Norval Elliot
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Bad news from MassLive: MBTA's new Orange Line subway cars remain out of serviceGreat article! I hope that they remain fixed afterwards.
New Red and Orange Line Cars
- Thread starter bostoneophyte
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MBTA’s new Orange Line subway cars remain out of service
MBTA spokeswoman Lisa Battiston said Tuesday that tests are ongoing to solve an issue with pads that sit between the train cars and their wheel assemblies. The cars were assembled by CRRC MA in Springfield.
www.masslive.com
Not much new information. People from the T sound optimistic however they refuse to give a timeline.
F-Line to Dudley
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They don't have to give a timeline. This is all warrantied work on a first-year rollout; if CRRC is living up to the terms of its contract at deploying the necessary fixes it's all "on-time" whether you're seeing the new cars out in revenue service or not.MBTA’s new Orange Line subway cars remain out of service
MBTA spokeswoman Lisa Battiston said Tuesday that tests are ongoing to solve an issue with pads that sit between the train cars and their wheel assemblies. The cars were assembled by CRRC MA in Springfield.
Not much new information. People from the T sound optimistic however they refuse to give a timeline.
Once more: this has happened with EVERY new-gen fleet purchase since the beginning of time. It's only news at this point for those who can't see past short attention-span theatre.
Agree. Although this would not be getting so much attention if the current cars weren't in a state of disrepair.
ssresident
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Now 1404 is showing as active, been that way since about noon today.
HenryAlan
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Equilibria
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Not that they didn't want the hype, but putting the trains in service was going to generate it regardless. The Blue Line and Type 8 debuts came before social media and before the transit-obsessed Globe of 2020.
People need to learn to be patient more than the T needs to learn to bury good news.
Probably just at the Wellington yard
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Assuming the Orange problem is the height adjustment air cushion, how common is such tech? (The British seem to not care how level trains are with platforms even if they've gone to the trouble of making the station step free)
I agree with some of that. But "people need to learn to be patient"????? How about people need to be better informed by the T?
I'm a big fan of the T, but honestly, this one is on them. Which party are the professionals and which are the unknowing masses (you know, the millions of folks NOT spending hours per day here on our 'nerd forum')? How about the MBTA media and public relations staff actually inform the public???? Managing public expectations is a good thing.
The Durgin Park waitress attitude doesn't work in today's world. When F-Line writes "It's only news at this point for those who can't see past short attention-span theatre." it obviously gets a chuckle here in the club. But there are people who have other lives and skills we could never be expected to learn overnight out there and they just want to get to work and home in some degree of comfort and timeliness. The future belongs to the metropolitan areas who understand and honor that.
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Equilibria
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They've informed the public what they need to know to get home. The new train doesn't get you home quicker, and it only adds a marginal degree of comfort. The public had no need to know that the new trains are having the typical growing pains, and if the reporters at the Globe felt the need to inform them, they should have done the research to find out that this sort of thing is normal. They are a tabloid when it comes to the T, so they didn't bother.
The T has no obligation to shout from the rooftops "HEY, YOU KNOW THOSE NEW TRAINS YOU ALL INFLUENCERED YOURSELVES ON IN OCTOBER? THEY'RE BROKEN!!!" when it doesn't impact service, and they're typically pretty good at announcing and updating every incident that does on Twitter.
“We were here before your grandfather, now eat your boiled dinner!”
F-Line to Dudley
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It's in every HRT car on the planet, pretty much. The air ballast is part of the hydraulic system and serves to smooth out the ride from excessive vibration, in addition to self-regulating the level boarding interface with the platforms. Very low-tech, and generic as it comes. If there's issues with it it's a fit/finish issue with the hydraulics design in the cars with parts that may be improperly fitted. The "unusual noise" reported earlier when the cars were in service can be a tell that there's something off-kilter and the ballast isn't damping a vibration that it should be (either because it's a particular vibration that shouldn't be there or the ballast just isn't wearing correctly).
Minor issue, but can be a needle-in-haystack thing to isolate a definitive cause because there's a whole cacophony of vibrations underneath smothered by the ballast. But again...things like this have paused rollouts on every new-gen procurement of cars since the dawn of time, so this is as mundane and routine as teething a new make gets. Nothing to get excited about or live and die by every Tweet of non-news for.
Equilibria
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Is your point that the public is too busy to become experts or isn't it? I agree with you that not everyone will be an expert. The problem is that the Globe, B&T, etc. make people think they're experts by feeding them partial information designed to stoke resentment of the agency to get clicks. If all you want is dinner, then eat the boiled dinner. If you want to know why it wasn't barbecue, ask. What we have here is your jealous aunt whispering in your ear "did you ever wonder why your parents don't make you prime rib? it's because they hate you".
If your parents never communicate with you and you only eat dinner alone with your jealous aunt and have no one else to speak with, then yes, you are going to be misinformed.
'Oh no!! The Globe and Banker and Tradesmen are saying nasty things about the T, which has no means to answer that!!! It's so unfair that the T has absolutely no method of carrying its own informational messages to its captive passengers who wait at T stations and ride in ENCLOSED T VEHICLES!!!!!!!'
Ya know, I'm finally coming around to understanding that, perhaps, your last 2 posts on this subject are simply a clever parody of 1953 Boston Attitude. If so, then well done sir/madam!!! Well done!!!
But if not.......whew!
Back in the real world, the T recently hired Danny Levy in the newly established role of Chief Customer Officer and she has publicly acknowledged the entrenched mountains to climb to bring the T's customer service/mindset away from the Mayor Curley Administration and into the 21st century, despite protestations from the parody post above.
Q&A with MBTA's Chief Customer Officer Danny Levy
Prior to joining the MBTA last year, Levy served as chief marking officer for the Massachusetts Port Authority, where she headed up a 10-person department at the $800 million agency.
- Do what we do best: Care for our customers.
- Eliminate institutional thinking and innovate.
- Continuously fix and standardize processes and procedures.
- Develop a consistent, repeatable, and impactful communications and engagement strategy.........
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statler
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"Although we are all excited about the new trains going into revenue service we want to remind our riders that while we have done extensive testing on these new trains, certain performance issues may require us to remove the new sets for extended periods of time."
Maybe they did put out a statement like this at one point but I don't think it was ever clearly communicated.
Maybe they did put out a statement like this at one point but I don't think it was ever clearly communicated.
Equilibria
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I agree that such a statement would have been a good idea.
If your parents never communicate with you and you only eat dinner alone with your jealous aunt and have no one else to speak with, then yes, you are going to be misinformed.
'Oh no!! The Globe and Banker and Tradesmen are saying nasty things about the T, which has no means to answer that!!! It's so unfair that the T has absolutely no method of carrying its own informational messages to its captive passengers who wait at T stations and ride in ENCLOSED T VEHICLES!!!!!!!'
Ya know, I'm finally coming around to understanding that, perhaps, your last 2 posts on this subject are simply a clever parody of 1953 Boston Attitude. If so, then well done sir/madam!!! Well done!!!
But if not.......whew!
I'm still a bit confused on whether you believe that the harried customers of the T are too busy/distracted to want to get into the weeds. If they are, then the T is communicating the right way by focusing on things that will actually impact their commutes. If they aren't (and they want to be informed about more of the details) then I believe that those members of the public should avail themselves of the resources provided by the T and others that provide context for challenges, and they should be patient. Thanks to the FMCB and the efforts at the T you cited yourself, there's more of that information out there than ever before. The T puts links to it on digital signs and on social media.
This isn't complicated, so which is it?
You literally complained that the Globe and B&T are doing a disservice stoking passenger resentment and (proactively) disseminating selective information (thus misinforming). If the T is NOT proactively countering that (when they literally own the home field with its passengers!), then the problem is not just the Globe and B&T because the T has forfeited that subject.
What F-Line and others wrote above about this being historically quite NORMAL for new equipment could easily be communicated to the public. It should not be a "problem" (your words) that the Globe and B&Tare slanting the issue.
It seems you are ok with the T sitting back and allowing that which you called a "problem".
"...... The problem is that the Globe, B&T, etc. make people think they're experts by feeding them partial information designed to stoke resentment of the agency to get clicks. If all you want is dinner, then eat the boiled dinner. If you want to know why it wasn't barbecue, ask....."
Why should passengers more easily be fed selective information designed to stoke resentment, but have to then do research to correct what they are given? What's that saying about ' a lie goes around the world 3 times before the truth can get across the street'? Passengers aren't fact checkers. Why should the agenda-drivers at the Globe and B&T have an uneven playing field advantage? The T has taxpayer paid professionals specifically for public education/relations. If they cannot do their job (when they literally own the land, billboards, tv screens, etc. where their customers stand), then the T deserves the misinformed resentment.
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Equilibria
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The question is what the priority is for the PR folks. I agree that they should be open with good, useful information if the Globe or B&T call them for comment, but I don't think the agency is well-served by engaging in a tit-for-tat argument on social media.
"You've been hearing a lot about these cars being out of service lately, here are the facts..." doesn't play very well with a public whipped up into a "crisis" frenzy. Better to focus on testing the fix. FWIW, the new train was queued up to leave the yard again just now, so they're working on it.