General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

JeffDowntown said:
This article and the one in the Globe both implicate the management more than the workers.

Key breakdown that is unforgivable: The T has no Standard Operating Procedure for rail defect detection, reporting, logging and repair.
Not having an SOP for a critical safety related function in a transit operation is an unconscionable systemic management failing.
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Agree with your assessment. I also feel, though, that Eng is doing the right thing from a leadership standpoint by not throwing the workers under the bus. He needs constant, honest input from those on the ground floor in order to continue to detect all the gaps and put corrective measures in place -- without people fearing reporting things, and toward that, they need to feel he has their backs. That said, the lack of SOPs was an unforgivable management failure and someone/people is/are obviously responsible, but it is unclear whether those are still employed in the first place. Eng did pretty solidly with this, IMO, he only whiffed on one key dimension, which is that he should have found someone in management to sacrificially fire to convey the gravity of the situation and send the message that accountability is going to matter going forward. There must have been someone planning to retire anyway that he could have symbolically canned toward this end...
 
*sighs*
It looks like the Sullivan-Community slow zone has been re-instated today, albeit not anywhere near as bad as it was prior. Line speed was nice while it lasted.
Screenshot 2023-09-08 at 2.16.12 PM.png
 
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nbcoram said:
*sighs*
It looks like the Sullivan-Community slow zone has been re-instated today, albeit not anywhere near as bad as it was prior. Line speed was nice while it lasted.
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These are the many moments that I wonder what they see that forces them to do things like reinstate it.

I know more than once that some have here voiced that "maybe the real issue is the MBTA is being too cautious", but what truly determine how true that answer is the reasoning behind examples like this. Did they saw the work is unsuitable and must slow down else a disaster will eventually come? Did they just a tiny kink that doesn't actually matter safety-wise but slow it back down out of abundance of caution? Or whatever in between.
 
Delvin4519 said:
Slow zones on the Red Line are accelerating a lot more rapidly, and has already tied the worst of Spring 2023. In the meantine, service on the Red Line continues to decrease, since the onset of COVID.

Extrapolate the lines into a trendline to get a guess into the future?

Source: TransitMatters Data Dashboard https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/red/slowzones/?startDate=2022-06-08&endDate=2023-09-10

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I’m a regular Orange and Green Line rider. I rode the Red Line last night for the first time in a long time and it’s as bad as reported. I bailed at Central, ordered an Uber, and spent $15 to save 1 hour and 23 minutes (that isn’t an exaggeration).
 
Delvin4519 said:
Slow zones on the Red Line are accelerating a lot more rapidly, and has already tied the worst of Spring 2023. In the meantine, service on the Red Line continues to decrease, since the onset of COVID.

Extrapolate the lines into a trendline to get a guess into the future?
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While I'm reluctant to give the MBTA much benefit of the doubt these days....I do believe the recent performance deterioration is at least partially because of ongoing work, not because of the lack of work.

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From JFK south has had 8:45pm weeknight and/or full weekend shutdowns on some or all of the line pretty much since the beginning of August through the end of this month, and the entire Ashmont Branch is going to be fully shut down Oct 14-29 for track work.

I would assume at this point that:

- The increasing delay on the same sections they're working on is probably reflective of whatever the same deal was with the Orange Line work - restricted further than usual because the work hasn't settled yet or something.

- The decline in service delivered is I presume because they're cutting a whole bunch of night/weekend trips back for said trackwork.
 
millerm277 said:
- The decline in service delivered is I presume because they're cutting a whole bunch of night/weekend trips back for said trackwork.
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I don't think this tells the whole story. Using the weekday schedule, there are about 17 or so round trips scheduled on the Braintree Branch after 8:45 pm (rough count using Pantograph, I'm not sure when the earliest trip that gets cut actually happens so I was just going off arrival time in Braintree) and a total of 141 scheduled round trips (as per TM service dashboard). However, on Friday, September 8, only 97 round trips were delivered, meaning 44 round trips got dropped. Trains began turning at Quincy Center at about 8:45 pm, so there's no way all of the roughly 17 trips got dropped (as they feasibly could have been if the entire branch were closed, albeit much to the annoyance of passengers in the trunk.) (Disclaimer: I am not an expert at MBTA scheduling.)

Sure, it's likely contributing a little bit, but I think there is something else at play here. Old equipment and an operator shortage might have to do with it -- Heavy Rail Operator just got posted for the first time since the new deal with the union raised starting pay to $31.47, and the job description states that only the Red and Orange Lines are available at this time; and the older Pullman and UTDC train sets just sound like they are struggling so much at times (and even the less-old Bombardier trains are 30 years old now and many of them are showing their age). With no new deliveries in sight from CRRC (and the last pair delivered, 1910/11 in June 2022, having just entered service in the last month), old equipment could pose an issue for a while, even if state of track repair and the number of operators both improve dramatically.
 
The fact that a bunch of amateur observers on an Internet forum are reduced to speculation, hunches, and reading signs and portents would be comical if it were fiction. A dashboard of slow zones provided without commentary is insufficient. The T needs to show their work.
 
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Justbuildit said:
I prefer to read the entrails of a burnt out orange line car and let the screeches of the outbound green line speak to the future. Lo these days the silver line sits in traffic again, for the gods are angry and wish us great suffering.
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Haruspicy
 
RandomWalk said:
The fact that a bunch of amateur observers on an Internet forum are reduced to speculation, hunches, and reading signs and portents would be comical if it were fiction. A dashboard of slow zones provided without commentary is insufficient. They need to show their work.
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Want to know who should really be showing their work? The MBTA.
 
To be clear, I was referring to the MBTA/MassDOT. I figure we are all nerds here with our particular interests, and we generally don’t skim through the work like the T.
 
RandomWalk said:
To be clear, I was referring to the MBTA/MassDOT. I figure we are all nerds here with our particular interests, and we generally don’t skim through the work like the T.
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Ahhh. Sorry for the misunderstanding, and for my prior saltiness which I removed as soon as I realised that you were probably talking about MassDOT/MBTA. My bad.
 
Justbuildit said:
I prefer to read the entrails of a burnt out orange line car and let the screeches of the outbound green line speak to the future. Lo these days the silver line sits in traffic again, for the gods are angry and wish us great suffering.
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I think that it's highly unlikely that you'll ever see a new Red or Orange line railcar burning. In fact, nothing like that should even happen again with anything that the MBTA has, old or new. :eek:
 
Justbuildit said:
I prefer to read the entrails of a burnt out orange line car and let the screeches of the outbound green line speak to the future. Lo these days the silver line sits in traffic again, for the gods are angry and wish us great suffering.
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I think that it's highly unlikely that you'll ever see a new Red or Orange line railcar burning. In fact, nothing like that should even happen again with anything that the MBTA has, old or new. :eek:
 
Hey MBTA, what the [insert four-letter word of your choice] happened?
Screenshot 2023-09-13 at 7.34.01 PM.png

The Sullivan-Community southbound slow zone is now back up to a 3 minute travel time after being at line speed for all of 2 days a week ago before increasing to nearly 2.5 minutes.

I think this is the finest example of slow zone repair being one massive game of whack-a-mole for the T.
 
Another thing that’s incredible is the poor state of RL Alewife-Harvard both directions. After 10 years of off & on weekend diversions for the Floating Slab project, where are the results? Or are we just “lucky” it runs at all.
 
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