Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

fatnoah said:
Is that the actual reason? Never once, as the driver of a vehicle along the E line, have I ever noticed a stop sign on a train. I just figured I was supposed to stop for a train letting people out into a traffic lane. (Googles pictures of LRVs) ...and I know I know what those look like. TIL
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If you're looking for an octagonal one, it's because they don't have one as such. Admittedly, it's on the forward door rather than the back which makes it harder to see from the rear of the train. It's more that one of the leaves of the bifold doors conveniently becomes the stop sign as it folds out. The type 9s, having plug doors, don't have that.

That said, with the type 10 supercars coming it shouldn't be too hard for CAF to include a pop out sign like those on school buses and retrofit it to the 9s.
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Equilibria said:
Which is why I think the problem is more likely with the September inspection than with the track...



I think it's more likely that they're being very conservative given all the flak they've taken from FTA (rightly) and they simply don't care about providing service to customers vs. getting through the day without getting fined or fired.

Also bear in mind that the MBTA literally had no Maintenance of Way chief until one week ago, after a vacancy of more than a year. Baker and Poftak abandoned this agency to the wolves for their last year in office. A lot of the slow zone stuff comes back to the fact that no one was actually reading or processing (or often doing) track inspections. It wouldn't be a surprise that they screwed one up again.
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And the wolves have come back to stake their claim into one more thing; the GLX, to make IT slow like all or most of the other lines. I tell you, this bloody slowness crap has everything so plagued up that it's even so ridiculous to just even ride the lines!! How on earth can a transit agency have things or vehicles running so slow?! Don't they even care? People have to get to & from work. Not only that, but to be able to do other things like to go visit families & friends. With the T, it's like; "Get to work the best way that you can. We've slowed things down. It's going to take you an hour or more to get to work." :eek:
 
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I just got to thinking; That the GLX probably isn't Eng's fault, since I think that it opened while Baker was in office & Poftak was managing things at the T. The snafu that just happened with the tracks clearly came about just a short while ago. Eng is probably excused from that!! :)
 
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The discussion on the "tracks too close to each other" has revolved around gauge being too tight, is anyone sure that is what they are saying or is it that the inbound and outbound tracks are too close to each other. Commonly known to experienced track people as "track centers." In other words if the minimum allowable track centers are 12'-0" and some areas are say 11'-11 1/2" then the "tracks are too close to each other." It is certainly possible for tracks to shift horizontally over time (and vertically)
If this is true the T needs some spokesmen who understand track, they are confusing people

Also track geometry cars don't measure track centers, they only measure the parameters of the track they are operating on.
 
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reno said:
The discussion on the "tracks too close to each other" has revolved around gauge being too tight, is anyone sure that is what they are saying or is it that the inbound and outbound tracks are too close to each other. Commonly known to experienced track people as "track centers." In other words if the minimum allowable track centers are 12'-0" and some areas are say 11'-11 1/2" then the "tracks are too close to each other." It is certainly possible for tracks to shift horizontally over time (and vertically)
If this is true the T needs some spokesmen who understand track, they are confusing people

Also track geometry cars don't measure track centers, they only measure the parameters of the track they are operating on.
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This possibility intrigued me, so I went looking. Both Eng and Pesaturo are quoted talking either explicitly about track gauge or implicitly about track gauge (when Eng commented something to the effect of ‘obviously you expect tracks to widen, not narrow, over time’). I suppose it’s possible there’s been a terrible internal comms failure, but Eng strikes me as the sort who would want to review the data himself, which would presumably reveal whether it is a gauge issue vs track center issue.
 
Riverside said:
This possibility intrigued me, so I went looking. Both Eng and Pesaturo are quoted talking either explicitly about track gauge or implicitly about track gauge (when Eng commented something to the effect of ‘obviously you expect tracks to widen, not narrow, over time’). I suppose it’s possible there’s been a terrible internal comms failure, but Eng strikes me as the sort who would want to review the data himself, which would presumably reveal whether it is a gauge issue vs track center issue.
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If they specifically said gauge your right, they are talking about the rails on one track. I'd like to see the result of their investigation, this still is an unusual event.
 
I see a lot of talk about whether or not we should blame Eng for this and other current problems with the T. Just look at how many governors and T leaders have come in and out over the last 20 years promising to fix the T and it continues to deteriorate. Are they all incompetent? Most likely not.

Maybe the T is just unfixable given it's current situation. Could the state, or possibly even the federal government, put the T into receivership and let a few competent leaders clean house and finally fix the damn thing?
 
MrDee12345 said:
I see a lot of talk about whether or not we should blame Eng for this and other current problems with the T. Just look at how many governors and T leaders have come in and out over the last 20 years promising to fix the T and it continues to deteriorate. Are they all incompetent? Most likely not.

Maybe the T is just unfixable given it's current situation. Could the state, or possibly even the federal government, put the T into receivership and let a few competent leaders clean house and finally fix the damn thing?
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Yes to this. State-run clearly doesn't mean "done well" in the case of mass/public/rapid transit in Massachusetts, specifically Boston. Outsource/sell/whatever. It'll be better sooner than we can fathom.
 
No new slowdowns on GLX “eastbound” this afternoon from North Station to Ball Square from the condition prior to the “narrow tracks” announcement. Possibly a new one leaving Gilman Square about 300 ft at 3 MPH but nothing like what was reported last week.
 
Is most of it pre-Gilman? Because I use it nearly every day and it's a tiny bit slower than it was most of the time post 12/12/22, but really not much different.
 
chrisbrat said:
Is most of it pre-Gilman? Because I use it nearly every day and it's a tiny bit slower than it was most of the time post 12/12/22, but really not much different.
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Accordingly to the website. The three longest slow zones are

1. Westbound (Inbound) between Tufts and Ball Sq for 1,200 ft (.23 miles)
2. Westbound (Inbound) between Gilman and East Somerville for 800 ft (.15 miles)
3. Eastbound (Outbound) between Ball Sq and Tufts for 800 ft (.15 miles)

So it is kinda pre-Gilman. A good 1,700 ft (1,200+500) is before Gilman sq. Though there is a 800 ft long slow zone between Gilman and East Somerville. That spot parallels with the community path so everyone can outwalk the Green Line in very visible fashion.

Hmmmm... This one of the moments where the MBTA website provides better data than TransitMatters.
 
MrDee12345 said:
I see a lot of talk about whether or not we should blame Eng for this and other current problems with the T. Just look at how many governors and T leaders have come in and out over the last 20 years promising to fix the T and it continues to deteriorate. Are they all incompetent? Most likely not.

Maybe the T is just unfixable given it's current situation. Could the state, or possibly even the federal government, put the T into receivership and let a few competent leaders clean house and finally fix the damn thing?
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Honestly, while the T has had plenty of foibles in its history (it has nearly shut down due to bankruptcy at least twice) the current failure isn't old. It began with inattention and institutional rot in 2021 and 2022 under Poftak and Baker.

For most of my life, the system has worked. There have been times when we were even optimistic about it. This is NOT normal for the MBTA, and responsibility is firmly on a handful of people in the prior administration. If Eng hasn't done anything to make it better a year from now, then it's on him (and Healey).
 
Equilibria said:
Honestly, while the T has had plenty of foibles in its history (it has nearly shut down due to bankruptcy at least twice) the current failure isn't old. It began with inattention and institutional rot in 2021 and 2022 under Poftak and Baker.
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The slowdowns are the result of the FTA getting involved and demanding them. Who knows how long they had been running the T at some level of risk deemed unacceptable to the FTA.
 
Equilibria said:
Honestly, while the T has had plenty of foibles in its history (it has nearly shut down due to bankruptcy at least twice) the current failure isn't old. It began with inattention and institutional rot in 2021 and 2022 under Poftak and Baker.

For most of my life, the system has worked. There have been times when we were even optimistic about it. This is NOT normal for the MBTA, and responsibility is firmly on a handful of people in the prior administration. If Eng hasn't done anything to make it better a year from now, then it's on him (and Healey).
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The T's deferred maintenance issues date well before Baker, Poftak. You don't get this far in the hole in just 4 or 8 years. (I am not suggesting they helped at all, but they perpetuated an ongoing issue, they didn't start it.)

Analysts have pinned the transfer of Big Dig debt to the T as the major source of the deferred maintenance issues. As far back as 2009 (well before Baker) there were serious reports of unfunded safety-related maintenance issues, because of the T debt burden.

Study Finds MBTA Passenger Safety Being Compromised

A sweeping review of MBTA finances found the largest transportation provider in Massachusetts has relied on an overly optimistic and unsustainable financing model that now is compromising safety because it cannot fund critical maintenance and equipment replacements.
www.wbur.org www.wbur.org
 
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