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Green Line riders sighing once more: Another new trolley with a broken door
By adamg on Sun, 02/09/2020 - 1:57pm
Jonathan Berk was among the riders inconvenienced at Copley Square around 11:40 a.m. when yet another one of the brand-spanking new Green Line trolleys had to be taken out of service because one of its doors broke. He adds it wasn't just Green Line regulars who were put out - there were a lot of Orange Line riders trying to use the Green Line as a downtown replacement due to it being shut for repairs this weekend.
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Comments
Given all the great Boston bands
What's up with the T's obsession with The Doors?
Maybe it's because
People Are Strange?
Riders in the Storm
.
Until the Boeing LRVs arrived on the property
every type of enclosed Boston Elevated Railway and MTA streetcar had folding doors, including the nationally-designed PCC cars that were adopted by numerous streetcar lines in the country. The Boeing LRVs originally had sliding doors, but were subsequently changed to folding doors because the sliding doors (800 parts per pair of doors) were so unreliable.
The Type 7s and Type 8s have folding doors. With the exception of periodic bridge plate problems with the doors on the Type 8s, in general the folding doors are reliable.
So who thought it was a good idea to either a) specify that sliding doors be used on the Type 9s or b) failed to specify the type of doors to be furnished on the Type 9s?
In the long run, they want to
In the long run, they want to raise the platforms again so wheelchair passengers can board without having to use a bridgeplate/ramp. Folding doors won't work with a platform the same height as the floor. The future Type 10s will also have sliding doors.
The whole point of low floor cars is that
you don't need raised platforms. As for the proposed Type 10s, the concept of a behemoth car with multiple articulation points (which have been the Achilles heel of every LRV the MBTA has ordered) will prove to be a gigantic failure. Instead of taking a "futuristic" approach to the Green Line, perhaps we should stick to concepts that have worked for decades. Like ordering cars of manageable length and running short trains most of the day and coupling them into longer trains during rush hour.
You do need raised platforms
You do need raised platforms with low-floor cars, 8 inches higher than rail height, so that the slope of the bridgeplate/ramp is not too steep and meets ADA standards. There are still many surface Green Line stops that have not had the platofrm height raised at all, cannot be used by a wheelchair even on a low-floor cae, and do not meet ADA. The long term goal is to raise the platforms several more inches (even those that meet ADA today) so that a wheelchair could roll onto the car without the use of a ramp (such as on the Red, Orange, and Blue lines). Folding doors would strike the raised platform when opening (the barley clear a few of the 8-inch raised platforms now).
When I first saw a photo of these cars
The first thing I thought about were the Boeing doors.
Back when the Kinkysharo cars were coming on, I was talking to the librarian at the State Transportation Library. He keyed in on the doors and the issues they were having with the Boeings. Interesting that when they rehabbed the Boeings midlife, they installed folding doors.
Others might note the need for non-folding doors, but for some of us, this is a repeat of an old problem.
Sliding Doors
After decades of experience with folding door PCC cars, and before the sliding door Boeing LRVs were designed, the MBTA designed new cars of its own, the Type 6, with sliding doors! No Type 6s were built because the MBTA had to buy the to-be national standard Boeings in order to get federal funding. It is likely that the Boeing's designers even considered Type 6 features when satisfying different cities' needs in a new streetcar. Oh, by the way the Boston Elevated Railway (which became the MBTA) had several hundred sliding door streetcars of their own designs in use back in the early 20th century.
They don't make things they
They don't make things they used to! Even the new sneakers I just bought are already falling apart. However, my kitchen blender which was handed down from my grandmother is 40 years old and still kicks ass.
are open doors so bad
In Bombay the trains have doors that remain open when the train is moving. Each day, a couple of people fall/lean out of the doors and are killed, but other than that, it works fine.