General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

F-Line to Dudley said:
FYI...cleanup of the cars was supposed to happen last night, so graffiti should be removed by today and any required touch-up on the paint done before week's end.
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My friend took a pic at Boylston this morning and the graffiti was still there.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

I just now saw it on the news.

That is disrespectful, distasteful and downright mean & nasty!!! :mad:
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

They should have thrown a tarp over it immediately. They are giving this prick recognition by leaving it open to cameras.

Thatbeingsaid, if it does get a new paint job it will be interesting to see if the old girl powers up. I know PCCs don't do well just sitting there.


(Sort of related, why are the cars NOT powered up? The MTA transit museum keeps their cars on the third rail, which likely does wonders to keep mice and moisture at bay, not to mention how great it would look with the interior lights on.)
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

davem said:
They should have thrown a tarp over it immediately. They are giving this prick recognition by leaving it open to cameras.

Thatbeingsaid, if it does get a new paint job it will be interesting to see if the old girl powers up. I know PCCs don't do well just sitting there.


(Sort of related, why are the cars NOT powered up? The MTA transit museum keeps their cars on the third rail, which likely does wonders to keep mice and moisture at bay, not to mention how great it would look with the interior lights on.)
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The T doesn't really care about doing anything with the cars other than let them sit there (and...well...pounce on bad PR by cleaning them up when something like this happens). Patching some electrical cord into them to turn the interior lights on probably isn't hard, but it would take some sort of showcase event in the city for them to have an excuse to do it for pomp and circumstance.


Boylston's actually a good place to store them. They're climate-protected, and Boylston doesn't get nearly as wet or humid as other stations. Their preservation fares a lot better there than sitting anywhere outdoors.

I know the Type 5 is unlikely to ever run again here because its wood frame has serious structural weakness. Unless Seashore got some major cash donations for a full structural rehab it probably has more use as a static display with its working components used to keep some of the other preserved specimens going. Seashore has another one in-service, CT Trolley Museum has one in-service, and the BSRA acquired another one that it's is in the process of doing a top-to-bottom restoration on.


The PCC probably isn't that hard to get running since PCC parts are still very plentiful worldwide. It's just not going to happen here because there's nobody left at the T trained on maintaining the early-50's Picture Window variety (the Mattapan cars are all 1940's Wartime models), so they'd have to dish that off to a museum or the SF Market Railway folks to get it out and about again. The pantograph does make it an attractive acquisition prospect because it can run on almost any modern light rail system.


If it means they get the preservation love elsewhere and potentially run again, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if the T parted with them. If they don't have the in-house preservation expertise or the resources to run their own transit exhibit in a way that'll contribute a few pennies of revenue...set them free and let 'em be somebody else's much bigger gain than our loss.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

It's getting cleaned up

1553382_2480946943026_346034856_o.jpg


Photo Cred: Nick
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

The MBTA has put most of the Keolis and MBCR commuter rail contract proposals on line. Looks like that proposed Readville maintenance facility was there from the start, wasn't just thrown in by MBCR at the last minute.

http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/B...olicitations/MBCR Suggested Modifications.pdf

It's referenced in the index of the linked document in section 4B, although the details of the proposal are not included in the public document.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

^ that might be the biggest irony. because they were tagged they are getting a cleaning that they would never have gotten.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Don't see the need for the other 4 guys though. seems like a two man job.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Does this have anything to do with MBCR's exit, or perhaps the pending lawsuit?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Shepard said:
Does this have anything to do with MBCR's exit, or perhaps the pending lawsuit?
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The last slip from 1/7 to 1/27 for the new schedules was because of elevator shaft issues at new Yawkey. So if it's delayed again I would place bets on they found something else minor at Yawkey during final inspections and don't have a revised date yet. "Indefinitely" just means they have to announce something with only a week to go to give riders a heads-up, but doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be more than a minor blip.


EDIT: Yup...it's Yawkey. Station won't be ready for the 27th.
 
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Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Pretty epic:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/2014/01/...-mbta-lines/5VAT8aKlPcDIEOtEku3zmO/story.html

Nine disabled trains on three lines. Red Line wins with five disabled trains during the morning commute:

...

Five disabled trains on the Red Line, at Braintree, Porter Square, Quincy Station, Fields Corner and between Wollaston and Quincy Center caused delays on both the Ashmont and Braintree branches between about 6 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., according to an MBTA spokeswoman. A disabled train on the Mattapan high-speed portion of the line at Cedar Grove caused delays at around 7:15 a.m.

On the Green Line, two disabled trains, at Kenmore and Reservoir stations, caused delays at around 6:50 a.m. and 8:15 a.m.

A disabled train at Back Bay Station on the Orange Line caused delays at around 7 a.m.

...
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Honestly, how can we possibly make it to 2019?

EDIT: ^That was not a rhetorical question. Does anybody with more technical knowledge know how many of these trains are simply not going to make it through five, maybe six, more winters and what will happen in the meantime?
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

bigeman312 said:
Pretty epic:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/2014/01/...-mbta-lines/5VAT8aKlPcDIEOtEku3zmO/story.html

Nine disabled trains on three lines. Red Line wins with five disabled trains during the morning commute:



Honestly, how can we possibly make it to 2019?

EDIT: ^That was not a rhetorical question. Does anybody with more technical knowledge know how many of these trains are simply not going to make it through five, maybe six, more winters and what will happen in the meantime?
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Pray for global warming?


There's some money set aside for modest repairs to the Red and Orange cars to backstop their decay until the new cars are in, but that's not necessarily going to improve their reliability on sub-zero mornings. Old cars don't like cold; there will be above-average winter failure rates till they're gone. And they've already pulled every trick in the book for keeping snow from getting sucked into the old motors with their food service hairnet + duct tape fix. The best we can hope for is stop-loss, that interim repairs can keep it from worsening.


Green should get quite a bit better next winter when the Type 7's start coming back from their overhaul. They will be more resilient to cold starts than they've been in years. And commuter rail will have several HSP-46's in service next winter, most of the Rotem coaches in service, and the Kawasaki bi-levels returning from their overhauls. With none of the old locos or coaches due to be scrapped until 2016, so they will have the largest standby fleet on reserve that they've had in over 20 years.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Why are there so many empty ad slots inside buses lately? This 116 I'm on now only has Callahan Tunnel closure info and courtesy counts PSAs - no other ads. Seems like missed opportunities for revenue.
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

It's probably not worth the effort. The T's ad revenues were $21 million in FY 2005, down to $12 million in 2012. That's out of 373 million rides.

Even if the T took away every single corporate ad in the entire system, you'd pay a little over 3 cents more per trip, or somewhere in the range of a dollar for a monthly.

That's net profit, by the way, above the costs of placing the ads. So in this hypothetical future where twelve dollars a year is worth never seeing a single ad on the T, there's no reason they couldn't offer some of the less annoying ad slots to local nonprofits for free (or hell, at cost).
 
Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos

Is the T perhaps too quick to declare a train "disabled" when it has only a minor mechanical problem that could wait until the end of the day (or at least the end of the run) to fix?
 
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