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The next MBTA train to Improvementville is not now arriving
By adamg on Thu, 06/01/2023 - 2:54pm
A top T honcho says riders could see noticeable improvements in a year or so. But two months? Not likely, CommonWealth reports.
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Comments
Shocked you posted this article
That contains this little fact.
"I think Charlie Baker probably was the first governor since Mike Dukakis to pay any attention in any real way to the T.”
Maybe you stopped reading before the article was completed.
Fact?
Nah. Mayor Koch of Quincy was quoted as saying that. The writer of the article did not say that.
Koch was and is a Baker buddy, appointed to the T Board by Baker, and his statement is hilarious. If Koch really believes what he said, he's probably the only person in Quincy that believes that.
Said the Guy Appointed by His Good Buddy Charlie B.
Koch is chair of an advisory board that did nothing and asked no material questions while the red line killed a guy, the orange line caught fire, an escalator collapsed, and the green line played demolition derby. I wouldn't trust Mayor Koch's word if my life depended on it. If there was any accountability, he would be forced to step down from the board and a chair appointed who actually cared about the T.
Then he could go back to focusing on buddying up with Mike Pence and trying to keep the city of Boston from accessing its ideal treatment center location on Long Island.
I have a simple metric
How many trains are on the Orange Line?
A year ago it was 16 during rush hour, which is the number it has been for over a decade give or take a few and discounting the winter of 2015, which was resolved in what now looks like a quick 2 months.
Right now, it's 10. Allegedly, they have all the dispatchers they need, and they've got more than 10 train sets. I'll take slow trains at 6 minute intervals over speedy trains every quarter hour any day.
6 minute intervals??
The Ashmont Line is currently running 18 minutes between trains, rush hour or not. We in Dorchester can only wish for 6 minute intervals.
The Red Line is a different animal
As I haven’t been a regular rider since the 1980s, I never paid attention to headways before all of this. The goal is to get things back to whatever it was in 2019. With the line split, there’s no way it was less than 8 south of Andrew.
In the before times
During rush hour the Ashmont line was every 5-10 minutes. During off hours is was 10-15. But now during slow zone and dispatcher hell, it's a minimum of 18 minutes, all the time.
On site but not ready
The Orange line roster says 13 trainsets of 6 cars each is needed for peak service. They have 12 I think. While they have a couple additional sets they are under review and test and getting changes added that have been identified from earlier problems.
They have not received ant additional cars since last September and even if they did they are still addressing the supply chain issues with the USA parts, and a reported workmanship issue at the manufacturing plant in Springfield, MA.
So they are short one and still need a few more as spares.
They still have older Hawkers on the property but rumor control says the FTA is not allowing them to use any of those that were deemed (by the MBTA) as the better of the remaining litter, due to age and issues the MBTA was willing to live with. So they won't be more trains for a while and we will have to live with the ones we have.
Hopefully those with door sensor issues can be fixed quickly since when a trainset is taken out of service for work, the schedule slips accordingly.
There's a light at the end of the tunnel.
Unfortunately, it is a disabled train that has to unload its passengers for a tour of the red line.
Ruggles escalator
Any word on when, if ever, the escalator at Ruggles will be repaired? It has been blocked off and been disassembled for MONTHS. I have never seen anyone working on it.
MONTHS.
I'm mean, if we're talking Ruggles
How long has half the stairwell to Ruggles Street been blocked off?
The thing about escalators is, they can be used as stairs when they are turned off. A blocked escalator, on the other hand, is useless.
The thing about escalators is
It could be, except in this case the escalator itself is disassembled, parts sitting there at the bottom with the escalator blocked off. It’s not in a condition to be walked on. And it’s been this way for months, as if the repair crew just went on lunch break and never came back.
Months? Bowdoin scoffs.
https://www.universalhub.com/2022/seasonal-art-display-bowdoin-t-stop
Just marked my calendar for a year from now
To check in on the progress.
I'll be eligible for The Ride
I'll be eligible for The Ride soon. Then I will die.
When you consider a few days
When you consider a few days ago the news is they manage to remove 66 slow zones over the past 2 months but there's 204 slow zones totaling 27.4 miles, just basic math would say this is going to take until 2024. And that's assuming no additional slow zones are added, each job is done right, and they can keep at the same pace.
At our most optimistic view, barring another rip-the-band-aid push (that truly works), there won't be any dramatic improvement. Just a gradual progress that become noticeable when one thinks back to the slowest days. Maybe it can reach that noticeable point by post-summer. But if the last's two months didn't felt noticeable, then comparing the next 2 months won't either. But maybe once we can look back a collective 4-6 months then we might.
There's a lot of ifs though. One thing I definitely don't want to see is we just "get used to it". We cannot allow this to become a "new normal". We have to get back to pre-slow zone days. We have to get back to sub-15 minute headways.
Even getting back to that point is still a sad position compared to other countries, but it was good enough for a significant population. People built lives using the T as transit voluntarily because it works well for their life (and not because or some principle or necessity). Now I'm seeing increasing number IRL and online now literally getting a license and buying cars. On some certain spaces, one might tell me I'm just witnessing the next phase of life. No, some might, but I'm sure a significant number are doing it because people are getting burned using the MBTA now.
But I digressed, this is going to take a while, but we need to not get used to this. If they fail to make improvements, we need to remember so this remains viewed as a crisis - because it is, even if it takes a while so we'll have to adapt.
BS!
They have been saying things will improve for over 20 years. Actions speak louder than words!