New Red and Orange Line Cars

[HelloBostonHi]

I'm not sure whether this is from the mock-up or one of the actual cars, but it looks to me like we are getting something that I would call an active route display

@HelloBostonHi, what makes you think this requirement was dropped?

And LED route map display refers to something like this:

What we are getting is an LCD route map display. I personally would have liked to see both options exercised since they can serve different purposes.

 

[bakgwailo]

Yeah, I dig the LED route map better myself.

 

[jass]

RE: Bart map

Font size 3 is not what I would call a good job.

 

[The EGE]

The picture doesn't do a good job showing the size of the screen - the map is probably 18 inches square, and all the text is easily readable from across the car.

 

[HenryAlan]

Yeah, I dig the LED route map better myself.

It's all subjective, but when I look at that image, I wonder why anybody would want that, considering how much better current imaging tech can be.

 

[stick n move]

Why didnt they go with pass through cars that add 10% more space per car plus allow crowds to spread out?

 

[whittle]

Why didnt they go with pass through cars that add 10% more space per car plus allow crowds to spread out?

Because American Transit agencies didn't get the memo they exist until after the order was placed.

 

[sneijder]

Why didnt they go with pass through cars that add 10% more space per car plus allow crowds to spread out?

I think to keep the ability to swap out married pairs when parts crap out. Otherwise they'd have to take an entire train out of service.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Why didnt they go with pass through cars that add 10% more space per car plus allow crowds to spread out?

Because Boston isn't New York on overcrowding. Orange's overcrowding largely gets tamed by having a fleet large enough to run advertised headways for the first time since 1987. Red, despite the *slightly* more compelling case for open gangways, has other more pressing problems holding it back: achieving optimal headways through closing car performance and signaling loopholes, getting some load diversion projects like Red-Blue belatedly cued up before downtown chokes to death, and the stations themselves which often (e.g. Park) have such wretched egress layouts that passengers will bunch to the exits in a way that open gangways wouldn't help at all.


Lots of folks like to use open gangways as a rhetorical prop to "America transit teh sux!" but make little effort to actually peg them on a priority order of most achievable infrastructure fixes. It's constrained funding...if they spent more up-front on that car design, they wouldn't have had money for a bunch of the lineside performance optimization. And then people would be pissing and moaning about that. Transit isn't funded in this country in a way where we can have it all, so agencies like the T have to pick their battles.

Personally, I think when the better Orange frequencies debut nobody is going to remember that they didn't order open gangway cars, because there'll be that much more available seats throughout the service day on which to rest a weary arse.

 

[tysmith95]

^Although, if development along the northern section of the orange line continues at its current pace, we could see NYC level crowding by the end of the new cars life.

 

[Arlington]

How 'bout baby steps: open gangway between the cars in the married pair. Good for 3%? 6%?

 

[datadyne007]

How 'bout baby steps: open gangway between the cars in the married pair. Good for 3%? 6%?

This is similar to how Berlin did it on Kleinprofil lines when they first switched to artics (U1, U2, U3) with Type HK.

 

[HelloBostonHi]

How 'bout baby steps: open gangway between the cars in the married pair. Good for 3%? 6%?

It was decided somewhere along the way that the accessibility requirements for open gangways would result in too expensive and difficult to repair cars. If you have an open gangway then you have to have it be wide enough to be fully accessible. Other countries have managed to do it just fine though.

 

[Equilibria]

It was decided somewhere along the way that the accessibility requirements for open gangways would result in too expensive and difficult to repair cars. If you have an open gangway then you have to have it be wide enough to be fully accessible. Other countries have managed to do it just fine though.

Other countries don't have the ADA. Other countries do lots of things with transit vehicles that our regulatory environment won't permit.

 

[HenryAlan]

Other countries don't have the ADA. Other countries do lots of things with transit vehicles that our regulatory environment won't permit.

An important point. The ADA does significantly increase complexity and cost for some choices. That said, I am very glad that the United States has the ADA. It's a reminder that despite all kinds of problems and bad choices, we still do a top level job at certain things compared to just about any other country.

 

[jass]

An important point. The ADA does significantly increase complexity and cost for some choices. That said, I am very glad that the United States has the ADA. It's a reminder that despite all kinds of problems and bad choices, we still do a top level job at certain things compared to just about any other country.

Please. For one, ADA is garbage at helping the blind. Many other countries are worlds ahead. And look at how poor ADA enforcement has been. It passed almost 30 years ago and you cant walk a block without hitting 6 different ADA violations.

 

[millerm277]

Please. For one, ADA is garbage at helping the blind. Many other countries are worlds ahead. And look at how poor ADA enforcement has been. It passed almost 30 years ago and you cant walk a block without hitting 6 different ADA violations.

Name some?

I certainly haven't seen any, and I've been to most of Europe. It's virtually impossible to function very independently as a disabled person in most countries that I've seen there.

For one of many examples, here's how tiny the Paris Metro is if you are disabled: https://www.citymetric.com/sites/default/files/bodyimage_201505/ratp_access.png

Or you can even look just over the border to Montreal, where only about a dozen of ~70 metro stations are accessible.

 

[citylover94]

NYC is an in USA case of a system where the vast majority of stations are inaccessible. ADA hasn't had much of an effect there.

Guardian Aticle

This article has maps comparing systems with each other showing all the stations in the first map and only the accessible stations in the second. The biggest pattern seems to be the size and age of the system the older and larger a system is the less accessible the newer or smaller the more accessible it is.

 

[jass]

Name some?

I certainly haven't seen any, and I've been to most of Europe.

Well theres your problem! Japan excels at building for the blind. Brazil adopted Japanese standards for that and is following suit. I have hear that South Africa does as well, but I have no clue if thats true

Note how there is a yellow tactile strip directing the blind to the stairs.

Heres Sao Paulo, note the blue strip so the blind can be led to the elevator.

This guidance extends to sidewalks as well

Meanwhile, multiple blind people are killed or severely injured in US subway systems every year. There are still subway stations in NYC that dont have any tactile feedback at platform edges.

Also, US guidance on tactile domes is severely lacking. For example, building a sidewalk ramp that directs people into the crosswalk is OPTIONAL which is why most cities build one that sends people into the center of the intersection (diagonal orientation).


As for wheelchairs, you point at Paris lacking wheelchair accessibility, but their bus system is much better at accommodating them.

While US buses accommodate wheelchairs, if youve been on one when someone boards you know its an afterthought. It required drivers t get up, manually flip a rap, manually flip up seats, lock the seats, and make space.

Meanwhile, buses in Paris (and other cities) accommodate 2-3 wheelchairs with zero driver input

Did you know New Jersey, which I believe operates the largest bus fleet in the country has zero (0) low floor buses?

 

[HenryAlan]

So we have two arguments here, one that says the US can't do certain things because our regulations require accessibility. The other argument says that it is those same countries that more easily build infrastructure that actually have better accessibility standards. So, which is it?

Jass has posted some good examples of new systems in other countries with very good accessibility. Are these countries also retrofitting old systems, or is all of that new build? It's a question that matters because it is far less expensive to build a new system correctly from the ground up, than it is to convert an older system. New York is a case study in the challenges of adding elevators to platforms that are barely wider than a wheel chair. My comment above about the ADA was not meant to imply that there is no place with better accessibility than any given place in the United States. Rather, it's a very broad set of standards that do not leave much room for exceptions. Look at all the progress in Boston on a system that is over 100 years old. Compare that to Paris. The ADA is saying that it matters enough that we need to spend money not just going forward but on repairing the mistakes from the past. That's a pretty substantial thing in my opinion.