General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

bigeman312 said:
Congrats! You bring up an interesting point with that quote. Do you believe a SGR can be achieved (through unlikely measures like dramatically increased revenue) without major, long-term shutdowns?
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Not really. We've dug ourselves too deep. As Jim says, the piecemeal approach we've taken isn't working. We can continue to suffer signal & switch problems for the rest of eternity and fix them one by one every time they fail or we can suffer (big time) for 6 months or so with a total accelerated overhaul (will require massive amounts of funding) and come out in the end with a modern reliable system. The T is figuring this out with station ADA renos, Government Center most notably. With the station closed, it took 2 years of intense suffering for an amazing end result, opposed to the 6 years of messy partial closures and construction barriers. Science Park was also done that way, as a counter to the sloppy way Arlington & Copley were done that dragged on for years.
 
Anyone feel like faking an injury for a free Cape Flyer trip?

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datadyne007 said:
Where does it say anything about a free Cape Flyer trip? It actually says you must arrange your own transportation to the drill location in Barnstable.
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Yeah, but the dead train and arranging your own ground transportation around a spate of "police activity" T Alerts is such an indelible part of the whole Purple Line aesthetic! How often do you get your normal daily commute catered and receive a participation ribbon in the process?
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What, like the planned 18 month shutdown of the Lechmere branch?

Or NYCTA's similar length plan for the L?
 
Matthew said:
What, like the planned 18 month shutdown of the Lechmere branch?

Or NYCTA's similar length plan for the L?
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True. However the Lechmere branch is just two stations. The Washington Metro may close an entire 27 station heavy rail line for maintenance. I just posted this to show that maintenance problems are not limited to the MBTA and are worse elsewhere in the country. I just wish the US was more focused on improving public transit than it is on subsidizing car culture.
 
Meh, that article in post 4209 manages to miss how the DC Metro is the only system in the World where there was a crash after installing CBTC. Or how they can't even fix their escalators. Or the chronic covering up of staffing and safety issues. The DC Metro is f***ed up in a way incomprehensible to New York or Boston. In most cities, transit operations are inefficient and cost too much. In DC, they can't even run the trains.
 
tysmith95 said:
True. However the Lechmere branch is just two stations. The Washington Metro may close an entire 27 station heavy rail line for maintenance. I just posted this to show that maintenance problems are not limited to the MBTA and are worse elsewhere in the country. I just wish the US was more focused on improving public transit than it is on subsidizing car culture.
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Assuming the "27 station" is referring to the idea of the Blue Line being shut down, I still have no idea whether that means shutting down the Orange Line in DC? The Yellow Line in Virginia? The Silver Line in Maryland/DC?

It seems like an off the cuff mark that makes no sense. The Blue Line is almost entirely shared with other lines in their system.

http://wmata.com/rail/docs/color_map_silverline.pdf
 
I was in DC a couple of weeks ago when the entire Metro subway system was shut down for 24 hours. I was staying in Chevy Chase and attending a meeting in the old Navy Yard area south of the Capital. It took me three hours walking and on a Metro bus to go the 10 miles the Wednesday afternoon of the shutdown, 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm from the Capital building to Chevy Chase. Gridlock everywhere. Fortunately I had a seat on the bus.

Any shutdown of any of the DC Metro subway lines for a prolonged period will definitely be "car"megeddon.
 
While the MBTA certainly has a major SGR backlog, it's largely things that can be done with more conventional methods like weekend closures or closing sections of lines. They've closed the outer Blue Line, the Ashmont Branch, the Mattapan Line, and the D Branch (in two sections) for long-term repairs that way.

A few high-profile non-fatal incidents aside, the MBTA actually has an excellent safety record. There's been no collisions on the heavy rail lines or the commuter rail that I know of since the 1990 Night Owl wreck at Back Bay (caused by Amtrak) and the 1981 Prides Crossing wreck. Two collisions on the Green Line - one low-speed with no fatalities, one in 2008 where the driver fell asleep due to sleep apnea and was killed in the impact. There have been a number of low-speed Green Line derailments, but that appears to be more a result of the Type 8s than the tracks.

DC has had four collisions (two fatal) since 1996, ten track workers killed in 7 separate incidents since 2005, at least 9 derailments since 2003, and the 2015 fatal smoke incident.
 
DC Metro is atoning for a criminal cover-up of SGR issues so severe they were a daily threat to passengers' and workers' life-and-limb. They have by far the worst safety record of any rail transit system in the country. Ex-officials are going to do jail time for their negligence, and these draconian shutdowns have a rather large ass-covering motivation for all the folks tainted by association with their former bosses and the new regime brought in to clean up this toxic mess. It isn't comparable to any other situation with any other transit agency. There is nothing about this sequence of events that makes them role models on how to run a public service.


The T's got problems but their SGR issues have been well-enumerated for years right down to each unfunded line item in the CIP, none of them are things that'll kill people, and the people running the agency most certainly aren't guilty of covering up things that'll kill people. Making a reach for apples-apples comparisons between DC Metro's problems and ANY other American transit system's problems isn't just misguided...it's a little bit sick. Riders in Greater Boston risk arriving at destination tired and surly because of a FUBAR'd commute on the T; they aren't at risk of not arriving at all because a group of bureaucrats engaged in a massive criminal cover-up. Nobody here has to deal with the level of abuse-of-trust in their public institutions that riders in the nation's capitol are dealing with right now. The T smells like a rose compared to what perpetuated this fallout in D.C.
 
Seems like the most fatal accident was on June 22, '09 during rush hour at about 5pm, when a speeding train collided with a stopped train just outside Fog Totten Station. The moving train's lead car had telescoped on top of the stopped train's rear car.

Nine people, including the driver of the moving train were killed. The cause of the crash was a broken circuit in the track that helps control the trains' onboard computer (ATO) speed when a stopped train is detected ahead within a certain distance.

The NTSB came out to investigate the cause of the crash. Their investigation had concluded that the accident was caused by the WMATA's negligence. They had failed to maintain the proper procedures of making sure that the track's system was working right.

The WMATA had accepted full responsibility of the crash.
 
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Everett is talking signal priority

Traffic signals that could keep lights green for buses would be installed along a stretch of Broadway as part of the Wynn Boston Harbor casino project, said Jay Monty, transportation planner for the city. He said the project is in the design phase and signals capable of giving buses priority could be installed in the next two or three years.
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Other signal priority stuff in the article:

The T has not yet used signal prioritization in any widespread way. MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said signal prioritization is in place at seven Silver Line intersections and four Route 57 intersections, and the T is working with Boston to add signal prioritization for Green Line trolleys on the B and E branches.
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What's this about seven SL intersections and four 57 intersections? I can't imagine this is real signal priority -- it's probably weak-tea D Street type stuff, right?

Boston has experimented with offering signal prioritization to MBTA Silver Line buses along the Washington Street corridor, according to City Hall spokeswoman Bonnie McGilpin. She said in January and February city and T officials ran a trial along Washington Street providing signal priority to Silver Line buses every other day, and officials are now reviewing the results to see if the technology worked and understand its impact.
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She said in January and February city and T officials ran a trial along Washington Street providing signal priority to Silver Line buses every other day, and officials are now reviewing the results to see if the technology worked and understand its impact.
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I'd love to be paid to work on the cutting edge study, "Does reducing stop time have a positive impact on travel time?" The fact that this is a question says so much about the MBTA, MassDOT, and BTD.
 
I wasn't sure if this is better for the new orange/red line cars or here. If this is in the wrong place, please let me know

In the new capital investment plan, there is $1.6 billion allocated for revenue vehicles. Of that, over 1 billion is already set aside for funded projects. Does the $566 million contract for the new red/orange count under this plan? Or was it under the last CIP since the contract was awarded a couple of years ago?

I'm really curious to see what they do with that funding. It is significant enough to replace the entire green line fleet or avoid the CR carmeggdon. However, it isn't enough to do both


link to slide im talking about (not displaying the pic here for some reason)
http://imgur.com/JXVYEB4
 
BuilditDenser said:
I wasn't sure if this is better for the new orange/red line cars or here. If this is in the wrong place, please let me know

In the new capital investment plan, there is $1.6 billion allocated for revenue vehicles. Of that, over 1 billion is already set aside for funded projects. Does the $566 million contract for the new red/orange count under this plan? Or was it under the last CIP since the contract was awarded a couple of years ago?

I'm really curious to see what they do with that funding. It is significant enough to replace the entire green line fleet or avoid the CR carmeggdon. However, it isn't enough to do both


link to slide im talking about (not displaying the pic here for some reason)
http://imgur.com/JXVYEB4
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Right-click the image > Copy Image Address, then paste & surround with [IMG][/IMG] tags.

JXVYEB4.png
 
underground said:
I'd love to be paid to work on the cutting edge study, "Does reducing stop time have a positive impact on travel time?" The fact that this is a question says so much about the MBTA, MassDOT, and BTD.
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Of course it does. That's rather obviously not the study objective.

Getting hard data to quantify the improvement in travel time, how well their implementation of it works, what impacts to other traffic flow are, etc are necessary to start using it widely. Hence, a study.
 
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