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Can subway trains suffer heat exhaustion?
By adamg on Wed, 08/05/2009 - 9:33pm
The T reports a Red Line train crawled into Porter Square and died this evening.
That's on top of all the Green Line trolleys that gave up the ghost today. Mel Du, who's apparently been keeping count, tweets that makes ten DOA trains today.
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Comments
Buses (and cars!) too
I caught a 66 bus this evening that was blocked from exiting the stop by a dead car. The bus made it to the next stop and also died - the driver said the "check engine" light had come on and he had to wait for help.
Cars do all the time, its
Cars do all the time, its called over heating lol
I would imagine that the tunnels normally maintain a certain tempature even in hot weather but that is affected when it does not dip below 75 for X number of days in a row. I feel the same thing in my walls after an extended heat spell, when the walls are as hot as the air thats when you know its been hot. So if the tunnels dont cool off the trains never get a chance either.
In the misery loves company
In the misery loves company department, below is a link to all of the WMATA (Washington) subway delays and failures for August 4, its not just an MBTA thing to have high failure rates in high temps.
http://www.wmata.com/rail/disruption_reports/viewP...
Quick, someone call the mayor of Newton
...and ask him about all those 'capital improvements'.
Yesterday evening, I was on the E line outbound and the driver stopped the trolley, opened the doors, got out, pushed a button that said "LEFT", got back in, closed the doors, and started the train up again.
Summer in the subway
This is one of my pet peeves. The short sightedness of running air conditioned trains in tunnels. They dump the heat back into the naturally cool tunnels, heating up the whole subway and make cooling progressively harder for each successive train. I never understood why they just didn't cool the tunnels with massive - but ultimately cheaper - fixed systemic AC that dumps heat above ground, and just VENT the trains with the cool, dry, tunnel air.
It will never happen in this economic climate (no pun intended). But I'm curious if any mass transit system does this - or at least researched this approach?
European subways do not have
European subways do not have A/C (well, Lausanne does).
That doesnt mean theyre cool though.
I am not up on the prices
I am not up on the prices but I can see that happening. It would be nice because then the stations themselves would be cool as well.
My only concerns are that we would then want to install rotating doors at the mouths of all stations as to not lose the cold air through the open doors many of the stations have. Also once we seal the system and install a massive central air system does that not open up the MBTA system to a massive terrorist strike where all they have to do is insert the biological/chemical weapon in the central air system and let it spread across the 4 train branches during rush hour? Currently there is no central system in place so this is not feasible but in a central system it would be easy with the infiltration of just a handful of MBTA employees.
Since 1/2 the tunnels have
Since 1/2 the tunnels have leaking raw sewerage, this isn't an option.
Isn't it nice what 30 years of politics can do? Remember folks, as everything around you crumbles, taxes are evil and the gov can't do anything right.
that mentality has poisoned the electorate, and demonizing taxes made the latter more true then ever.