General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

Chrystal Kornegay (an MBTA board member) literally stated at the FMCB meeting today "I don't know anything about transportation planning, I just play along on TV" and Stephanie Pollack tried to save her by saying "yeah but you know about housing" and Kornegay repeated " yeah but I don't know anything about transportation planning..." Remind me why this woman was appointed to the board? She's one of the governor's buddies right? But I mean she's proven in every meeting she doesn't have a clue what they're all talking about and doesn't seem too interested to learn.

Don't forget this is the same Chrystal Kornegay who runs the public spending disaster at Mass Housing, spending $400 a night on hotels in Fort Lauderdale and Marthas Vineyard, as well as $4,800 welcome parties and $750 meals of bone marrow and venison.

Also re: AFC 2.0, I spotted it on the schedule for late September. Maybe they'll hold on to that date for once.
 
Re: Regional Rail (including North-South Rail Link)

whighlander said:
Framingham having becoming the first new city in Massachusetts in forever
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Slightly OT, but just to clarify (and focus on an irrational pet peeve of mine): Braintree, Weymouth, Amesbury, Winthrop, Amherst, North Attleborough, and Palmer, among several others, rechartered as Cities within the last two decades (at least two of them within the past year). In Massachusetts, cities that call themselves "town of" are still statutory cities. Selectmen (aka Selectboard) & Town Meeting = town. Council/mayor or just council = city.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
Chrystal Kornegay (an MBTA board member) literally stated at the FMCB meeting today "I don't know anything about transportation planning, I just play along on TV" and Stephanie Pollack tried to save her by saying "yeah but you know about housing" and Kornegay repeated " yeah but I don't know anything about transportation planning..." Remind me why this woman was appointed to the board? She's one of the governor's buddies right? But I mean she's proven in every meeting she doesn't have a clue what they're all talking about and doesn't seem too interested to learn.

Don't forget this is the same Chrystal Kornegay who runs the public spending disaster at Mass Housing, spending $400 a night on hotels in Fort Lauderdale and Marthas Vineyard, as well as $4,800 welcome parties and $750 meals of bone marrow and venison.

Also re: AFC 2.0, I spotted it on the schedule for late September. Maybe they'll hold on to that date for once.
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Honestly, I’d be too ashamed to even show up if I were that clueless.
 
It's a shame these studies have to be written into a state budget and not routinely done by a competent planning department.
 
That Curbed has a link to a ItemLive article and it's absolutely depressing. Blue Line to Lynn was a full on green light back in 1975 along with the Orange Line and Red Line that was done in that timeframe. But it got killed by a newly elected mayor backed by support of groups that fought against smashing highways through cities. The same movement that stopped the highway from smashing through Cambridge also stopped 1975 BLX.

That mayor that blocked it apparently supports it now. Much good that do as it is closes in on 50 years.

No Republican governor have batted at eye on the project. But even when we have the Democratic administration of Deval Patrick, we still didn't get a break. Apparently all he wanted was South Coast Rail (seriously, why is that seems to be the only rail project people in power wants? Meanwhile everything else what seems transit advocates and activists is an uphill battle)

Apparently it would have cost 100 million dollars. A quick inflation calculator says this is $475 million today. GLX is about the same amount of miles will cost over x4 times that when all said and done. (Though the re-bidding is slightly under a billion and it is doing most of the real work so maybe a BLX if done "correctly" may look more like GLX re-bid but just that one start).

One missed window and even if we see BLX in the next decade, it will cost so much more to build now and nearly a human lifetime have missed out on the service.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
It's a shame these studies have to be written into a state budget and not routinely done by a competent planning department.
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Fortunately, MassDOT has one of these and it's constantly studying good things. The reason that BLX and RBX are back on the table is because the MassDOT OTP put them there in Focus40.
 
ant8904 said:
That Curbed has a link to a ItemLive article and it's absolutely depressing. Blue Line to Lynn was a full on green light back in 1975 along with the Orange Line and Red Line that was done in that timeframe. But it got killed by a newly elected mayor backed by support of groups that fought against smashing highways through cities. The same movement that stopped the highway from smashing through Cambridge also stopped 1975 BLX.

That mayor that blocked it apparently supports it now. Much good that do as it is closes in on 50 years.

No Republican governor have batted at eye on the project. But even when we have the Democratic administration of Deval Patrick, we still didn't get a break. Apparently all he wanted was South Coast Rail (seriously, why is that seems to be the only rail project people in power wants? Meanwhile everything else what seems transit advocates and activists is an uphill battle)

Apparently it would have cost 100 million dollars. A quick inflation calculator says this is $475 million today. GLX is about the same amount of miles will cost over x4 times that when all said and done. (Though the re-bidding is slightly under a billion and it is doing most of the real work so maybe a BLX if done "correctly" may look more like GLX re-bid but just that one start).

One missed window and even if we see BLX in the next decade, it will cost so much more to build now and nearly a human lifetime have missed out on the service.
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Another thing is, back in the 70s federal funding was easier to get than it is now.
 
Charlie Baker announces an $18 Billion Transportation plan.

More than half of the proposed spending would be earmarked for Massachusetts Department of Transportation's Highway Division. That includes $5.6 billion for highway construction projects aided by the federal government, $3.1 billion for other highway work not supported by the federal government, $1.25 billion for bridges and $150 million for paving area roads.

Another $50 million in the proposal would go toward work on making changes to known bottlenecks on area roads.

Baker's proposal would provide $5.695 billion more to the MBTA for improvements, including $3.4 billion for new buses and expanding the use of dedicated bus lanes and signal priority systems. His plan also includes an additional $825 million for the South Coast Rail Project, $595 for the Green Line Extension Project and $400 million for the Commuter Rail System.
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It also provisions $50 million for $2,000/per employee tax breaks for companies who choose remote/telecommunication employees.
 
So, um, this happened: https://www.wcvb.com/article/multip...ommuter-rail-train-stopped-in-canton/28512600

Regardless of whether this is "actually" a severe issue, the visual is stunningly bad. And caught on so many recording devices, you could probably create a 3D movie of it from all the angles it was recorded from...

EDIT: To be clear for those who don't want to click through -- videos of what will look to the typical reader like a commuter rail locomotive caught on fire.
 
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Probably another stack fire or turbocharger issue. This unit had a stack fire back on January 10th of this year. GE prime mover at its best!
 
Riverside said:
So, um, this happened: https://www.wcvb.com/article/multip...ommuter-rail-train-stopped-in-canton/28512600

Regardless of whether this is "actually" a severe issue, the visual is stunningly bad. And caught on so many recording devices, you could probably create a 3D movie of it from all the angles it was recorded from...

EDIT: To be clear for those who don't want to click through -- videos of what will look to the typical reader like a commuter rail locomotive caught on fire.
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Blown turbocharger. As bad as it looks in pictures, it's actually a fairly benign failure that will happen from time-to-time. A turbo injects air and fuel into the combustion chamber to increase the power efficiency of an engine...so it is quite literally playing with fire by-design. Therefore, a major failure to the component is going to involve lots and lots of flames.

When a diesel truck or gasoline sports car using a turbo has a failure, the vehicle might go up in flames and be wrecked (more an issue with trucks than smaller vehicles like cars). Boats, aircraft, and locomotives with more robust design usually survive a blown turbo by ejecting the flames and exhaust out the engine stack at little to no interior damage. That's why yesterday's fire looked so incredibly bad from the outside: all the damage was vented to spare the engine room and fuel tanks, and to ensure the fire would go out on its own if it was on a stretch of track inaccessible to emergency personnel.

I believe this is the first blown turbo on an HSP-46 loco, whereas it's happened plenty of times before on F40PH-2C's, GP40MC's, and (other people's) MP36PH-3C's. So they might take a finer-toothed comb inspecting the new design for damage. But the unit probably won't be out-of-service for more than a few weeks while they remove the busted turbo, power wash the soot off the engine room, fix any collateral damage, and install the new turbo (which they probably already have in-stock at the warehouse).


And now, some 'totes gnarly blown turbo pics. . .
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060118trainfire2956707254_t350_h4348fa7ce3860dbdc968a854f47bbd13f8b379be.jpg
 
Thanks for the info! I had a feeling it was likely rather benign, since apparently passengers were told to reboard and (allegedly) that the fire would put itself out.

But, like... the public (riding and otherwise) will see this as the T literally on fire. Coming on the heels of the Blue Line, the Red Line and the Green Line, I think the T’s standard response of “mechanical problems, nothing to worry about” is going to seem like fiddling while Rome burns.

Cool pics!
 
Riverside said:
Thanks for the info! I had a feeling it was likely rather benign, since apparently passengers were told to reboard and (allegedly) that the fire would put itself out.

But, like... the public (riding and otherwise) will see this as the T literally on fire. Coming on the heels of the Blue Line, the Red Line and the Green Line, I think the T’s standard response of “mechanical problems, nothing to worry about” is going to seem like fiddling while Rome burns.

Cool pics!
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True...but MBTA Alerts tweets are also an awkward place to try to explain that a commuter rail loco seemingly erupting in a fireball is actually a safety "feature", not a flaw. Once the pics have circulated it sort of no longer matters to explain that this is a no-fooling "normal" failure mode; people's primal instincts have already made up their own minds.

We're not alone here. Amtrak and every other commuter rail agency in the land, as well as every overseas passenger agency running diesel, has to every once in awhile play Iraqi Information Minister to a spooked public when they have a fire-belching turbo on one of their trains.
 
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