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Red Line made it a week before a slow zone popped up again
By adamg on Sun, 12/01/2024 - 9:14pm
Red Line trains can only go 10 m.p.h. on part of the Ashmont branch. Map by MBTA.
A new slow zone emerged on the Red Line this weekend, just one week after MBTA officials had declared the line free of speed restrictions for the first time in two decades.
For safety reasons, train drivers are required to go no faster than 10 m.p.h. in a one-tenth mile stretch of the inbound Ashmont branch just north of Savin Hill, according to the T's speed restrictions page - which does not specify the cause of the new restriction.
In announcing the seeming end of Red Line speed restrictions last week, T officials had expressed hope they could clear what at the time seemed like the last of the entire system's slow zones, two of them on the Green Line downtown, in work scheduled for this month.
Percentage of track per line with slow zones over the past month:
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
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Comments
well
Well that didnt last long. sigh
also that graph.. I assume the black line is the orange line? since the other three colors match mbta subway line colors.
The black line represents the
The black line represents the sum of all 4 subway lines. The orange line is hiding behind the blue, since both are (for now) slow zone free - AKA 0% affected
Seems to me...
...that a new slow zone (or an old one) has reappeared between South Station and Broadway headed outbound. The last few times I've been on that portion of the red line there was a slow down in that area. Here we go again...
(Also, the one sometimes-working escalator at Andrew is broken again...again...)
Congestion
Trains run slowly when they are bunching up.
Orange line does this. I've seen holds at State and inbound at Sullivan.
Operational delays
In the busy central areas of the lines there will be operational delays to maintain spacing between trains.
I've encountered this at Sullivan both inbound and outbound, and on the Green Line at Government Center. Trains will hold at stations or signals, or run slowly to keep from piling up and reduce the chance of them banging into one another.
It isn't a slow zone per se ... just a lot more active dispatch than we are accustomed to.
Automatic
On the Red and Orange, a lot of that isn't even active - the signal system tells the computer in the train cab how fast to go, and if there's a train a certain distance ahead, the signal system tells the train to go slower, and it does. The operator just has to keep the handle pushed to max, and can concentrate on the track, until it's time to stop at a station.
Ah, so that's what has changed
Either way, these happen in order to maintain headways.
Not there yet…
Also why are the trains still every 12 minutes at rush hour? It ain’t back to 2019 yet. Where are all the new trains that were supposed to be here years ago? A lot of backslapping congratulations going around but we need continuous work to keep a decent level of service. And how about some political accountability for the last few years of ridership hell??
Politically
Healy found Eng and he's been the best GM in decades.
Baker and Patrick (and Romney, etc...) made the system progressively worse but at least Healy can say it's better now vs when she started, entirely because of Eng's hiring and support.
The big question is what happens once federal funding is cut dramatically.
Credit the FTA too maybe?
Credit the FTA too maybe?
Not really
The feds and state regulators were asleep at the wheel as the system crumbled so I won't give them any credit for recent improvements.
The improvements have only happened because Healy hired someone had a history of making improvements and gave them the mandate to do what it takes to get things back on track.
And, the MBTA Fiscal and
And, the MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board did not put us on the right track?
I always look askance when any sitting pol receives too much credit for the slow building improvements that come to fruition on their watch.
No the fiscal and management
No the fiscal and management control Board was one of the reasons things like this were pushed back. They focused on cost cutting to make Baker look tough on public transit to the exurbs not improving service.
“Advocates call for T Control
“Advocates call for T Control Board extension- MassINC. Mar 22, 2024. SOME OF THE STATE'S leading transit advocates are calling for extending the life of the existing MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board…”
“Page Not Found…”
https://massinc.org/2020/01/06/advocates-call-for-t-control-board-extens...
And the Big Dig
Let's not forget that Baker was one of the people who pushed for the T to shoulder the Big Dig debt, aka one of the biggest reasons it's been in a financial hole for so long.
Seems like you just want to
Seems like you just want to give accolades to anyone but Healey.
If credit proves due then
If credit proves due then fine, but there’s no “i” in team.
No money
You sound like someone who would lecture a TANF recipient on not saving enough money to buy a house.
It is analogous. Charlie Baker hated the T and wanted to destroy it for decades. That was his life's work. There wasn't enough money to do the basic maintenance.
Dramatic
It’s a bit dramatic to say Charlie Baker’s life work was to destroy the T. After all he did push forward commuter rail expansion and the GL Extension.
He had ZERO choice
The Conservation Law Foundation sued the state to make good on its promises for Big Dig mitigations, which included GLX and commuter rail expansion.
Also, look into his career at the Pioneer Institute - he had been trying to destroy the MBTA for decades and put a lot of effort into it.
...or 20 minutes
At Ashmont at rush hour, the trains are still 18-20 minutes apart at rush hour, which is absurd. I don't get the congratulations tour either. I appreciate the fixes to the slow zones, but the T still isn't back to normal and no one should be surprised that so many people still choose to drive to work instead of taking the T. I take the T only because the traffic and parking costs bother me more, but if they want people to ditch their cars, the T needs to at least get back to baseline.
They had a train with runaway
They had a train with runaway motors on one of the cars (one axle spinning while the train is stationary), that left some divots in the rail. Since it was a holiday weekend, they probably had to wait a day or two before a crew could come in to replace the rail at that spot overnight.
It appears to be right at the station
It appears to be a section of track by the platform at Savin Hill Station. On Friday, when I first noticed the slow zones entering the station from Fields Corner, there were several T employees, and some T customers looking and pointing at the track.
The slow zone (entering and exiting the station) was bad enough but the ancient red line train I was on was not handling the slow speed well. The clunky breaking, the shaking, the lurching, all felt like the train was going to die at any moment.
ōld harvard ?
ōld harvard ?
By virtue of its permanence,
By virtue of its permanence, the permanent speed restriction at Harvard Square doesn’t count as a “speed restriction?”
Thanks to several UH contributors for explaining the hx of this baked in slow down. (I can no longer extract useful, non-commercial information out of search engines.)
Please remind me
Can someone please remind me the reason for this permanent slow zone again? I know it’s been discussed here before but I can’t remember exactly why.
Curve
There's a sharp curve there.
Physics
The curve going into/out of Harvard is about 90 degrees thanks to some buildings in the square. Trains HAVE to slow down going around that curve (and create that godawful screech) if they don't want to derail.
Slow Zones Happen
The system should be judged by how long it takes to fix them.
In the time just before Covid, Trains magazine did a piece on the maintenance crews of the T. In it, the crew replaced the switch between Mass Ave and Ruggles. This was done in the overnight period when the system is closed. That is the given reason for the lack of 24 hour service.
Then, as I keep on noting, they stopped doing the work altogether.
Nowaways, they will close the line for a week to do the same work.
Slow zone on Green Line D
Is there a slow zone on the Green Line D between Beaconsfield and Reservoir that is not shown in that map? The trains are always slow both ways between those stations.
Not a slow zone
A low speed limit, because of all the switches and crossovers into reservoir yard
Aaaand it's gone
Per Boston.com and an MBTA spokesperson it was actually repaired before service opened, but they missed the 3AM cutoff for updating the slow zone map so it was listed as still present. Sounds like a quick fix.
https://www.boston.com/news/transportation/2024/12/02/red-line-speed-res...