MBTA "Transformation" (Green Line, Red Line, & Orange Line Transformation Projects)

[nbcoram]

If they're doing nightly tie replacement it makes sense that there's a speed restriction. That's standard practice.

The issue is not with the fact that there is a speed restriction due to tie replacement. In a vacuum, that's fine.

The issue is with the fact that they still have a lot of tie replacement left, necessitating the slow zones, 2 weeks after a 4 week shutdown that they explicitly stated would fix the slow zones north of North Station, and they are not being honest with the public or the media whatsoever on the matter.

My point was that the travel times should not be higher than pre-shutdown given the way all this work was pitched to the public, to the media, and to local officials; and given that the area with the slowest travel times was one that they said would be addressed.

A bit of transparency would go a long way...

 

[Brattle Loop]

The issue is not with the fact that there is a speed restriction due to tie replacement. In a vacuum, that's fine.

The issue is with the fact that they still have a lot of tie replacement left, necessitating the slow zones, 2 weeks after a 4 week shutdown that they explicitly stated would fix the slow zones north of North Station, and they are not being honest with the public or the media whatsoever on the matter.

My point was that the travel times should not be higher than pre-shutdown given the way all this work was pitched to the public, to the media, and to local officials; and given that the area with the slowest travel times was one that they said would be addressed.

A bit of transparency would go a long way...

Agreed. The basic rationale for the shutdown - that a sustained service suspension would allow a blitz of work that usually takes much longer if done on weekends, or overnight - is a worthwhile one, though even on that their communication could have been somewhat clearer. The problem is that they have now very clearly lied, both about OL shutdown and the GLX shutdown, where they either outright stated or heavily implied that the slow zones (particularly those north of North Station, and on the Lechmere Viaduct), would be fixed, neither has been fixed, and, at least in the case of the Orange Line, the work itself is not done. They then compounded that with their effective lie that the slow zones would go away after 5-7 days (we're at at least double that), which may or may not be true in a technical sense on the work that's completed, but, as noted, the work isn't all done, so the slow zones persist.

In my view, the problem isn't even that they implied all this work would get done in the shutdown (whether that was ever the plan, on the other hand...), the problem is that they (to use a cliche) over-promised and under-delivered. Proper communication would have involved being honest with passengers about what exactly the shutdown would and would not accomplish, what service improvements would be immediately apparent, and which would not (and any potential service issues that would result, i.e. from more, but temporary, slow zones). They've clearly and blatantly failed on that score. I don't know if it's just general incompetence, or if they were overly-worried that opposition to the shutdown would be greater if they told people that they wouldn't see immediate massive improvements to these areas even after a month of no service. Problematically, while they might have somewhat eased the public's willingness to accept the shutdown as it happened, it will have come at a significant cost to their already-shaky-at-best trustworthiness, because it's absolutely legitimate for people (especially the bulk of passengers who don't frequent this forum and get a more nuanced and granular discussion of these issues) to feel as though they've been duped and taken advantage of. And this problem is avoidable with proper communication, they just completely failed to do it here.

 

[bigeman312]

Days 13-15 Update:

Northbound

• Orange Line northbound travel time improved from 52.0 minutes (mean of daily median travel times, 9/23 - 9/30) to 48.1 minutes (mean of daily median travel times, 10/1-10/3). This is still 5.5 minutes longer than pre-shutdown (42.6 minutes):
  • These improvements were driven by travel time decreases over the Community College -> Assembly segment:
    • Community College -> Sullivan: Travel time decreased from 5.2 minutes to 1.9 minutes starting on Friday evening, still slightly slower than pre-shutdown (1.8 minutes).
    • Sullivan -> Assembly: Travel time decreased from 3.3 minutes to 1.3 minutes starting late morning today, still slower than pre-shutdown (0.9 minutes).
    • These improvements were somewhat offset by some other minor travel time increases.

Southbound

• Orange Line southbound travel time improved from 48.4 minutes (mean of daily median travel times, 9/23 - 9/29) to 48.0 minutes (mean of daily median travel times, 9/30-10/3). This is still 8.7 minutes longer than pre-shutdown (39.3 minutes):
  • This is a minor improvement not worth further analysis.

Round-Trip

We are now down to 14.2 minutes longer than pre-shutdown round-trip. While this improvement is worth noting, it's also worth keeping our eye on the prize that we were promised better service post-shutdown, not equal (or worse) service. The single-stop segments that are still running 1.0+ minutes longer than pre-shutdown are:

• Assembly -> Sullivan (SB): Averaging 3.3 minutes compared to 0.8 minutes pre-shutdown. +2.5 minutes.
• Sullivan -> Community College (SB): Averaging 5.2 minutes compared to 0.8 minutes pre-shutdown. +3.8 minutes.
• Wellington -> Malden Center (NB): Averaging 3.8 minutes compared to 2.7 minutes pre-shutdown. +1.1 minutes.

Bottom Line: The most egregious remaining shutdown-introduced slow zone is the two-stop segment section between Assembly and Community College, southbound. That comprises 44% of the round-trip travel time increase. If the MBTA can improve that section, similar to the improvements on the same section in the opposite direction over the last few days, it would go a long way towards status-quo, and a step towards improvement some day.

Their communication, on the other hand, remains bottom-of-the-barrel.

 

[nbcoram]

The MBTA is now claiming (via a statement to WBZ) that they decided to to some last minute work between Assembly and North Station that was above and beyond what was planned.

I have my doubts about that explanation, to put it kindly. For sure, it's good that they were be able to do extra projects with any extra time ... but deciding at the last minute to do something that would result in a significant impact on service like this? Seems sketchy to me and I still wonder if something else is going on that they are using this as a cover for.

 

[kingofsheeba]

At least they’re trying to fix the escalator at Wellington

 

[bigeman312]

The MBTA is now claiming (via a statement to WBZ) that they decided to to some last minute work between Assembly and North Station that was above and beyond what was planned.

I have my doubts about that explanation, to put it kindly. For sure, it's good that they were be able to do extra projects with any extra time ... but deciding at the last minute to do something that would result in a significant impact on service like this? Seems sketchy to me and I still wonder if something else is going on that they are using this as a cover for.

“Hey, I know I told you that if you gave up service for a month it would be fixed, and yes it works worse than before, but it’s not because I did anything wrong. It’s because I went above and beyond!”

These people have no shame. There is no taking responsibility. No honesty. No integrity.

Let’s say, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we decide to take the MBTA at their word. Let’s say this issue is due to them going above-and-beyond and doing extra work. Then answer me this: why were they telling us that the slow zones would be lifted in a week when they knew they weren’t going to be? Why were they saying that everything went exactly to plan when it wasn’t?

Basically, if they aren’t lying now, it means they have been lying the entire time up until now. How is this acceptable?

 

[Jahvon09]

“Hey, I know I told you that if you gave up service for a month it would be fixed, and yes it works worse than before, but it’s not because I did anything wrong. It’s because I went above and beyond!”

These people have no shame. There is no taking responsibility. No honesty. No integrity.

Let’s say, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we decide to take the MBTA at their word. Let’s say this issue is due to them going above-and-beyond and doing extra work. Then answer me this: why were they telling us that the slow zones would be lifted in a week when they knew they weren’t going to be? Why were they saying that everything went exactly to plan when it wasn’t?

Basically, if they aren’t lying now, it means they have been lying the entire time up until now. How is this acceptable?

As it seems, they are so full of it!! That could've been done during the shutdown! They lied to the passengers. Now they're STILL doing repair work. Work that should've been done all along. Glad that I'M not riding it right now. They'd have heard from me!! I can't blame the passengers for getting so frustrated. I'd be also!!

 

[737900er]

"A spokesperson said it is work the T would have had to do at a future date anyway, but crews decided to get it done now, while construction materials are on-hand."

 

[RandomWalk]

It’s the same culture that won’t regularly publish a simple Gantt chart for a project. They want to take credit for the wins, but know that someone is going to play gotcha with anything that isn’t a clear win. Change needs to come in the form of radical transparency. Put the data out there and answer the questions that arise.

 

[bigeman312]

Some small good news on Day 16 of the week of slow-zones:

• Ruggles -> Mass Ave (NB): Travel time decreased from 2.0 minutes to 1.3 minutes starting midday today, matching its pre-shutdown time (1.3 minutes). With that good news, we can now see a bigger picture starting to fall into place:
  • Stony Brook -> Mass Ave (NB): Median traven time from Stony Brook to Mass Ave today was 6.2 minutes compared to 7.2 minutes immiately pre-shutdown. -1 minute! This is our first, big section that lives up to the Orange Line shutdown promise of faster service (albeit a late delivery). In fact, today's travel time over that section is the fastest it's been since August, 2020.

More of this, please.

 

[nbcoram]

I seriously hope someone makes a FOIA request on their communications related to the shutdown and the persistent slow zones. Might be the only way the real truth comes out, much like with the Blue Line tunnel closure fiasco.

In related news, North Station to Assembly northbound is finally back to pre-shutdown levels. The caveat there is that this stretch, especially between North Station and Community College, was a brutal ~3 minute slow zone before the shutdown began. So there's still 3 minutes of slow zone left to remove before they can even get this stretch to the old status quo, never mind anything that truly is "faster service".

Unfortunately, they appear to have made absolutely no progress southbound.

Elsewhere on the line...
Wellington to Malden Center northbound is still over a minute above pre-shutdown levels.

Tufts to Chinatown northbound is nearly a minute above pre-shutdown levels. Southbound, Chinatown to Tufts is over 30 seconds slower. It's such a short distance, but these graphs are still embarrassing for the MBTA.

Tufts to Back Bay in both directions looks like child's play now compared to the Assembly to North Station slow zones. However, I decided to do some longer-term investigation of the stretch and the results were damning.

Southbound, Tufts to Back Bay is still running at ~2.4 to 2.5 minutes. This is a bit faster than pre-shutdown and quite a bit faster than earlier this year when it ran over 3 minutes, but slower than a brief period in late July.

I decided to go way back and see how this section ran in the early days of the TM tracker..... for a large part of 2016 and 2017 it ran at just 45 seconds. I have so many questions as to how it got as bad as it did.... yay for deferred maintenance.

Going northbound, travel times have improved by over 30 seconds compared to pre-shutdown from 2 minutes to just under 1.5 minutes.

Extending the graph out, the area is still running a bit above where it was for much of 2021 (about 1.25 minutes):

Doing the same long-term analysis for the northbound direction as I did for the southbound direction, I can only find travel times as low as about 1.1 minutes, dating back to early-mid 2016 (see screenshot below). (However, for much of 2018, much of 2019, and around half of 2020, times were just so slightly higher at 1.2 minutes.)

Does anyone with more expertise about the design speeds in this area know if Back Bay to Tufts northbound is just designed for a lower speed in general? Regardless of the current issues, I would expect there to be at least some stretch of time where trains could traverse it in ~45 seconds, so either the design speed is lower going northbound or there is a super long term slow zone of sorts going northbound.

Either way, it's downright ridiculous that it ever got to the point where long term slow zones are even a thing. It's almost like their strategy to fix aging track was to just institute slow zones. It's a shame that this technology wasn't around when, say, the SWC opened, as I would be very interested to look at BBY-Tufts data from when it opened.

 

[Ruairi]

Serious question. Has anyone in management at the T lost their job from the fire over the Mystic till now?
They asked for a lot of patients and understanding from the public over the last 6 weeks and they don't seem to be bothered at all about repaying that good will.

 

[bigeman312]

Serious question. Has anyone in management at the T lost their job from the fire over the Mystic till now?
They asked for a lot of patients and understanding from the public over the last 6 weeks and they don't seem to be bothered at all about repaying that good will.

I think you know the answer to this question. There is zero accountability among the MBTA’s management.

 

[Ruairi]

I think you know the answer to this question. There is zero accountability among the MBTA’s management.

Yea, I just had the idea that it's so egregious at this stage, and there is so little clammer for anyone to be held accountable, that I must have missed something.

 

[HenryAlan]

"A spokesperson said it is work the T would have had to do at a future date anyway, but crews decided to get it done now, while construction materials are on-hand."

This would be a reasonable decision. Not telling us about it, on the other hand, is eminently unreasonable. And now there is no reason to trust them at all, so the potentially true, reasonable explanation, is hard to accept.

 

[nbcoram]

I'm not going to copy and paste the whole article here, but basically they are now claiming that they discovered they needed to do more work north of North Station to lift slow zones; Back Bay to Tufts is still slow because they need to replace 200 more Cologne eggs to return to full speed; Tufts to Chinatown, for one, is still slow because they haven't been able to manually adjust signals yet (how did they not plan for that to be done during the shutdown!?!?); and there is still a lower speed limit (though significantly faster than pre-shutdown) at crossovers near Jackson and between Ruggles and Mass Ave because they need a settling machine to go over it (again, they told the public that running trains would allow it to settle, though to be fair those crossovers are not used in scheduled service).

I don't even know what to say anymore. I'm just speechless. There are some mind-blowing revelations, including MBTA COO Erik Stoothoff with a line saying we shouldn't focus on when all slow zones are lifted. Steve Poftak also says he "[feels] bad" about the communication issues.

I can't wait for someone to FOIA all this so the real truth comes out (assuming they don't try and ignore or deny the request).

Globe article for those interested: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10...-make-orange-line-faster-its-slower-data-show

 

[nbcoram]

There has been some progress made in recent days, mainly in the northbound direction, though there is still plenty of work to do.

Tufts to Chinatown northbound was resolved yesterday morning:

Wellington to Malden Center northbound was resolved on Friday of last week:

Our favorite segment, North Station to Wellington, has seen improvements and is down to a delay of just over 2 minutes compared to before the instatement of the pre-shutdown slow zones.

That over-2-minute delay is primarily driven by the North Station to Community College stretch...

...as Community College to Sullivan Square is faster now than even before the slow zones...

... and Sullivan to Assembly also is marginally faster than pre-shutdown (there was a big slow zone here in the spring).

A marginal slow zone from Assembly to Wellington accounts for the remaining delay in the North Station to Wellington stretch northbound.

Unfortunately, there has been absolutely no progress made between Wellington and North Station southbound (I expanded the graphs to include Wellington because the slow zone starts just north of Assembly, on the Assembly side of the Mystic but before the station, so the delay induced before the station is included in the Wellington to Assembly travel time).

Chinatown to Tufts has also not been fixed in the southbound direction, and Back Bay to Tufts has not changed either since my last assessment.

 

[thepianoperson]

It’s also worth noting that northbound travel times along the entire line are finally back down to their pre-shutdown numbers:

Southbound not at all:

 

[bakgwailo]

Maybe it's just as well those new Red Line trains are late: Upgrade of the yard where they'd be maintained is delayed and mired in lawsuits

Looks like more trouble in paradise - the Cabot Yard project looks to be pretty boned at the moment with lawsuits flying fast and everywhere. Found it rather amusing having just got the email Red Line Transformation update which painted a bit rosier of a picture of the entire thing.

 

[ant8904]

To add more news. I heard an explanation on WBZ Radio that based on the reporting of Federal Safety Hearing that Senator Warren and Markey hosted. Here's the equivalent online article - https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news...-failure-leadership-mbta-boston-steve-poftak/ and looking around Boston.com has it's own article covering it https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2022/10/14/mbta-hearing-warren-markey-safety/

The WBZ article above mostly said what I heard on the radio (and Boston.com too, but it is more detailed). But the radio did said one thing that I can't find on the online article (which makes me wonder if it was actually said in the hearing or just personal speculation by the anchor). The reason why the slow zones are still there is because the rail still needs to be settled > this is usually done by the weight of the trains itself > but that convention is based on the MBTA on regular frequency > but it's been on weekend schedule > which is from the dispatch crisis.