General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[omaja]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Actually, no.

Doesnt the ADA law say that all key stations have to be fully handicap accessible........by 1993? With an extension to 1997?

It's 2012. MBTA is operating on a slight delay. Thats unacceptable.

They did both Copley and Arlington for a total of $60M or so, if I remember correctly. It doesn't make sense that GC is costing 33% more than those two stations, even if adjusting for the increase in construction costs. The whole thing reeks of inefficient design and project management.

 

[massmotorist]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Tally up the liability from the fatal 2008 wreck and the Gov't Center wreck and the cost is already in tens of millions, plus 4 wrecked Green Line cars valued at >$1M each which have to meet the scrapper's torch and will have to be replaced whole as part of the Type 9 order. You don't have to resort to false equivalencies about the price of a human life vs. price of a signal system. It's already taken its chunk of flesh out of the T's coffers in real money. Real money so far...neither of those two cases are closed, neither have had all costs tallied. And if we have more wrecked cars every couple years from these types of rear-enders, the price of the Type 9 order goes up as they have to tack on contingency units to cover wreck victims. The GL isn't swimming in fleet surplus. Those are fucking expensive bumper cars. Already are. No cost hypotheticals about it. A system that averages a high-liability case and "car loss event" on one line at a rate of about once every couple years better damn well figure out how to manage its traffic under load a little more fail-safe than that. This shit gets expensive.


Second...that was not a slow-speed crash. All auto-stop systems (Red/Orange ATO, commuter rail cab signals, Amtrak PTC) have a manual override in case of signal loss or some other contingency. Capped at 5 MPH max. And only after making a dead stop. 5 MPH is your maximum potential energy for a collision with stop protection. 5 MPH will not push a parked two-car GL consist a full 20 feet forward when the brakes on both cars are locked in tandem for a station stop. This was going faster than that. How much so, I don't know...but easily 10-20 MPH physics. The GC wreck was going way faster than that. The D wreck was going way faster still. None of these three incidents happen with that severity under PTC. They don't. They don't even happen with Red/Orange's hardly state-of-the-art ATO system. OK...right there, we have preventability metrics you can crunch vs. the liability bleed and equipment loss.


Third...where are you coming up with this $1B figure? The initial estimates (see p.20: http://www.bostonmpo.org/bostonmpo/pmt-old/PMT-2.pdf) for CBTC on the Green Line were established at $327M. Be ultra cynical and say they've doubled. There's still not enough lard you can physically pack onto a signal retrofit of the D, Central Subway, Huntington subway, and GLX to arrive at $1B. Track miles set the construction costs for this. That's why the Red Line's 26 miles price out the most expensive of the 4 rapid transit lines for CBTC. That's what's driving NYC Subway's cost estimates. But new GL signals are not a billion-dollar project.


Fourth...this has nothing to do with South Coast FAIL. We'd save way more than 1 life per year extending the subway's operating hours two hours to 2:30am, two nights a week and getting those people off the road at closing time than we would spending one paltry capital dollar on any new service or any new piece of infrastructure anywhere. Or, hell, probably 1 life per year per every half-hour extra per night. So what's your fucking point?



I understand that safety vs. cost valuation is a tough nut to crack and there's a healthy debate on the limits we can spend for "not one life". So state your case without cloaking it in a turd sandwich of logical fallacies, please.

I got the $1B figure from an article that said according to the FTA per-mile costs are X, there are Y miles to do, so the total cost would be $500m to $1B. I'm not going to address all your other points because you're probably correct.

Instead I'll just explain where I'm coming from. A billion dollars is a lot of money, and $327 million is a lot as well. Too often the expenditure of public dollars is done narrowly and without a sufficiently broad, rigorous, formula- and fact-based view. That view would say "we have $X in our budget, what is the best bang for our buck long-term". And it would factor in opportunity cost - $327m on this is $327m we can't spend on keeping the subway open until 2:30 on the weekends. Yes, I know, capital vs. operating budgets, but I'm just talking conceptually here.

Maybe the cost-benefit on this is such that it's the right thing to do. I don't know. But what I do know is that the MBTA's main cost driver is employee compensation. It's not going to be long until the technology is there to cost-effectively automate these trains entirely, and it's going to happen pretty suddenly. If you're thinking in terms of automating the entire T within the next, say, 25 years, PTC doesn't seem like the best investment. Maybe I'm wrong that the technology will be there to do that, but I don't think so.

 

[metasyntactic]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

It's not going to be long until the technology is there to cost-effectively automate these trains entirely, and it's going to happen pretty suddenly.

The technology to fully automate trains has existed since the 80s. It's just that the cost is full grade-separation, which isn't going to happen on the Green Line anytime soon. Also, I'd rather not have infrastructure investments contingent on the success of Hard AI (which has been in a perpetual state of "almost there" for a long time).

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I got the $1B figure from an article that said according to the FTA per-mile costs are X, there are Y miles to do, so the total cost would be $500m to $1B. I'm not going to address all your other points because you're probably correct.

Instead I'll just explain where I'm coming from. A billion dollars is a lot of money, and $327 million is a lot as well. Too often the expenditure of public dollars is done narrowly and without a sufficiently broad, rigorous, formula- and fact-based view. That view would say "we have $X in our budget, what is the best bang for our buck long-term". And it would factor in opportunity cost - $327m on this is $327m we can't spend on keeping the subway open until 2:30 on the weekends. Yes, I know, capital vs. operating budgets, but I'm just talking conceptually here.

Maybe the cost-benefit on this is such that it's the right thing to do. I don't know. But what I do know is that the MBTA's main cost driver is employee compensation. It's not going to be long until the technology is there to cost-effectively automate these trains entirely, and it's going to happen pretty suddenly. If you're thinking in terms of automating the entire T within the next, say, 25 years, PTC doesn't seem like the best investment. Maybe I'm wrong that the technology will be there to do that, but I don't think so.

Let me ask you this, then: say they have another "car loss event" and the NTSB throws the book at them. They are prohibited from running the current headways without an auto-stop system because the accident rate is too fucking high ("car loss event" due to operator error @ < 3 year inervals = too fucking high). They must run headways twice as long and space cars twice as far to operate the line under the current signal system...because those are the only service levels the NTSB pegs as acceptable in their current margin of error. At whatever holy hell of public blowback, revenue loss, and general paralysis that unleashes. And they have to stay at half-load until they upgrade to an auto-stop signal system that prevents these >5 MPH operator error accidents. Or, decide to give up and just let the Green Line run half-load forevermore.

Would your answer actually be any different? Or are you still going to sit here and argue to study it some more for a fact-based approach, confident that Jetsons Shit will be right around the corner to save us? Cut the intellectual dishonesty, please. If you don't think the Green Line is worth the charity and/or should be put out of its misery, say so and state the usual reasons why. But don't try to pass this off like the valuation hasn't already been made. If there is one thing that does keep even the most larded-up bureaucrat in the T up at night, it's the prospect of the NTSB handing them Strike Three: cripple the service until they're willing to make it safe. This isn't like the railroad PTC mandate. That's the FRA doing its typical bureaucratizing in the name of interstate commerce to justify its existence. Nobody's under a mandate to tart up light rail systems to one single standard, because rapid transit systems aren't (thank god) common carriers like the RR network.

This threat is from the federal agency that decides if you're system's safe enough saying...it ain't safe enough. And what do they do if they get called out and told it ain't safe enough. Kneecap GL headways because it ain't safe enough to prevent operator-error "car loss events" and it creates the votes that bounce the pols that back the bureaucrats. Swiftly and brutally. That scares them to death...on their turf.

It's been studied. It's being studied. They have already actively sought to acquire more study money for Green Line CBTC than they have spent to fundraise for the allegedly "binding" RR PTC mandate carrying a 12/31/2015 implementation deadline. Which do you think they're more afraid of? Not the forces of interstate commerce bureaucracy, apparently. They fear waking up to not being able to run the GL at full headways because they got flunked on safety under load, and what happens when they have to cope totally reactively to that festering wound with the riding public. Each time they have an incident like this in track-signaled territory where the speed involved is preventable by an auto-stop system, everybody with a stake in power at the T and MassDOT wakes up in a cold sweat with a reinforcing jolt that Strike Three odds are still way too high for happening on their watch.

Understand? This isn't "conceptual" navel-gazing. They know exactly what's at stake, and whose hold on power is at stake if shit hits the fan. If you want to argue that the Green Line is such a waste of resources that reducing it to half-load/half-speed/half-cocked at "no-build" under Strike Three is a better value than safety-hardening it to stay ahead of Strike Three, go ahead and argue that. But don't cloak it in some impenetrable fog of uncertainty and abstraction, because the stakes are known. So...unfortunately...are the relative odds.

 

[massmotorist]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Let me ask you this, then: say they have another "car loss event" and the NTSB throws the book at them. They are prohibited from running the current headways without an auto-stop system because the accident rate is too fucking high ("car loss event" due to operator error @ < 3 year inervals = too fucking high). They must run headways twice as long and space cars twice as far to operate the line under the current signal system...because those are the only service levels the NTSB pegs as acceptable in their current margin of error. At whatever holy hell of public blowback, revenue loss, and general paralysis that unleashes. And they have to stay at half-load until they upgrade to an auto-stop signal system that prevents these >5 MPH operator error accidents. Or, decide to give up and just let the Green Line run half-load forevermore.

Would your answer actually be any different? Or are you still going to sit here and argue to study it some more for a fact-based approach, confident that Jetsons Shit will be right around the corner to save us? Cut the intellectual dishonesty, please. If you don't think the Green Line is worth the charity and/or should be put out of its misery, say so and state the usual reasons why. But don't try to pass this off like the valuation hasn't already been made. If there is one thing that does keep even the most larded-up bureaucrat in the T up at night, it's the prospect of the NTSB handing them Strike Three: cripple the service until they're willing to make it safe. This isn't like the railroad PTC mandate. That's the FRA doing its typical bureaucratizing in the name of interstate commerce to justify its existence. Nobody's under a mandate to tart up light rail systems to one single standard, because rapid transit systems aren't (thank god) common carriers like the RR network.

This threat is from the federal agency that decides if you're system's safe enough saying...it ain't safe enough. And what do they do if they get called out and told it ain't safe enough. Kneecap GL headways because it ain't safe enough to prevent operator-error "car loss events" and it creates the votes that bounce the pols that back the bureaucrats. Swiftly and brutally. That scares them to death...on their turf.

It's been studied. It's being studied. They have already actively sought to acquire more study money for Green Line CBTC than they have spent to fundraise for the allegedly "binding" RR PTC mandate carrying a 12/31/2015 implementation deadline. Which do you think they're more afraid of? Not the forces of interstate commerce bureaucracy, apparently. They fear waking up to not being able to run the GL at full headways because they got flunked on safety under load, and what happens when they have to cope totally reactively to that festering wound with the riding public. Each time they have an incident like this in track-signaled territory where the speed involved is preventable by an auto-stop system, everybody with a stake in power at the T and MassDOT wakes up in a cold sweat with a reinforcing jolt that Strike Three odds are still way too high for happening on their watch.

Understand? This isn't "conceptual" navel-gazing. They know exactly what's at stake, and whose hold on power is at stake if shit hits the fan. If you want to argue that the Green Line is such a waste of resources that reducing it to half-load/half-speed/half-cocked at "no-build" under Strike Three is a better value than safety-hardening it to stay ahead of Strike Three, go ahead and argue that. But don't cloak it in some impenetrable fog of uncertainty and abstraction, because the stakes are known. So...unfortunately...are the relative odds.

Let me be clear here, obviously you know more than I do about trains and transit, and if I'm wrong I won't defend previous statements just for the sake of defending them.

That said, what the hell are you talking about? The NTSB has no regulatory or enforcement authority. They conduct investigations and make nonbinding recommendations.

 

[cden4]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect Green Line drivers to make sure they don't hit other trains underground. They are the only vehicles there and can only go in one direction!

We let the bus drivers go out in crazy Boston traffic and they seem to do fine, especially since their risk of hitting something or being hit is much higher!

 

[datadyne007]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I'm still puzzled as to why they don't have a cause yet. Ask the damn operator what happened and release it to the public.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I'm still puzzled as to why they don't have a cause yet. Ask the damn operator what happened and release it to the public.

This. Like holy hell, this doesn't put the MBTA in a good light that they can't figure it out yet. Good god, just interrogate the guy if need be, and give us some answers! Did he/she fall asleep because he hadn't slept in a week? Did his/her foot slip off the brake and onto the accelerator?

This shouldn't have to be like pulling teeth.

 

[omaja]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

That said, what the hell are you talking about? The NTSB has no regulatory or enforcement authority. They conduct investigations and make nonbinding recommendations.

NTSB may not have enforcement capabilities, but the vast majority of their recommendations are enacted by whichever is the regulatory agency overseeing the particular transportation sector. If the recommend that the MBTA ought to be restricted from operating the Green Line as they currently do, you had better bet the FTA, MassDOT, Patrick, Menino, et. al. will be all over it.

 

[novitiate]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

NTSB may not have enforcement capabilities, but the vast majority of their recommendations are enacted by whichever is the regulatory agency overseeing the particular transportation sector. If the recommend that the MBTA ought to be restricted from operating the Green Line as they currently do, you had better bet the FTA, MassDOT, Patrick, Menino, et. al. will be all over it.

Has the NTSB ever made such a recommendation?

I seem to recall that the Washington Metro had a history of failing to fully implement NTSB recommendations, resulting in further (fatal) accidents- but never received such dramatic sanction.

 

[omaja]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

To my knowledge there isn't a single rail line operating like the Green Line does with anywhere near the complex scheduling and reliance on antiquated signaling so I'm not sure what we would compare it to?

Washington suspended service on its Red Line immediately after the 2009 crash and supposedly implemented all of the NTSB's recommendations within a year following the accident. Also, to my knowledge previous accidents on Washington's Metro were all different - train detection circuits, vehicle brake malfunctions, etc., whereas all the of recent Green Line crashes are entirely operator error/negligence. You can fix computer errors replace equipment, etc., but there's really no way other than increasing headways and doubling down on block sections that could attempt to mitigate the margin for train operator error.

 

[massmotorist]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

NTSB may not have enforcement capabilities, but the vast majority of their recommendations are enacted by whichever is the regulatory agency overseeing the particular transportation sector. If the recommend that the MBTA ought to be restricted from operating the Green Line as they currently do, you had better bet the FTA, MassDOT, Patrick, Menino, et. al. will be all over it.

Unless there are massive fatalities, they would never do what was described to the Green Line. Remember, this is a line the functions fine, what, 364 days out of 365, and on the one day it doesn't you get some minor injuries an maybe a single fatality. Not to minimize injuries, but the fact is that because the direct cause is operator error it makes it easier to simply put in place some "new policy" to call the problem fixed rather than finding an engineering solution.

It's like on Route 24, there were lots of articles in the Globe recently about its poorly engineered ramps and high fatality rate. Rather than do the hard and expensive work of re-engineering the ramps, they sent the State Police out to do "enforcement" and called the problem solved after a few weeks.

 

[Ron Newman]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

isn't San Francisco Muni pretty much the same as our Green Line? Multiple surface streetcar lines fanning out from a central subway tunnel?

 

[mass88]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

isn't San Francisco Muni pretty much the same as our Green Line? Multiple surface streetcar lines fanning out from a central subway tunnel?

For the most part. Instead of having letters like the Green Line, each branch has its own color. I would say in some cases, the Muni is worse than the Green Line on certain lines. Took the MUNI out to the zoo once and it made the B Line look fast.

 

[Matthew]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

They have letters, and names too. N - Judah, L - Taraval, J - Church, M - Ocean View, K - Ingleside, T - Third. Never heard anyone refer to them by color.

 

[jass]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

isn't San Francisco Muni pretty much the same as our Green Line? Multiple surface streetcar lines fanning out from a central subway tunnel?

Their central subway is much more modern. High floor, modern stations.

Their branch lines are much worse. Actual streetcars, like the remaining section of the e, with a couple of exceptions.

The cars can load on both high floor and low floor due to collapsing stairs.

They do also run a mattapan style line with PCCs.

 

[Equilibria]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Their central subway is much more modern. High floor, modern stations.

Their branch lines are much worse. Actual streetcars, like the remaining section of the e, with a couple of exceptions.

The cars can load on both high floor and low floor due to collapsing stairs.

They do also run a mattapan style line with PCCs.

As long as we're summarizing: The "Mattapan-Style" line is also a streetcar line. None of the Muni lines spend much time on dedicated surface ROWs. Also, the phrase "Central Subway" in San Francisco refers to a new north-south tunnel for the T-Third Line currently under construction. The Market St. Subway was built in concert with BART and runs directly above the BART tunnel. I have no idea what the signaling system is like in there, but collisons happen as frequently as in Boston as far as I can tell (though not between trains). Someone even drove a truck down there...

Also, it's worth noting that Boston's lines connect underground. Muni lines merge on the surface before entering the tunnel.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Unless there are massive fatalities, they would never do what was described to the Green Line. Remember, this is a line the functions fine, what, 364 days out of 365, and on the one day it doesn't you get some minor injuries an maybe a single fatality. Not to minimize injuries, but the fact is that because the direct cause is operator error it makes it easier to simply put in place some "new policy" to call the problem fixed rather than finding an engineering solution.

It's like on Route 24, there were lots of articles in the Globe recently about its poorly engineered ramps and high fatality rate. Rather than do the hard and expensive work of re-engineering the ramps, they sent the State Police out to do "enforcement" and called the problem solved after a few weeks.

One "maybe single fatality" per year in normal operation due to operator error is so flagrantly above and beyond what any regulator would consider 'safe' operation that you better believe they would do exactly that. Those are not tolerable probabilities...those ARE worst-case, beyond-the-pale numbers that'll call for drastic, involuntary intervention.


Also, the Route 24 ramps analogy doesn't work here. A car driver is left to his own devices to obey a posted speed limit, and state troopers are a scarce resource that have to be assigned based on need. Carrot-and-stick enforcement of that sort does work to a certain degree when the difference between compliance and recklessness is "am I being watched?" It doesn't work here, because GL operators are already being watched in ways that a car driver isn't. Their speed readouts are monitored by the doormen in the other cars in the consist. They're squawking positions back and forth over the radio with the dispatcher every couple of minutes. There are inspector booths every few stations--denser concentration the closer to downtown (with a booth 20 feet away from this latest incident at Boylston)--and ride-along inspectors all over the place. And there are security cams in every single subway station (including some of the D surface stops) governed by track signaling. Leadfoot doesn't have many opportunities to hide habitual recklessness. They routinely do get written up and pulled out of the driver's seat for it.

The only way a policy directive is going to noticeably change anything is if it's closing up an unanticipated loophole like the texting ban. Otherwise...GL operators are already 25x more regulated than bus drivers, nevermind any individual car on the road. Enforcement is already saturation-level; a transfer of more enforcement resources does not have the same carrot-and-stick effect as it does with autos where enforcement is an inherently scarce resource. There's no magic bullet in assigning more inspectors to the already bloated ranks. If the well-watched operators are blowing that 5 MPH speed limit into stations too often and it's causing "maybe single fatality" / "maybe multiple injuries" / "maybe car-loss event" accidents every 2-3 years, the only recourses are to take the margin of error away from them entirely. i.e. Auto-stop enforcement, or space the cars out (and maim headways) enough that they'd have to blow twice as many stop signals and warnings from dispatch to even land themselves in proximity for an operator error rear-ender.



The bottom line is the GL is having too high an accident rate for there to be some neat, tidy, low-cost solution in just squinting at this looking hard for some bureaucratic efficiency angle that fits neatly with political narratives. If a system designed to operate safely within the bounds of human error is no longer operating safely within the bounds of human error...that is an engineering or ops problem in concrete terms. And requires an engineering or ops solution. We know what that is: auto-stop system, or space the cars out far enough apart to eliminate the rear-ender potential at any meaningful probability. That's not some political looking glass through which one can interpet his or her own worldview about bureaucracies. It's engineering.

 

[massmotorist]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

One "maybe single fatality" per year in normal operation due to operator error is so flagrantly above and beyond what any regulator would consider 'safe' operation that you better believe they would do exactly that. Those are not tolerable probabilities...those ARE worst-case, beyond-the-pale numbers that'll call for drastic, involuntary intervention.


Also, the Route 24 ramps analogy doesn't work here. A car driver is left to his own devices to obey a posted speed limit, and state troopers are a scarce resource that have to be assigned based on need. Carrot-and-stick enforcement of that sort does work to a certain degree when the difference between compliance and recklessness is "am I being watched?" It doesn't work here, because GL operators are already being watched in ways that a car driver isn't. Their speed readouts are monitored by the doormen in the other cars in the consist. They're squawking positions back and forth over the radio with the dispatcher every couple of minutes. There are inspector booths every few stations--denser concentration the closer to downtown (with a booth 20 feet away from this latest incident at Boylston)--and ride-along inspectors all over the place. And there are security cams in every single subway station (including some of the D surface stops) governed by track signaling. Leadfoot doesn't have many opportunities to hide habitual recklessness. They routinely do get written up and pulled out of the driver's seat for it.

The only way a policy directive is going to noticeably change anything is if it's closing up an unanticipated loophole like the texting ban. Otherwise...GL operators are already 25x more regulated than bus drivers, nevermind any individual car on the road. Enforcement is already saturation-level; a transfer of more enforcement resources does not have the same carrot-and-stick effect as it does with autos where enforcement is an inherently scarce resource. There's no magic bullet in assigning more inspectors to the already bloated ranks. If the well-watched operators are blowing that 5 MPH speed limit into stations too often and it's causing "maybe single fatality" / "maybe multiple injuries" / "maybe car-loss event" accidents every 2-3 years, the only recourses are to take the margin of error away from them entirely. i.e. Auto-stop enforcement, or space the cars out (and maim headways) enough that they'd have to blow twice as many stop signals and warnings from dispatch to even land themselves in proximity for an operator error rear-ender.



The bottom line is the GL is having too high an accident rate for there to be some neat, tidy, low-cost solution in just squinting at this looking hard for some bureaucratic efficiency angle that fits neatly with political narratives. If a system designed to operate safely within the bounds of human error is no longer operating safely within the bounds of human error...that is an engineering or ops problem in concrete terms. And requires an engineering or ops solution. We know what that is: auto-stop system, or space the cars out far enough apart to eliminate the rear-ender potential at any meaningful probability. That's not some political looking glass through which one can interpet his or her own worldview about bureaucracies. It's engineering.

I guess what it comes down to is cost-benefit. My general, uneducated feeling is, you're spending $327m (a lot of money!) and getting... what? I'd like to see them examine some kind of alternatives. It seems like the technology is there to do something perhaps 80% as effective for 5% of the price. Imagine a device in the cab that could read the upcoming signals (using a camera or some type of radio frequency) and alert the operator very loudly if he's running a red signal. It wouldn't stop the train, but unless the driver is incapacitated he'd be able to stop it. Or a simple LIDAR device connected to the brake, like the type Lexus cars have, that would stop the train if it was approaching another too quickly.

That's just spitballing, and I'm sure if there are huge holes in those ideas you'll point them out. But it seems nuts that everything related to transit is so preposterously expensive.

If those options wouldn't work, how about going in the other direction. If we're spending $327m, can we spend $750m and get dramatic long-term efficiency gains (such as some level of automation?)

Regardless, the MBTA has great autonomy to do what it wants, and the scenario of the Feds restricting headways or anything similar is impossible under the current legal framework, which specifically prohibits the Feds from regulating operations and delegates oversight responsibility to the state.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I guess what it comes down to is cost-benefit. My general, uneducated feeling is, you're spending $327m (a lot of money!) and getting... what? I'd like to see them examine some kind of alternatives. It seems like the technology is there to do something perhaps 80% as effective for 5% of the price. Imagine a device in the cab that could read the upcoming signals (using a camera or some type of radio frequency) and alert the operator very loudly if he's running a red signal. It wouldn't stop the train, but unless the driver is incapacitated he'd be able to stop it. Or a simple LIDAR device connected to the brake, like the type Lexus cars have, that would stop the train if it was approaching another too quickly.

You're squinting again.

This isn't cost/benefit analysis...a.k.a. maybe if we only had bureaucrats capable of cost/benefit analysis they'd have found that perfectly cost-effective means that fits every narrative!
This isn't new technology...a.k.a. maybe if we only had bureaucrats who didn't fear thinking outside-the-box we'd have licked this already with Jetsons Shit!
This isn't efficiency/simplicity...a.k.a. maybe if we only had bureaucrats who didn't hijack every opportunity to make things more complicated than it has to be in order to enrich their friends we'd have an 'elegant' solution!

No. There is no eureka moment here. The bureaucrats aren't missing anything about what the problem is and what the options are. They know exactly what it is.


The device you are describing which reads upcoming signals and alerts the operator very loudly HAS been around for 90 years. It's called cab signals. That is exactly what happens to a Red or Orange operator when they blow the posted speed limit...they get pinged through RF track signals, they hear a buzzer in the cab that they're over the speed limit, and they have X number of feet to get back under the limit or the train dumps the brakes and makes a penalty stop. You've been on that train before that makes an inexplicable HARD stop in the middle of the tunnel and nearly sends standees flying...that's Larry Leadfoot up in the cab getting spanked by the "enforcement" arm of the law. The Blue Line's mechanical trip-stops do the exact same thing in more primitive form. CBTC does the exact same thing in more modern computer-controlled form.

Any which way you just answered your own question with the words "auto-stop system" and defined your own cost metrics for the leap. The difference between 21st century CBTC and 19th century trip arms as the preferred alternative is small compared to the difference in replacing/upgrading the Green Line from present non- stop-enforced signaling to ANY known form of stop-enforced signaling on the Green Line. And before squinting harder and asking "what if we just kept the existing signals and augmented them with something"...stop...that's exactly what the Blue Line is: ex-trolley block signals--formerly 100% human-controlled--that were modified to throw those mechanical trips. Squinting further for some other magic bullet's just gonna make you go crosseyed. These are known knowns.

That's just spitballing, and I'm sure if there are huge holes in those ideas you'll point them out. But it seems nuts that everything related to transit is so preposterously expensive.

If those options wouldn't work, how about going in the other direction. If we're spending $327m, can we spend $750m and get dramatic long-term efficiency gains (such as some level of automation?)

Regardless, the MBTA has great autonomy to do what it wants, and the scenario of the Feds restricting headways or anything similar is impossible under the current legal framework, which specifically prohibits the Feds from regulating operations and delegates oversight responsibility to the state.

Well, that's exactly why NYC subway is going with CBTC. It didn't face a safety decision when it decided to take the plunge. It has a humongous glut of maintenance intensive trip-arm signaled lines that are past rated lifespan and need replacement, so it priced out the options. Much higher up-front cost, but they don't have to be out there every night of the week maintaining thousands of mechanical trips that constantly wear out, break, and are susceptible to weather. And they gain precision computer control over train spacing to pack trains tighter with absolute safety, so they get a system enhancement for the pain and suffering. So they decided to go for it.

You'll notice that PMT document I linked to a few posts ago prices this out for all 4 lines, even though Red, Orange, and Blue don't have any safety issues and haven't had a single "car loss event" between them in almost 38 years. For Blue...those trip arms are a royal P.I.T.A. to maintain in icy salt air. For Red, it's the only way headways can track with ridership growth. For Orange...largest chunk of track mileage of any line (SW Corridor) where the existing signal equipment is all nearing end of rated service life at the same time, and if by that point all other lines are upgraded there's economy in stamping out the outliers instead of just refreshing the equipment (same logic as completing the arduous Haymarket-north cab signal project...once the Blue 0600 cars were gone it was gonna get pricey to maintain the OL fleet for half a line's worth of trip arms). All very much a bang-for-buck + system enhancement discussion driving that conversation.

So, again...waste of time to squint, squint, squint at this thinking you're going to "Aha!" the so very inefficient bureaucrats. It's been done.