Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

Mentions Lechmere Viaduct specifically; MBTA speed restrictions are trending in the wrong direction, systemwide.

commonwealthmagazine.org

MBTA speed restrictions trending in wrong direction

The percentage of MBTA subway tracks with speed restrictions is heading in the wrong direction. In March, T officials said they uncovered some unspecified
commonwealthmagazine.org commonwealthmagazine.org
 
Delvin4519 said:
Mentions Lechmere Viaduct specifically; MBTA speed restrictions are trending in the wrong direction, systemwide.

commonwealthmagazine.org

MBTA speed restrictions trending in wrong direction

The percentage of MBTA subway tracks with speed restrictions is heading in the wrong direction. In March, T officials said they uncovered some unspecified
commonwealthmagazine.org commonwealthmagazine.org
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“When the work was being done in 2021, the rail still had useful life, so it wasn’t fiscally responsible to replace it at the time,” she said.

“The primary objective of the 2021 Lechmere project was to strengthen the structure in order to remove the operational speed restriction that only allowed one train to cross at a time,” she said. “Now there are three condition-based speed restrictions that are planned to be addressed with the replacement of specially formed ties.”

Battiston said two of the speed restrictions were put in place on the viaduct in December 2021 and a third was added in June 2023. Those slow zones are now being addressed, which should reduce the percent of subway track subject to speed restrictions as long as new defects don’t emerge in the meantime.
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Spotted this at Gilman Square. I wasn’t aware that GLX was part of the Hudson Yards Project.
 
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The image directly above your post but on a sticker on the front of a truck.
 
Highwayguy said:
Having a hard time putting to words how hopeless this makes me feel. People in this community (myself included) have been beating the drum on the need for more TOD, road diets, ect… while snickering at the outdated notions of the parking minimum crowd.

With service this bad on a brand new line, how could I refute someone who believes mode shift away from SOVs is a quality of life reduction? How could l ask for less parking at all the new TOD since “everyone would take the T”, when with service this bad anyone who could afford to live there would opt to drive/ uber instead? How can l advocate to spend billions of dollars on the NSRL, when the sadly correct perception of new transit is 20 minute headways, then traveling at walking pace once the train eventually shows up?

As sad as it is to admit, all those straw men are 100% correct right now, l at least have egg on my face, and the trend is NOT looking up.

In 100 years when I-93 has been made redundant by flying cars or whatever, 70% odds people could look down from where the upper deck used to be and still find the Orange Line trundling along at 4 MPH through that cursed Sullivan slowzone.
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Delvin4519 said:
Yea. As soon as I found Not Just Bikes saying "there's no hope for American and Canadian cities, get out", then seeing news like this is quite depressing and only reinforces NJB's messaging to be the truth case. Then I see a Globe article saying the ceiling collapsed at DTX and the MBTA is losing workers at a new record breaking pace this spring.

Boston will be flooded underwater by the sea, before the Blue-Red connector even gets built, or CR electrification and BNRD gets underway.

I really can't believe the GLX has like 6+ speed restrictions of 3 MPH on both branches. I don't get it. How come Amsterdam is able to close an entire throughfare for cars, remove 10,000 parking spaces, and build a North-South Metro line; yet the GLX needs speed restrictions less than a week after the CPX/GLX reached full completion, and GLX trains can only run every 25 minutes during the GCG Haymarket shutdown?

At this rate, Europe will have high speed rail between every single European capital city, meanwhile the entire GLX will turn into an 3 MPH slow zone.
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These comments was posted on June 27 when speed restrictions were added on GLX. Today, all speed restrictions on the Medford branch have been removed, with only one 3 mph slow zone from Union Square to Lechmere at 200 ft (in addition to the ones over the Lechmere viaduct).

For all the fear mongering about transit doomsdays and "entire GLX turning into 3 mph", the slow zones ended up to be just temporary for 2 weeks.
 
Teban54 said:
These comments was posted on June 27 when speed restrictions were added on GLX. Today, all speed restrictions on the Medford branch have been removed, with only one 3 mph slow zone from Union Square to Lechmere at 200 ft (in addition to the ones over the Lechmere viaduct).

For all the fear mongering about transit doomsdays and "entire GLX turning into 3 mph", the slow zones ended up to be just temporary for 2 weeks.
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The speed restriction at East Somerville is still in place on the dashboard as of today. Note that blue circle at the station.

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Delvin4519 said:
The speed restriction at East Somerville is still in place on the dashboard as of today. Note that blue circle at the station.

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Gotcha, sorry I overlooked that one. Regardless, my point still stands: the reactions to those speed restrictions that ended up being temporary - and didn't take too long to fix compared to most others on older tracks - were overblown.
 
Teban54 said:
Regardless, my point still stands: the reactions to those speed restrictions that ended up being temporary - and didn't take too long to fix compared to most others on older tracks - were overblown.
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Only speaking for myself here, but my point was more that the bus/ RT component of the T overall is borderline unusable (and very much trending worse), and how that creates additional challenges both in the political sphere to reducing car dependency and to the long term health of the urban core post-Covid. I agree that a few minutes of delay on a new line in isolation is trivial.

Glad those slowzones on the GLX were removed and my overall outlook on the T is something l desperately want to be proven wrong about, but the network wide service still continues to suck. Those little slow-zones were just the little nudge that finished what a Northside Orange Line commute post shutdown will do a person.

To nitpick slightly, I do consider the Leachmere viaduct and the crawl over it as new track part of the GLX…
 
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Highwayguy said:
Only speaking for myself here, but my point was more that the bus/ RT component of the T overall is borderline unusable (and very much trending worse), and how that creates additional challenges both in the political sphere to reducing car dependency and to the long term health of the urban core post-Covid. I agree that a few minutes of delay on a new line in isolation is trivial.
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With bus ridership exceeding 80% pre-pandemic despite service cuts and trip unreliability, I’d say that the bus system is far from unusable. Cuts are not a good thing but the worst cuts were unfortunately made strategically to the lowest ridership routes. The routes with the highest ridership are actually seeing increased service over pre-pandemic because those are the T’s backbone. Some rush hour service cuts were also made to facilitate off-peak service which depending on the route can be a good change to make. Moderate ridership routes also remain fairly stable.
Dropped trips suck though. I’ve been the victim of being stuck in Norwood with 3 straight cancelled 34E trips. It’s good that fixing this is first up on the list for them.
 
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