General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

F-Line to Dudley said:
There are no bad track conditions on the Green Line right now, only a too-unsafe ops culture that can't be reformed enough to appease federal regulators until the Green Line Train Protection System closes the loophole forever on overspeeding and getting in collision range of another …
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I feel like this unsafe ops culture goes back really far… at least since before the texting operator wreck on the Riverside branch. Why was it allowed to fester for so long?
 
Delvin4519 said:
The MBTA continues to have back to back OL and GL weekend shutdowns on October for signal and GLTPS "upgrades".

MBTA Announces October Service Changes | News | MBTA

Official website of the MBTA -- schedules, maps, and fare information for Greater Boston's public transportation system, including subway, commuter rail, bus routes, and boat lines.
www.mbta.com www.mbta.com

I thought the GLX shutdown was going to mean that there will only be 1 branch serving North Station, but the MBTA GTFS data says they will still service North Station with 2 branches.

We've dodged a bullet with this one with the broken downtown transfers. The MBTA seems to intend on 10 minute headways between North Station/Haymarket and Kenmore during the GL shutdown.

Does anyone know what the capacity of the North Station turnback is and whether it can handle sub-5 minute headways of 2 branches?
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I still remember clearly when the T had to do those garage shutdowns in 2023. The GLX ran 20 minute headways since the North Station turn back could only hold 1 train every 10 minutes in the core trunk, with 2 branches to serve with halved frequency.

Is the upcoming Green Line weekend diversion on October 4th going to cut service down to 20 minutes on the D and E during the diversion?

Surely the MBTA may have crippled the core capacity of the North Station turnback such that their GTFS schedules for Green Line diversions are completely meaningless.

There’s a post on zombie reddit that says the MBTA is running a whole lot more express trains from East Somerville to Medford these days.
 
The garage shutdowns required turning back trains at North Station from the north, which the turnback is not designed to do. The early garage shutdowns had trains make an adverse move through the turnback crossover without signal protection, requiring that the interlocking be put on hand-throw and trains be flagged through double-red signals by an official. Because of the adverse move, only one train at a time was allowed between Science Park and North Station, resulting in such lousy headways. Later garage shutdowns got safety clearance to use a crossover between North Station and Haymarket, which vastly improved the situation.

Normal use of the turnback to turn trains from the south/west, as is happening with the upcoming diversion, does not pose such problems. The North Station turn-back has handled two branches full-time at several points in its history, including from its opening in July 2004 until the new incline at Science Park was completed and opened in late 2005, from April to November 2011 for accessibility renovations at Science Park, and from the closure of old Lechmere in May 2020 to the start of simulated revenue service on the Union Square branch in late 2021.
 
alewife said:
The garage shutdowns required turning back trains at North Station from the north, which the turnback is not designed to do. The early garage shutdowns had trains make an adverse move through the turnback crossover without signal protection, requiring that the interlocking be put on hand-throw and trains be flagged through double-red signals by an official. Because of the adverse move, only one train at a time was allowed between Science Park and North Station, resulting in such lousy headways. Later garage shutdowns got safety clearance to use a crossover between North Station and Haymarket, which vastly improved the situation.

Normal use of the turnback to turn trains from the south/west, as is happening with the upcoming diversion, does not pose such problems. The North Station turn-back has handled two branches full-time at several points in its history, including from its opening in July 2004 until the new incline at Science Park was completed and opened in late 2005, from April to November 2011 for accessibility renovations at Science Park, and from the closure of old Lechmere in May 2020 to the start of simulated revenue service on the Union Square branch in late 2021.
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Has the MBTA always ran 2 branches to North Station prior to the GLX opening? Was there ever a point where the MBTA only ran 1 branch to North Station from the south/west, or do MBTA service planners always have 2 branches run all the way to North Station?

Even if the North Station turnback has handled 2 branches at full frequency in the past, if in 2025 there are new operating procedures at the North Station turnback since the GLX derailments in 2024/2025, then that could still cripple the North Station turnback's capacity and curtail service frequency like the rest of the central subway tunnel.
 
After passing a double red and going 36 in 10 MPH zone, it is pretty telling what the operator had to say:
"What I didn't like or what I don't like about the whole situation is how I'm an employee for the MBTA, and they just publicly put the blame on me first without checking their equipment or checking the rails or anything like that," Fauntleroy said, according to the transcript. "I feel like this contributes to a community where operators or employees don't want to say that this is wrong, or that nobody checks about the PD faults that we drive every day, they supposedly take off the line and they're back on the line in an hour. I just feel like nobody wants to tell about that because our jobs are on the line."
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BeansTheCat said:
After passing a double red and going 36 in 10 MPH zone, it is pretty telling what the operator had to say:
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They're blaming the equipment for a 2-1/2 times overspeed? Like...the speedometer is right there. You're still supposed to be paying enough attention to notice a speed anomaly before it gets that bad and take evasive action by taking power off the throttle and braking as necessary. That wasn't a small-scale discrepancy....it was huge.

I won't deny that the labor culture and general chain-of-command seem like they're all kinds of fucked up throughout the Light Rail Division and that new ops leadership seems badly needed, but that excuse reads like a lot of bullshit.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
They're blaming the equipment for a 2-1/2 times overspeed? Like...the speedometer is right there. You're still supposed to be paying enough attention to notice a speed anomaly before it gets that bad and take evasive action by taking power off the throttle and braking as necessary. That wasn't a small-scale discrepancy....it was huge.

I won't deny that the labor culture and general chain-of-command seem like they're all kinds of fucked up throughout the Light Rail Division and that new ops leadership seems badly needed, but that excuse reads like a lot of bullshit.
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Completely agree. There's way too much that went wrong for the operator to be dodging blame like this. When I said it was telling, I meant of the operator and the light rail work culture, not of the T itself.
 
We don’t see these incidents on the heavy rail lines. So why is the work culture so casual on the Green Line where for some it’s like, “no big, I just ran a double red”?
 
wicked said:
We don’t see these incidents on the heavy rail lines. So why is the work culture so casual on the Green Line where for some it’s like, “no big, I just ran a double red”?
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I think the ATO and trip stop systems on red/orange/blue make it impossible for the operator to really exceed speed limits or run reds.
 
wicked said:
We don’t see these incidents on the heavy rail lines. So why is the work culture so casual on the Green Line where for some it’s like, “no big, I just ran a double red”?
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If I'm not mistaken, it's not possible to ignore speed limits and blow through stop lights on the heavy rail lines, whereas the Green Line has no automatic limiter system built in.
 
Delvin4519 said:
Has the MBTA always ran 2 branches to North Station prior to the GLX opening? Was there ever a point where the MBTA only ran 1 branch to North Station from the south/west, or do MBTA service planners always have 2 branches run all the way to North Station?

Even if the North Station turnback has handled 2 branches at full frequency in the past, if in 2025 there are new operating procedures at the North Station turnback since the GLX derailments in 2024/2025, then that could still cripple the North Station turnback's capacity and curtail service frequency like the rest of the central subway tunnel.
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Is the MBTA really going to just be running 15 or 20 minute headways between North Station and Government Center for the entire GLX diversion ? 😡😡😡

The GLX diversion isn’t supposed to affect North Station - Government Center service 😱😱😱!!!

More lies from the T. Why not tell riders between North Station and Government Center to expect reduced frequency? Just endless, covert, stealth service cuts that are made secretly.

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Delvin4519 said:
Is the MBTA really going to just be running 15 or 20 minute headways between North Station and Government Center for the entire GLX diversion ? 😡😡😡

The GLX diversion isn’t supposed to affect North Station - Government Center service 😱😱😱!!!

More lies from the T. Why not tell riders between North Station and Government Center to expect reduced frequency? Just endless, covert, stealth service cuts that are made secretly.

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Or it could just be this
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Ah yes, the Green Line operator on ArchBoston earlier said that lots of trains and the entire track and signal system have constant problems. But it’s quite the coincidence it started right at the same time as the diversion .
 
Delvin4519 said:
Ah yes, the Green Line operator on ArchBoston earlier said that lots of trains and the entire track and signal system have constant problems. But it’s quite the coincidence it started right at the same time as the diversion .
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The Green Line always has constant signal problems, because the signals in large stretches the Central Subway are past replacement age. That's why they're replacing them, to catch up on state-of-repair. This isn't news to daily riders of the Green Line, who've been suffering for years because of the increased signal failures.

You're getting very hard to take seriously with this amping-up conspiratorial torture porn act, Devin. :rolleyes:
 
First it was "COVID cuts", "operator shortages".

Now this is a new one from the T: "not enough buses" to return the bus network to the pre-COVID revenue service hours level of service.

Source: "This bus only runs for a few hours in the middle of the day. T riders want that changed."

The 55 is mostly duplicative, but there are plenty of other higher ridership bus routes that are still waiting for pre-COVID service levels to return.

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