General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[Riverside]

EDIT: jeez, the forum software is really struggling on mobile.

According to the article, the implication is that the track crew simply didn't report the first incident until the second one occurred, effectively reporting both at the same time. If the track crews didn't report it the first time it happened, that speaks to a different safety culture problem, one of laxity and risk normalization.

I still think most of my follow-up questions apply — why didn’t the crew report it? To your point, it could be a culture of laxness, but it could also be that there wasn’t a proper channel available to (or known to) the crew, or any number of other things.

(And to be honest, this incident/apparent lack of reporting seems less likely to me to be from laxness — a Red Line train barreling toward you at 25 mph while you’re trying to work in a subway tunnel with a live third rail sounds absolutely terrifying. It seems a little hard to believe that someone would just shrug that off, say “NBD”, and go home to their spouse that evening saying, “Honey, I’ve got a funny story from work today.”)

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I realize that the MBTA heavy transit lines are equipped with ATC such that there are trip-stops at signals, but is there such a thing as a "portable trip-arm?" Something they can flip up and down as needed? I feel like there must be, and if there is, the T would be well advised to provide one to all of it's track crews post-haste. A flagger, by themself protecting a track crew is merely providing a signal to a driver, and lacks any means by which to enforce anything.

There isn't anything like that. The signal blocks are hard-coded by the placement of lineside automatic trip arms (on Blue) and by placement of the lineside ATO transmitters (on Red and Orange). It's all fixed in-place. On Blue with the trip arms it's operator control between 2 sets of trips with an absolute stop penalty being enforced at the trips for blowing a signal, so there's still a fair-sized loophole for cheating against the signal system. The best they can do while a work crew is out is put on restricting signals on the block that's being worked on (and sometimes the adjacent blocks too)...which of course is going to slow down a whole lot more area than just the immediate work zone. You need a moving-block Positive Train Control system with radio communication like CBTC to precision-tune caution zones more snugly around the work area.

 

[Roxxma]

NYC does their version of point and call on the subway. They have since 1996, apparently.

Why MTA conductors point out of their trains after stopping at subway stations

Conductors have a curious habit of pointing out of their trains when it pulls into a station. Stand at the middle of any subway platform and a rider can see, like clockwork, a conductor pull up, po…

www.nydailynews.com

I'd never heard of that until last night when I watched Geoff Marshall's video from his visit to New York this past summer, where he met up with our own Miles in Transit to visit the Least Used Station™ on the New York City Subway. In it Miles explained why they do that.

 

[Roxxma]

NYC does their version of point and call on the subway. They have since 1996, apparently.

Why MTA conductors point out of their trains after stopping at subway stations

Conductors have a curious habit of pointing out of their trains when it pulls into a station. Stand at the middle of any subway platform and a rider can see, like clockwork, a conductor pull up, po…

www.nydailynews.com

I'd never heard of that until last night when I watched Geoff Marshall's video from his visit to New York this past summer, where he met up with our own Miles in Transit to visit the Least Used Station™ on the New York City Subway. In it Miles explained why they do that.

 

[bakgwailo]

Because of recent near misses on the tracks, the FTA is putting new restrictions on how MBTA can work on the tracks.

After new safety troubles, federal regulators impose restrictions to prevent further failures - The Boston Globe

They again ordered the MBTA to take immediate actions to prevent further safety failures and imposed new restrictions on the agency’s access to its own tracks.

www.bostonglobe.com

and the letter from the FTA

https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2023-09/Immediate-Action-Required-to-Prevent-Train-Collisions-with-Workers.pdf

Any ideas how big these restrictions are? What they mean practically for repair work?

So here's an idea: why not bring in/subcontract the London Underground, Tokyo Metro, JR, Toei Subway, MTR, or really, whoever to come in and take over track inspection and maintenance and train the MBTA's crews while doing so? I get that public transit is/can be pretty bespoke, but, I would assume the fundamentals, SOPs, etc. of track inspections and management are pretty transferable. Would this not be the best short-term solution and long-term plan with the MBTA taking things back over once crews are trained in best practices from other successful systems?

 

[Aprehensive_Words]

Federal regulators rip MBTA after finding agency violated safety order - The Boston Globe

The T's general manager ordered a major executive shake-up as repair work gets halted due to continuing safety failures.

www.bostonglobe.com

Looks like an unannounced safety stand-down happened this week.

 

[jdrinboston]

Took the Red Line from JFK to Quincy Center this morning for the first time in two months and it continues to be just awful. I was on one of the older series of cars and frankly, I don't think their controls are suitable to the low speeds the trains have to travel at....nearly the entire way from JFC to North Quincy was just an uncomfortable jerk motion, followed by a lurch, followed by a hard brake when the train apparently got too fast. (Too fast here being anything above 5 mph). Worst of all, there couldn't have been more than 20 people on the whole train.

I'm quickly reaching the point where I think it might be better for the T to just shut down the Red Line south of JFK and just say something to the effect of "We're sorry, but we just don't have the resources, personnel, or equipment" to bring you serviceable rail service at this time. We will work on a plan to restore service to normal levels and report back by XX date with a timeline." If something like this were to happen - ideally, the T would really dig into the work, rip out tracks, etc., not unlike what is planned for the Ashmont branch in October. I realize this sounds crazy, but the rate we're going now feels even crazier to me.

 

[bigpicture7]

Federal regulators rip MBTA after finding agency violated safety order - The Boston Globe

The T's general manager ordered a major executive shake-up as repair work gets halted due to continuing safety failures.

www.bostonglobe.com

Looks like an unannounced safety stand-down happened this week.

The work on the slow zones has been slow zoned.

 

[Teban54]

Took the Red Line from JFK to Quincy Center this morning for the first time in two months and it continues to be just awful. I was on one of the older series of cars and frankly, I don't think their controls are suitable to the low speeds the trains have to travel at....nearly the entire way from JFC to North Quincy was just an uncomfortable jerk motion, followed by a lurch, followed by a hard brake when the train apparently got too fast. (Too fast here being anything above 5 mph). Worst of all, there couldn't have been more than 20 people on the whole train.

I'm quickly reaching the point where I think it might be better for the T to just shut down the Red Line south of JFK and just say something to the effect of "We're sorry, but we just don't have the resources, personnel, or equipment" to bring you serviceable rail service at this time. We will work on a plan to restore service to normal levels and report back by XX date with a timeline." If something like this were to happen - ideally, the T would really dig into the work, rip out tracks, etc., not unlike what is planned for the Ashmont branch in October. I realize this sounds crazy, but the rate we're going now feels even crazier to me.

At which point does shutting down the entire Red Line (much like OL last year) not sound like a totally crazy idea? Both the northern end and two branches of RL are plagued with slow zones now.

 

[Delvin4519]

It just feels like we still have yet to see the worst, especially for the Red Line, the worst is probably still yet to come, in regards to slow zones and longer headways between buses and trains.

 

[Koopzilla24]

At which point does shutting down the entire Red Line (much like OL last year) not sound like a totally crazy idea? Both the northern end and two branches of RL are plagued with slow zones now.

Shutting down the southern branches for a period is coming but I don’t think the Cambridge side warrants it. Central-Harvard sucks as does Porter-Harvard but it’s still about a total 10min travel time to MGH from Harvard and beats driving time. North of Harvard in even more so.

EDIT: I don’t know how I never really noticed the full 10mph from Davis to Harvard when I’m on it at least twice a week but that’s pretty horrendous. Guess I’ve been paying negative attention to it.

I still don’t think North warrants a full shutdown as they’ve managed to clear major slow zones without. Though I do not know the extent of the track work necessary compared to what has already been cleared.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Shutting down the southern branches for a period is coming but I don’t think the Cambridge side warrants it. Central-Harvard sucks as does Porter-Harvard but it’s still about a total 10min travel time to MGH from Harvard and beats driving time. North of Harvard in even more so.

EDIT: I don’t know how I never really noticed the full 10mph from Davis to Harvard when I’m on it at least twice a week but that’s pretty horrendous. Guess I’ve been paying negative attention to it.

I still don’t think North warrants a full shutdown as they’ve managed to clear major slow zones without. Though I do not know the extent of the track work necessary compared to what has already been cleared.

I think the looming question is whether they are really clearing slow zones faster than ongoing deterioration is creating new ones.

There is a point in deferred maintenance where you can no longer keep up with point repairs -- you have to do a major rebuild (kind of like where the Sumner Tunnel is in terms of maintenance needs.) If you don't have enough access time for the major rebuild (i.e. a shutdown) you never catch up and the system collapses.

 

[737900er]

At which point does shutting down the entire Red Line (much like OL last year) not sound like a totally crazy idea? Both the northern end and two branches of RL are plagued with slow zones now.

I don't think it's feasible to shut down the whole thing. They had trouble getting enough buses for Orange, and Red would take even more. The design of Red with Columbia Junction also makes it a lot more feasible to shut down portions.

 

[Massachoicetts]

My friend is in Boaton and took the Red Line and she said it was going painfully slow.

How bad can this red line be? Its not a 24/7 line, they have atleast 4 hours every night to do work. I work for the MTA now and we would kill for this time. What exactly is Boston doing? Are they doing work during the significant amount of time that they haveeach night they do not want to operate their lines?

also between where Ashmont and Braintree merge, and Alewife, they run on separate tracks. Can they interline and run on a singular track while the other one gets worked on and vice versa? Is this even a possibility?

 

[jklo]

What exactly is Boston doing?

If you saw the other thread, train drivers almost running over workers trying to do overnight work.

 

[Jahvon09]

The MBTA is in crisis. Let's treat it that way.

AT A CRITICAL moment in Shakespeare’s King Lear, the raging, aging king bellows into the fury of a great storm, defying nature to “Blow, winds, and crack

commonwealthmagazine.org

 

[king_vibe]

My friend is in Boaton and took the Red Line and she said it was going painfully slow.

How bad can this red line be? Its not a 24/7 line, they have atleast 4 hours every night to do work. I work for the MTA now and we would kill for this time. What exactly is Boston doing? Are they doing work during the significant amount of time that they haveeach night they do not want to operate their lines?

also between where Ashmont and Braintree merge, and Alewife, they run on separate tracks. Can they interline and run on a singular track while the other one gets worked on and vice versa? Is this even a possibility?

There isn’t actually any work going on. Workers lope to their track sections, hang out for a couple hours, and lope back. There isn’t any kind of mechanism to actually do work and confirm that the work has been completed, so work just doesn’t get done.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

There isn’t actually any work going on. Workers lope to their track sections, hang out for a couple hours, and lope back. There isn’t any kind of mechanism to actually do work and confirm that the work has been completed, so work just doesn’t get done.

And you know this...how?

 

[Massachoicetts]

If you saw the other thread, train drivers almost running over workers trying to do overnight work.

well, what about the four hours they choose not to run the trains?

also, cant they interline the tracks? Can the Braintree train run on Ashmont lines if they need to do work on one of the tracks?

 

[Teban54]

well, what about the four hours they choose not to run the trains?

also, cant they interline the tracks? Can the Braintree train run on Ashmont lines if they need to do work on one of the tracks?

The tracks for Ashmont and Braintree trains are shared north of the Columbia Junction, which is just a bit north of JFK/UMass station. So if you want to do track work anywhere between Alewife and JFK/UMass, you have to shut down part of the trunk, since only two tracks exist (one for each direction).