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

Poftak would not provide a date for when the work would be completed on the Orange Line. "If I put a date in place, it doesn't prioritize safety it puts pressure on field staff to make a decision that is not based on what is the safest condition in the field, it forces them to make a different decision. I regret that I can't give you a date."
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This really sounds like using "safety" as an excuse to hide behind while they slowly let out details of how long the project will actually be. They published a fairly detailed list of tasks and a schedule for the original shutdown and many other projects and didn't hide behind "safety" as an excuse. Now they can't say how long it will take them to do, or even really describe what exactly they're doing.

Not being able to estimate how long something will take sounds more like catastrophic/unexpected failure than relatively routine maintenance work, unless of course the actual estimate is so bad they're reluctant to say it.

As I once heard someone say, "It's Boston, you can't treat people like they're stupid"
 
From the slow zone tracker, we did see trip improvements of nearly 5min for the Red line (looks like new track replacements on the north-side of the line) after some weekend closures.

It does seem like at the current pace of work, by sometime next month both red & orange will be running on pre-pandemic trip times which should improve headways slightly. It is however glaringly clear that the OL shutdown was never about actually improving baseline service for riders. It was all about doing deferred maintenance just to keep ANY service running.
 
sneijder said:
From the slow zone tracker, we did see trip improvements of nearly 5min for the Red line (looks like new track replacements on the north-side of the line) after some weekend closures.
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I think there's an issue with their tracker not picking up the Central-Harvard speed restriction remaining in place, possibly because of the diversion over the weekend. Alewife-Davis is probably the same situation, but I haven't ridden that section today. Definitely still seemed to be there on Saturday. Park-Charles seemed to be lifted or less severe than they're indicating though
 
Looks like as of today Wellington->Sullivan slow zone has been lifted:
A7B1714B-080F-4A8C-A18C-38BF674F0C27.jpeg

Glad to finally see movement on the southbound side of things.
 
JeffDowntown said:
You really cannot rule out the easy option that the MBTA is so bad a project management that they really do not know when they will manage to fix the issues.
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I really don't like to fall on the "defending the MBTA" side of things, but I believe it's entirely possible that they truly just don't know. Even the best estimates are still only estimates. And when you're dealing with infrastructure that has had maintenance deferred for decades in some cases, it's likely that unexpected complications will arise as work progresses. If any of it involves contractors (who have their own agendas and methods for estimating work timelines) and/or sourcing components (because: supply chain), you can expect further questions on the timeline. I don't doubt that "safety" was the convenient agreed upon explanation when trying to settle on a PR approach (sounds a lot better than "we have no idea what kind of mess we're going to find in there, so who knows?"), but it's really not crazy for them to be unsure enough about the timeline to avoid giving an estimate altogether.
 
Lrfox said:
I really don't like to fall on the "defending the MBTA" side of things, but I believe it's entirely possible that they truly just don't know. Even the best estimates are still only estimates. And when you're dealing with infrastructure that has had maintenance deferred for decades in some cases, it's likely that unexpected complications will arise as work progresses. If any of it involves contractors (who have their own agendas and methods for estimating work timelines) and/or sourcing components (because: supply chain), you can expect further questions on the timeline. I don't doubt that "safety" was the convenient agreed upon explanation when trying to settle on a PR approach (sounds a lot better than "we have no idea what kind of mess we're going to find in there, so who knows?"), but it's really not crazy for them to be unsure enough about the timeline to avoid giving an estimate altogether.
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Like with the Orange Line work. Commuters were being told that things were supposedly fixed during the month-long shutdown, then when the line reopens for business, they find out that some track work was still being done that should've been done during the shutdown. And that some of the slow zones were supposed to have gone away. :unsure:
 
Lrfox said:
I really don't like to fall on the "defending the MBTA" side of things, but I believe it's entirely possible that they truly just don't know. Even the best estimates are still only estimates. And when you're dealing with infrastructure that has had maintenance deferred for decades in some cases, it's likely that unexpected complications will arise as work progresses. If any of it involves contractors (who have their own agendas and methods for estimating work timelines) and/or sourcing components (because: supply chain), you can expect further questions on the timeline. I don't doubt that "safety" was the convenient agreed upon explanation when trying to settle on a PR approach (sounds a lot better than "we have no idea what kind of mess we're going to find in there, so who knows?"), but it's really not crazy for them to be unsure enough about the timeline to avoid giving an estimate altogether.
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It doesn't help that they have a long (and, recently, particularly blatant) track record of misleading or outright lying to the public. With regards to the extended Orange Line slowdowns, for example, it's not unreasonable that they'd find more work than expected, given the degree of deferred maintenance, but it hardly seems likely that they found the extra work literally at the very end, and at some point they knew they would be doing more work, which means more slow zones, and outright lied that the slow zones would be gone within a timeframe that they either knew or should have known was impossible. It seems like it'd be better for them to be upfront about things: get an idea about how long a project will take, then tell that to the public with appropriate caveats. It would have been annoying but ultimately fine if they'd said, at or near the end of the OL shutdown, that they'd found more work that needed to be done, meaning a bit longer on the slow zones, instead of keeping silent about it then only explaining the truth once people pointed out their previous statements had become flagrantly untrue.
 
Brattle Loop said:
It doesn't help that they have a long (and, recently, particularly blatant) track record of misleading or outright lying to the public. With regards to the extended Orange Line slowdowns, for example, it's not unreasonable that they'd find more work than expected, given the degree of deferred maintenance, but it hardly seems likely that they found the extra work literally at the very end, and at some point they knew they would be doing more work, which means more slow zones, and outright lied that the slow zones would be gone within a timeframe that they either knew or should have known was impossible. It seems like it'd be better for them to be upfront about things: get an idea about how long a project will take, then tell that to the public with appropriate caveats. It would have been annoying but ultimately fine if they'd said, at or near the end of the OL shutdown, that they'd found more work that needed to be done, meaning a bit longer on the slow zones, instead of keeping silent about it then only explaining the truth once people pointed out their previous statements had become flagrantly untrue.
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Yeah, fully agree. Simple transparency and humility/humbleness goes a long way. This invokes echoes of the MBTA of the past that managed to kill the E to Arborway during the "temporary" shutdown and other such moves. I had personally thought the MBTA had turned a bit of a new leaf in as far as actually wanting to improve.
 
It would not have been hard for the MBTA to have simply said, near the end of the shut down, that they had discovered multiple previously unidentified issues during the work that would also need to be addressed. Sure, people would have grumbled about it, but then that would have been the end of it. None of the communications strategy makes any sense.
 
Brattle Loop said:
It doesn't help that they have a long (and, recently, particularly blatant) track record of misleading or outright lying to the public. With regards to the extended Orange Line slowdowns, for example, it's not unreasonable that they'd find more work than expected, given the degree of deferred maintenance, but it hardly seems likely that they found the extra work literally at the very end, and at some point they knew they would be doing more work, which means more slow zones, and outright lied that the slow zones would be gone within a timeframe that they either knew or should have known was impossible. It seems like it'd be better for them to be upfront about things: get an idea about how long a project will take, then tell that to the public with appropriate caveats. It would have been annoying but ultimately fine if they'd said, at or near the end of the OL shutdown, that they'd found more work that needed to be done, meaning a bit longer on the slow zones, instead of keeping silent about it then only explaining the truth once people pointed out their previous statements had become flagrantly untrue.
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I agree 100%. I'm floored by the lack of transparency on their end. I think people (most, anyway) are reasonable enough to understand and even expect that correcting decades of neglect will take time and come with some unforeseen complications. There's no reason for the T to have such a hard time with being more forthcoming.
 
HenryAlan said:
Sure, people would have grumbled about it, but then that would have been the end of it.
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I do think it would be more than a little grumble, I'm sure that timeline we would be plenty mad and beyond just the initial announcement. But overall, I do think we would be less mad than we are now.

Though if we look from a different angle, neither scenario has made a difference in a way that truly matters. Regardless of whatever increase "levels of mad" from them lying and misleading, it's not affecting Baker's approval ratings, no tangible action has happen so far from the legislature, and not even scapegoats have rolled from the MBTA.

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Meanwhile, media continues to find report new angles. Latest report that is making the rounds on r/boston is this Boston Globe article. Apparently the latest attempt to spin is Poftak trying to debate the definition of a slow zone. Which is contradicted by his own COO. I think the other stuff have been already said before
 
Some "positive" news: we are now experiencing the fastest southbound median trip time since the shutdown (43.1 minutes yesterday), clocking it at only 5.3 minutes longer than pre-shutdown!

This is driven by recent gains on the northern half of the line. (@thepianoperson provided a relevant graphic above)

Most of the southbound travel time delays can now be pinned to the Sullivan -> Community College slow zone at this point. That segment is currently clocking in at 3.8 minutes longer than pre-shutdown.
 
The slow zone on the northbound side of Community College is now 2 minutes longer in the past 3 days this week than last week. Not yet reflected on the slow zone tracker. Clocking in at just under 7 minutes, compared to 5.0 minutes last week.


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One of the big issues with fixing the slow areas is that the T apparently does not even have a shared internal definition of what constitutes a "slow zone". (Noted in the Boston Globe article yesterday where Stoothoff the chief operating officer used a different definition than Poftak!)
www.bostonglobe.com

MBTA officials said service would be faster after the Orange Line closure. Now it’s slower, and they have few explanations why. - The Boston Globe

The MBTA can’t get its story straight. “The T should have better communicated to its riders who were told service would be faster after the 30-day closure,” an agency spokesperson said.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

The T has used speed restrictions as the quick fix for degraded track for so long (you know rather than fixing the track), Poftak has suggested that only sections with 10 MPH speed restrictions were "slow zones". So all that 40 MPH track running at 20 MPH is just another crappy operational day at the T, but it is not slow.
 
Does the T not realize the long lasting damage this is going to do? They shut down the entire orange line for a month, and it's still not running as it should. I am sure there are plenty of people who have simply given up on using it and will instead drive to where they need to go. Confidence continues to be shaken in the T and the orange line situation has cascading effects with user's confidence in other lines.

I am probably missing something, or have unrealistic expectations, but why do slow zones even need to exist?
 
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