New Red and Orange Line Cars

Whoever thought of this asinine joke ought to be ashamed of themselves for even THINKING about saying it!! I was almost beginning to believe it! They don't even have the full order in use yet! :mad:
 
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Don't know if anyone else saw this: deeply saddening and unfortunate:
https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/u0nphg

Seems like 1. The door should have had a working sensor if he was entering 2. The train shouldn't have started moving if the door wasn't closed

Replacing and maintaining these old fleets is really really important for rider safety.
 
AndrewOnTheMBTA said:
Don't know if anyone else saw this: deeply saddening and unfortunate:
https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/u0nphg

Seems like 1. The door should have had a working sensor if he was entering 2. The train shouldn't have started moving if the door wasn't closed

Replacing and maintaining these old fleets is really really important for rider safety.
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And 3. The driver should have seen there was an issue and not started the train
 
I don't believe we know yet whether it was a new car or old car involved in this accident. I hope there is a swift investigation: as several people said in that reddit thread, this is the stuff of nightmares -- as was the escalator at Back Bay and the staircase near JFK/UMass. These are the things of "so-bad-they're-good" horror films. Regardless of what specifically happened here, the T needs to be seen in the weeks and months ahead as investing in rider safety. I don't know what that looks like, but it needs to be something.
 
HenryAlan said:
This is where the 'T will place its focus, but in reality, the first 2 points are what matter. Human error is going to happen. A safe system needs to be able to block truly egregious error.
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Also, almost similar to the run-away Red Line train that had no driver in the cab & the train where one of the cars had derailed!! Or like the train that had a derailment while entering Broadway Station! These incidents had all involved one of the OLD trains!

It probably WAS an old train that this latest mishap & tragedy has happened on. These cars are decades old & it is probably the fault of the MBTA for keeping them around for so long, instead of investing in new trains sooner. After all, they've been in use since 1969, the 1500's were. I'd say that enough is enough. How many more tragic accidents must this line suffer before the T finally cracks down on getting the new trains much sooner? Otr at least to try putting a handle on this idiocy? :unsure:
 
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Details appear to be sketchy, but it appears as though it might have been a model 1800 train. At least that's the train shown in the news coverage. The driver or a doorman may not have seen the guy boarding the train. I'm pretty certain that the new train in use would have this safety feature in place. Similar to the door(s) on an elevator. It's not supposed to close & move if there's an obstruction there. But as far as we know, no new trains have been removed from service on the Red Line or the Orange Line. Being that Broadway Station is a center platform, I wonder if the man had mistakenly made contact with the 3rd rail, if it is in the middle of the tunnel. :unsure:

www.nbcboston.com

Man Dead After Being Dragged by Red Line Train

A man suffered fatal injuries when his arm became stuck in an MBTA Red Line train door and he was dragged into a tunnel at the Broadway Station in Boston, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office. Red Line trains are operating as normal despite the horrific incident that took...
www.nbcboston.com www.nbcboston.com
 
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This is awful. I witnessed a similar event happen first hand at Park St on the red line ~20 years ago (I was a child at the time). Person's foot and winter boot got stuck inside the train (door closed around ankle). Train started moving and the person hopped along outside while a car full of people watched without doing anything. Only my father and one other person jumped up to frantically try and free the person from the door. He pulled the emergency brake and the train stopped just before the end of the platform. I didn't realize at the time how badly that could have ended.

Tragic that the same exact scenario played out with a much worse outcome.
 
Riverside said:
I don't believe we know yet whether it was a new car or old car involved in this accident. I hope there is a swift investigation: as several people said in that reddit thread, this is the stuff of nightmares -- as was the escalator at Back Bay and the staircase near JFK/UMass. These are the things of "so-bad-they're-good" horror films. Regardless of what specifically happened here, the T needs to be seen in the weeks and months ahead as investing in rider safety. I don't know what that looks like, but it needs to be something.
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Just a guess here, but I don't think it was a new car. According to New Trains, there was a new trainset running on the Red Line as recently as 6 hours ago. It's hard to imagine the T running a new train this soon afterwards if a new train was involved and an investigation was still ongoing.
 
Treviot said:
This is awful. I witnessed a similar event happen first hand at Park St on the red line ~20 years ago (I was a child at the time). Person's foot and winter boot got stuck inside the train (door closed around ankle). Train started moving and the person hopped along outside while a car full of people watched without doing anything. Only my father and one other person jumped up to frantically try and free the person from the door. He pulled the emergency brake and the train stopped just before the end of the platform. I didn't realize at the time how badly that could have ended.

Tragic that the same exact scenario played out with a much worse outcome.
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I think I remember that one. With the quick thinking of your dad & another passenger's help, the guy was saved from certain death. But who in the world would've ever thought that the same scenario would come back to haunt everyone 20 years later & have a very tragic outcome?!! Funny how things happen! At first, no one gets hurt or killed. The next time, it seems to come back with a terrible vengeance!! I think OSHA will get involved with THIS investigation also. That's TWO people killed in the space of about a couple of weeks with the collapse of the garage that's being torn down at GC!! The T was not at fault with THAT one. And not too long ago, an old Orange Line train was in motion with a door open!! No one was hurt or killed in THAT incident either. Seems like the old trains are living on borrowed time. Only a matter of time before a tragedy happens with one of them!! :eek:
 
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Lrfox said:
Just a guess here, but I don't think it was a new car. According to New Trains, there was a new trainset running on the Red Line as recently as 6 hours ago. It's hard to imagine the T running a new train this soon afterwards if a new train was involved and an investigation was still ongoing.
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We more than likely would've heard that this tragedy happened with the new train that's in use. Also the one new train & ALL of the new ones on the OL would've been quickly yanked off both lines in a heartbeat, as they've done in the past when something went wrong with just one of the new cars. :unsure:
 
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Brattle Loop said:
Per WCVB it was a 01500-series car, so it doesn't appear to have anything to do with the new cars.
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Frankly speaking, THOSE are the ones that have been around since 1969. My razor-shard mind had suspected them as the likely suspect. They were the ones first used for the extention of the Red Line to Braintree. Richard Nixon was in office as President of the United States back then! And they are NOT going to put door sensers in those cars now, if they didn't already have them installed when they were being made. Shame on the MBTA for keeping these old Relics of the Dinosaur Age around & in use for this long!!! They are close to 50 years in age now! They should've been replaced eons ago!! And like the Orange Line, they'll remain in place until all or most of the new trains are in use. Whichever comes first.

And BTW, whatever happened to the watch person who stood on the platform, making sure that it was safe for the train to move from the station once the doors are closed?!! He or she would wave a flashlight, to signal to the driver that all of the doors are safely closed. Guess it was too expensive to have them on duty! You see? Saving money over the safety of the commuters, as they've done many times before! :unsure:
 
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The investigation is still ongoing. No conclusion has been reached yet, but the driver is still off-duty, pending the outcome.

 
Anecdotally, I've definitely seen the red line in motion when the door guard light (the red light next to the door leaf, both exterior and interior) never extinguishes, and the door appears less than correctly latched. Also, next to no riders actually pays attention to it.
 
Stlin said:
Anecdotally, I've definitely seen the red line in motion when the door guard light (the red light next to the door leaf, both exterior and interior) never extinguishes, and the door appears less than correctly latched. Also, next to no riders actually pays attention to it.
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I've seen how those lights work. Standing on the platform, when a train arrives, just before the doors are opened, the lights are off. They turn red when the doors are opened. Closed, they are off again. I once ran to get inside the train. The doorman had announced on the intercom that I shouldn't do that. The doors were closing, then opened back up. Don't know if it was the doorman or the sensers that triggered the reopening. :unsure:
 
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Pretty sad and the kind of thing that was my darkest fear way back when I started riding the T - although back then the operators would just continously slam the doors on people until they finally closed (usually) while cursing them out over the intercom. For whatever reason, I am actually going to give the driver a benefit of the doubt here. I can certainly imagine a situation where the door censor/alarm mechanism failed and the driver actually thought all the doors were closed, and there are times/stations where the driver can't actually see the doors out the side (either from platform crowding or platform curve itself). If it does turn out they that should have and could phyiscally check, or they had warning that the doors were still open, then, yeah, goes beyond a terrible accident into negligence. I've definetely been on trains where at least one door was just wide open the entire time and broken, and the driver seemingly had no way of knowing.
 
bakgwailo said:
Pretty sad and the kind of thing that was my darkest fear way back when I started riding the T - although back then the operators would just continously slam the doors on people until they finally closed (usually) while cursing them out over the intercom. For whatever reason, I am actually going to give the driver a benefit of the doubt here. I can certainly imagine a situation where the door censor/alarm mechanism failed and the driver actually thought all the doors were closed, and there are times/stations where the driver can't actually see the doors out the side (either from platform crowding or platform curve itself). If it does turn out they that should have and could phyiscally check, or they had warning that the doors were still open, then, yeah, goes beyond a terrible accident into negligence. I've definetely been on trains where at least one door was just wide open the entire time and broken, and the driver seemingly had no way of knowing.
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I think that they need to go back to having a doorman for every 2 cars. That way, if one of them doesn't notice a dangerous thing about to happen, the other one should be able to spot it. Of coarse, that was enacted to save money. It's like they are trying to save money in all the wrong places. :unsure:
 
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