General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[HenryAlan]

MBTA is eliminating frustrating slow zones at record pace - The Boston Globe

The percentage of subway tracks where trains are forced to slow down because of defects dipped below 20 percent this month for the first time since March, according to the agency’s dashboard.

www.bostonglobe.com

Paywall bypass here.

Nothing we don't already know, but still a big confidence boost regardless:

I'm not a daily rider, but I did notice when my wife and I went downtown for dinner on Friday, that the Orange Line between Forest Hills and Back Bay seemed very fast compared to my general expectations. It was a very pleasing ride.

 

[bigpicture7]

Womp womp.

EDIT: One Mattapan PCC gets stuck. Another one comes to push; it gets stuck too. A third one comes to push both; it gets stuck as well. I’m sure there is a children’s book or song to be written here…

As they've now run out of PCCs, I heard they're getting ready to deploy a mothballed horse-drawn trolley to keep pushing. They've just called the last remaining operator out of retirement to carry out this critical mission.

 

[bigeman312]

This piqued my curiosity. What was the rolling stock on the Mattapan Line before the PCCs entered service in 1955?

 

[TheRatmeister]

This piqued my curiosity. What was the rolling stock on the Mattapan Line before the PCCs entered service in 1955?

I'd assume mainly Type 4s and Type 5s, possibly a bit of whatever else BERy had at the time.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I'd assume mainly Type 4s and Type 5s, possibly a bit of whatever else BERy had at the time.

Mattapan's fleet was assigned to the Arborway Carhouse district, so they ran the same fleets as the E and Forest Hills hub. Probably, as you said, T4's and T5's.

 

[Riverside]

This piqued my curiosity. What was the rolling stock on the Mattapan Line before the PCCs entered service in 1955?

@The EGE, any ideas? I should also check my books.

 

[737900er]

This piqued my curiosity. What was the rolling stock on the Mattapan Line before the PCCs entered service in 1955?

Related: how were the 10 PCCs that were assigned to Mattapan selected? Were they the "best of the best" or simply ones happened to be assigned to Mattapan at the end of PCC operations?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Related: how were the 10 PCCs that were assigned to Mattapan selected? Were they the "best of the best" or simply ones happened to be assigned to Mattapan at the end of PCC operations?

They were all ex- E line, rebuilt in the late-70's. Essentially a "best of the rest" thing. I think 1987 was the year they were reassigned out of storage from Arborway, and they displaced a shabby roster of un-rebuilt early-1950's picture window PCC's that had been exiled to Mattapan.

 

[Riverside]

This piqued my curiosity. What was the rolling stock on the Mattapan Line before the PCCs entered service in 1955?

According to Streetcar Lines of the Hub: The 1940s, Heyday of Electric Trains in Boston, by Bradley H. Clarke:

Type 5s were the predominant streetcar on the Dorchester and Roxbury Lines ... Type 4 cars also ran in this area, but to a lesser extent than the Type 5s. Type 4s saw service on two lines in particular: Mattapan-Ashmont and Mattapan-Egleston. Both routes were based at the Park Street Carhouse ... Most Type 4s were stored at Mattapan, a substation at that time of Park Street. (pg 44)

(The Park Street Carhouse was at Fields Corner, which isn't confusing at all.)

Clarke later notes that in 1948, those two lines were operated "exclusively" with Type 4s, which were subsequently removed from service after a serious accident at Egleston on April 12 1948, in which the motorman lost both legs; the replacement with Type 5s was completed in 1949. (William D. Volkmer's Boston Trolleys in Color, Volume 2: The South Side suggests that there were Type 4s on the Mattapan Line as late as 1952, pg. 44.)

Clarke's Streetcar Lines of the Hub: Boston's MTA, Through Riverside and Beyond says:

In 1950, the Mattapan-Ashmont Line was assigned 14 Type 5 cars [which] handled all the service ... until the arrival of PCCs late in 1955. After that, Type 5 cars were used infrequently on this line.

Abandonment of the Arlington Heights Line in November 1955 made the PCC cars used there available ... The Mattapan-Ashmont Line was assigned twelve all-electric PCCs from Arlington, and they entered service on December 24, 1955.

(Volkmer seems to suggest that Type 5s remained until 1958, pg. 44.)

After the Mattapan-Egleston Line was ended in 1956, the MTA began running PCCs via what is now the Red Line to maintenance at the Eilot Square Shops near Harvard.

 

[TheRatmeister]

(The Park Street Carhouse was at Fields Corner, which isn't confusing at all.)

Going through the bus data there's a stop called "Park St Busway" to which I was like... what? I'd suspect it's the same spot.

 

[The EGE]

Going through the bus data there's a stop called "Park St Busway" to which I was like... what? I'd suspect it's the same spot.

More or less. The Park Street carhouse was located in the area now occupied by the strip mall parking lot. It dated back to the West End Street Railway days. When Fields Corner station was built in 1927, a bus garage was added where the Rite Aid now is.

The separated reservation on the south side of Park Street, now a busway, was built at that time to give streetcars from Dorchester Avenue and Neponset Avenue better access to the new station.

Co-operation : Boston Elevated Railway Company : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Issued by Boston Elevated Railway, 1922-1946; by Metropolitan Transit Authority, 1947-1953

archive.org

 

[The EGE]

Here's something that aged like milk:

It's actually from the 1980-82 bustitution, which was to reconstruct the line for LRVs, rather than the 1985 "temporary" bustitution that actually ended Arborway service. But still... oof.

File:March 1980 MBTA route 39 advertising pamphlet.pdf - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

 

[TheRatmeister]

Here's something that aged like milk:
View attachment 46362

It's actually from the 1980-82 bustitution, which was to reconstruct the line for LRVs, rather than the 1985 "temporary" bustitution that actually ended Arborway service. But still... oof.

File:March 1980 MBTA route 39 advertising pamphlet.pdf - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

that's a big yikes

 

[MrDee12345]

I'm not a daily rider, but I did notice when my wife and I went downtown for dinner on Friday, that the Orange Line between Forest Hills and Back Bay seemed very fast compared to my general expectations. It was a very pleasing ride.

As the slow zones get fixed throughout 2024, will the MBTA start increasing the frequency of the trains? I was looking at the schedules the other day and red, blue, green and orange lines seem to have fairly lousy headways these days.

 

[JeffDowntown]

As the slow zones get fixed throughout 2024, will the MBTA start increasing the frequency of the trains? I was looking at the schedules the other day and red, blue, green and orange lines seem to have fairly lousy headways these days.

At least on Orange we are still facing train set shortages waiting on CRRC deliveries.

 

[TheRatmeister]

As the slow zones get fixed throughout 2024, will the MBTA start increasing the frequency of the trains? I was looking at the schedules the other day and red, blue, green and orange lines seem to have fairly lousy headways these days

This has already been happening, albeit somewhat slowly. As the OL gets more trains that will improve headways as well.

 

[Delvin4519]

At least on Orange we are still facing train set shortages waiting on CRRC deliveries.

Red Line has issues where the ancient old trains are starting to have unfixable issues and as such in some cases trains need to be taken permanently out of service due to unfixable problems with the old trains. While I don't post to reddit anymore, this issue was mentioned in an MBTA throwaway account as a contributing factor for the RL, where the throwaway acct person stated that a few old RL cars had to be removed from service permanently with no new CRRC cars to replace them due to delivery delays.

 

[Jahvon09]

Why in the world are there still all these damn plans for shutdowns for frigging trackwork, seemingly across the board again, even when all this this work was supposed to have been done eons before, especially almost 2 years ago when the entire Orange Line was shut down for trackwork in the summer of '21 or '22?!!! Seems that this aggravating work will NEVER be finished because it seemingly just keeps on being re-upped all over the place!!! Check the schedules for each line. I can understand the Blue Line if the Blue / Red connector is being prepped for work, but otherwise, this all seems so ridiculous to have to keep on frigging going through for each & every year!!

Here’s a tentative schedule of all the planned MBTA shutdowns

The T's plan includes 188 days of track work and periodic shutdowns on all four subway lines, starting this fall.

www.boston.com

 

[Delvin4519]

Surprised this was not mentioned again, but on the MBTA, doors were closed with a passenger still inside the doorway, trapping the passenger between the doors for a little while. This "doors closing on top of passengers" incident occured on the Green Line at Medford.

The latest door incident on the MBTA occurs in the wake after a previous door incident resulted in a fatality on the Red Line back in 2022.

T investigating after Green Line door closes on woman helping child off the train

The MBTA pointed to possible operator error as the cause of an incident Monday where the Green Line doors closed on a woman's leg.

www.boston.com

 

[Riverside]

Surprised this was not mentioned again, but on the MBTA, doors were closed with a passenger still inside the doorway, trapping the passenger between the doors for a little while. This "doors closing on top of passengers" incident occured on the Green Line at Medford.

The latest door incident on the MBTA occurs in the wake after a previous door incident resulted in a fatality on the Red Line back in 2022.

T investigating after Green Line door closes on woman helping child off the train

The MBTA pointed to possible operator error as the cause of an incident Monday where the Green Line doors closed on a woman's leg.

www.boston.com

According to the article:

The MBTA said the preliminary investigation found that the operator shut the trolley down before ensuring that every passenger had gotten off and cleared the doors. When the train is without power, the doors won’t automatically re-open if there’s an obstruction, according to the T.

I wonder what the standard procedure is. Put the train in park and walk through before shutting off? Wait for confirmation from employees on the platform? Are mirrors supposed to be sufficient?