Platform Screen Doors

massmotorist

massmotorist

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One thing that never seems to be even discussed for the MBTA is platform screen doors. To me this would be a relatively inexpensive way of improving the experience of T customers, not to mention safety and security, and dampening some of the screeching noise coming from the tracks.

And once you have them in place, you can think about modernizing the stations a bit more, such as adding climate control.

This is what it could look like:

MTR_NAC_%2820%29.JPG
 
If they were doing it from scratch then it's a lot easier. They need to upgrade the control systems to be more precise. They need to work out a way to minimize the chance of doors getting stuck. And they need to redesign the ventilation for the tunnels, which currently depend on pushing air through and out the stations.

It would be nice, and also fully automated operation, which lowers operating costs considerably while providing more convenient service. Alas, I have little hope it will ever happen here.
 
They should also make the cars universal across Blue/Red/Orange. That's the Southwest Airlines model and it's been proven to cut maintenance, training, procurement, and all kinds of costs across the board. Might take some work to change the stations or tunnels but I think it'd be worth it. Then again I have no idea how different the dimensions of the cars are.
 
Procuring all new rolling stock to streamline Red/Orange/Blue operations and retrofitting dozens of stations for platform screen doors would be a massive undertaking.

While I think it is possible to have the Red and Orange use the same rolling stock, I'm pretty sure the Blue is out of the question with the tunnels originally built for trolley operations a la the Green Line. Replacing current Orange Line stock alone is on the order of a billion or two. I suppose they could move towards one manufacturer to provide a 'wide profile' rolling stock for Red and Orange with a modified 'narrow profile' one for the Blue.

As for platform screen doors, I'm not sure I would classify them as "relatively inexpensive". Retrofitting existing stations would cost a lot of money and I'm not sure it would be worth the investment in Boston at this point. Off the top of my head, the only place I know that is retrofitting certain lines with PSDs is Paris - and even then, that is because they are working towards driver-less operations and certain stations are dangerously crowded at peak times. As bad as certain stations can get (Park Street...) I don't think Boston is quite there yet.
 
Orange and Blue could conceivably share stock, as their tunnels were built for streetcar loading gauges. The Red Line was rapid transit from the start, it is significantly larger. The cost of retrofitting the Washington Street and East Boston tunnels would be astronomical. It's not going to happen.

What they should do is follow F-line's suggestions and make some small modifications to Boylston and Kenmore to accommodate off-the-shelf streetcar designs like the one Kinki produces.
 
This subject has come up repeatedly. And every time, I point out that the Red Line doesn't have standardized locations for its doors. The 1800 series cars have four doors, while older cars have three.
 
Ron Newman said:
This subject has come up repeatedly. And every time, I point out that the Red Line doesn't have standardized locations for its doors. The 1800 series cars have four doors, while older cars have three.
Click to expand...

But that's the problem. It seems like nothing MBTA-related is off-the-shelf or standardized. So you have to re-invent the wheel every time you procure new cars, creating custom stuff that's much more expensive and less reliable than off-the-shelf stuff. This is why we can't have nice things.

When they do procure new Red Line cars, they should replace them all at once. It'd cost more up front, but I bet it'd save in the long run on maintenance costs.

BTW, I'm not suggesting retrofitting all the lines with platform doors, just the busy downtown ones at first. Stations that are open-air (Blue Line, most of the Green Line), you'd never even bother. The main benefit to me would be the potential for climate control.
 
My understanding is that when the MBTA first considered procuring the 1800 (latest series) Red Line cars, they first did user surveys asking whether riders would prefer the new cars have (a) more seats, or (b) more doors. The riders chose (b).

The 1400 series needed replacing at that time, but the later 1500-1600-1700 series did not.
 
Japan is testing flexible Plaftorm Screen Doors for its regional Rail stations if successful they will try it on their subways then we could see this pop up in cities like Boston and NY were the Rolling stock varies...
 
Theyre going to need this within the next few years at stations like Kendall and Park which have very narrow platforms and very large crowds. Maybe south stations too.

Easy enough to do once the older 3 door models get retired.


There are two choices, the one shown in the OP which allows for A/C in stations and helps massively with noise, or a "crowd protection" ghetto model like this.

subway-gates-gray.jpg



Much cheaper, but only helps saving people from falling into the tracks.



besides saving lives, noise, climate control etc, platform doors also save time and money by preventing track fires caused by garbage
 
I'm not sure our subway platforms (Park & DTX excepted) are really dangerously crowded enough to merit the expense. This works in Asia where sardine-can is the norm, and NYC is right to experiment with it...but, really, do we have that big a safety hazard here over the norm? Especially when considering that old stations are much harder to retrofit with this than new (like the 2nd Ave. Subway stations that are getting them from Day 1).

I think the safety angle is sufficiently enhanced by the security cam era, which inevitably can lead to some sort of trip sensor that auto-stops an approaching train if somebody falls completely into the track area. That's cheap to implement on top of all the usual security cam frills on the platform. And the garbage situation is much better than it was years ago. Litter laws are enforced more in the subway, the bins are more plentiful, they're emptied more frequently, and the bins are physically more robust and better-designed to contain garbage. That's Homeland Security money doing its job. I know the T's maint staff sometimes does a crappy job picking up trash on Red and Orange downtown where there's a little bit of wind tunnel effect between Park-DTX, DTX-State...that's on them. But compared to when the Metro first debuted there's a lot fewer people bringing papers onto the trains. This little thing called the iPhone has put quite the dent in the dead trees newsprint biz.

As for dwell times and crowded platforms...well, not to sound like a broken record: CBTC signaling! Get those headways down to 3 minutes at rush and you'll never have an overcrowded Red platform at Park. The T is simply not a sardine-can subway in the absence of catastrophic delays (and...want fewer catastrophic delays, how 'bout tackling that repair backlog?). We simply don't have the volumes of people as Midtown Manhattan or Tokyo...the platform comfort upside isn't nearly the same when it's relatively rare to be standing toe-to-toe.



FWIW...the revised RL door configuration is going to be universal sooner or later. The new cars, if ever ordered, will match the 01800's setup. And since they'll be a small, isolated minority of the fleet after the 01500/01600's are retired, it's pretty unlikely the ongoing-rehabbed 01700 cars are going to last >12 more years. Parts supply alone will dictate that they'll have less running time post-rebuild than their more numerous predecessors did. The nonstandard mix of door configs is not going to be nonstandard forever.
 
Yeah, there are just so many other things that are higher priority and would do far more to increase efficiencies/safety than platform screen doors. It shouldn't even be on the MBTA's radar unless they're secretly planning to debut an entirely new line.
 
I just feel like park, by where the stairs are, can get dangerously crowded because everyone bunches there.
 
Well, we have a hundred+ years of data to mine to determine if it is unsafe.
 
statler said:
Well, we have a hundred+ years of data to mine to determine if it is unsafe.
Click to expand...

Except isnt ridership now at an all time high?

And it seems like every month we get a video of someone falling on the tracks
 
Crowding that Boston experiences would be better mitigated by decreasing headways between trains through the use of CBTC. Only once we start approaching ridership and congestion levels of Paris or Tokyo do I think we start talking about retrofitting existing stations with PSDs.
 
You think its cheaper to get the red line running at 3 minutes than putting platform doors at park?
 
Probably not cheaper if we only consider it as crowd mitigation. But when Upton add I all the other benefits, CBTC is an investment with a far more useful result than gained by adding screens.
 
jass said:
Except isnt ridership now at an all time high?

And it seems like every month we get a video of someone falling on the tracks
Click to expand...

We get video of folks falling on tracks because there's video cams everywhere. The rate of people falling on tracks hasn't changed. The track area is much safer than it used to be because it's always being monitored.


It's all relative on ridership. "All-time high" on the T--the whole T--still pales in comparison to the Lexington Ave. line--one NYC subway line--on any given day of the week. We are orders of magnitude off scale from bona fide sardine-can transit.
 
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