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Red Line riders need a moment of zen because signal problems have cropped up again
By adamg on Mon, 09/25/2017 - 9:24am
Today's Red Line signal problems are centered on Davis Square. The delays are "minor," the MBTA tells us, although one rider begs to differ:
20+ mins delay with overpacked trains and standing by at every stop is NOT minor.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
News?
Is it news if it happens, to one degree or another, every single weekday?
Today, flaming ball of gas edged over the horizon to illuminate the city... in other news, the Red Line has delays....
It would be great if the T's
It would be great if the T's texts actually meant "minor, moderate, severe". But minor means it could be anywhere from a 2-20 minute delay, and moderate usually means it'll be quicker for me to walk the hour to work, rather than try to take the T 4 stops.
I assume severe is restricted to when the entire system is on fire.
You hit the nail on the head.
If I hear "moderate" or "severe" that means I walk. And I am lucky I can.
I think I've cracked the code
Minor: nobody can get on the next train that pulls in
Moderate: platforms are too crowded and nobody can get OFF the next train that pulls in
Severe: there are fatalities and/or it's bad enough that they have to alert the Governor so he can go frown into a news camera and promise to get to the bottom of this
I wonder what Marty would say?
30 minutes to go from South Station to MIT/Kendall is not minor (never mind the lack of A/C in my car made it much more yucky).
And I got off easy. My colleague arrived to the office around 9:00am and it was much worse for him.
Signal problems seem to be a almost daily occurrence on the Red Line.
Mahty Mahty Mahty
I love that the Mayor of Boston gets the grief on these boards for how the T, specifically the subway runs, yet the T is a state agency, of which Charlie Baker has the reins and the ultimate power and never seems to face grief, save for the winter of 2015, where the problems were mainly in Quincy.
Furthermore, the Red Line, to the best of knowledge runs track through Somerville, Cambridge, Quincy, Braintree, and Milton, yet somehow Broadway (Somerville) Joe, the illustrious Cambridge City Council and the City Manager, Whomever is in power in Quincy whether it is Koch or Phelan or someone else, Joe Sullivan in Braintree (Don't Call us a City, even though we have a mayor), and the Really Trying to Be Wellesley (Milton's) Board of Selectmen somehow never face the ire on these boards that the Mayor for at least the next four years does. Now granted Milton only has the excellently run Mattapan line, so they get a pass, but ridership from the cities north of the Charles make up a huge section of the Red Line's ridership, but somehow it is all Boston City Hall's fault.
Yes, Boston is the driver of the economic agenda and is the largest city in the state, but for the love of god people, please understand who runs what and where in the city and region.
Sorry about your delay today. This wasn't meant as a personal attack, just I wish some people would understand who pulls the levers on certain parts of the region's operations and infrastructure.
Mayor
The mayor just said last week said the T isn't bad. It just makes him look stupid.
Mayor Walsh is wrong, then.
The fact that he said that indicates that he really has little or no clue of what the T is like and what it's like to have to deal with that every single day. It's really pathetic that the people who run the T, plus Charlie Baker, are doing little, if anything to fix the problems. It's really disgusting.
But here's the thing
Since the T is not something the mayor of any of the cities Costello mentions on has charge over, it doesn't matter his view on its reliability (and again, as an Orange Line rider, I concur with his assessment.)
Baker, on the other hand, pointed out the horrible state of the T within 2 months of taking office and appointed a board that is trying to do something about it. That makes Baker the better leader, no?
Not Really
That's the equivalent of telling your kids "see that pile of rocks - I expect dinner to be ready when I get home" without supplying any actual food to cook, and calling it "good parenting".
I disagree
And the weird part is that I don't necessarily agree withal of what Baker is doing, but he knows that costs have to be slashed for the necessary work to get done. How did his predecessor deal with problems with infrastructure? Sure, he purchased some new trains, putting in the order late in his tenure, but what good will those be when the signals, switches, and other track work is failing? Oh, and he had a study done that said that there is a backlog of work that needed to be done, then ignored their findings.
Okay, but you do understand
Okay, but you do understand that Marty has been out there saying ridiculous, tone-deaf things like "The T runs fine" and "it just has occasional problems" and "the media makes it look bad." Even if he's not the one making all of the calls on funding and management, he shouldn't be out there sound so clueless and politician-ese on an issue that affects so many Bostonians; he should be advocating for and pushing for change, not denying problems that are so obvious to so many.
Yes, but he didn't say what people have been saying he said
Here's the quote-
From the perspective of my commute (Orange Line, though with a feeder bus which doesn't count as far as people's complaints go, since the delays on the bus are always traffic based) what he said is right. There is the occasional rough commute, but by and large I can rely on it. Also, as I noted somewhere else, Walsh is making the point that Amazon shouldn't worry about transportation issues in deciding where to put their second headquarters.
Walsh's statement was wrong
Thanks for pulling the quote.
He said most days the T is reliable. (I think we could review Adam's posts and prove that false very quickly.) And then he implied that we would all agree with him that the T is reliable BUT FOR ("It's just that") the media's grumbling about the T performance.
Sorry, no. The media coverage is not why I think the T sucks.
So yes, he's out of touch. And yes, several of us are exaggerating his statement to show just how clueless he in on this issue. Get out of the car, Marty.
Oh no, it's totally reliable
I rely on the red line to have signal and/or switch problems at least three times a week.
With all due respect to your commute...
some other people's commutes have sucked over the summer:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/06/12/red-line-delays-during-even...
Amazon should worry. 50,000 new jobs and our crumbling T that needs infrastructure upgrades?
That's why I noted
I'm an Orange Line commuter.
Take the train (as opposed to track or signal) delays out of the equation (as new trains are on the way, thanks to late second term Deval Patrick) and things aren't too bad. Not great, but akin to what Walsh said.
Also, if Suffolk Downs is the preferred site, look to how often we hear about delays on the Blue Line. It might take a bit, but I'm sure Adam has, at one point since this website began, written about a dead Blue Line train.
I believe...
...s/he is thinking specifically of Marty because of this: http://www.universalhub.com/2017/walsh-cranky-reporters-should-stop-maki...
Yes, thank you.
I should have been clearer.
Thank you, John.
Yes, I agree. I was referring to the Mayor's statements recently made (see link above).
Trust me, I do understand the infrastructure!
Whatever happened to express trains?
I remember that express trains would go from Alewife to Harvard all the time whenever there were delays fouling things up.
How is this hypothetical
How is this hypothetical express train from Alewife to Harvard going to get around the problem at Davis? Just because a train doesn't stop somewhere doesn't mean it can just teleport past it.
It's followed by a less empty
It's followed by a less empty train so people at Davis can get on. I think that's how it worked.
The actual term for the practice is
"skip stop." It's normally employed where trains are closely bunched together and they want to get trains back to "normal" headways (usually to make their performance numbers look good). They will skip a bunch of stops for the first train, and the following train will then make all stops.
In theory, this can actually work well for improving capacity if there is high demand at the originating station, but relatively low demand at the intermediate stations being skipped. It also works best if there is already a relatively frequent headway between trains.. Of course, we all know that these conditions do not exist on the Red Line.
I understand how skip-stop
I understand how skip-stop and express scheduling works.
What none of you seem to be understanding though is that if there is a signal problem or a disabled train or any other issue at Davis, a train cannot pass it, even if it doesn't stop there. There are only 2 tracks on the Red Line.
Doubled my commute
My commute was doubled today due to delays. It was odd, the station never announced any delays and I got on a train within a few min of walking in. The train conductor never announced any ting and my two MBTA apps never had delays to report. At every station we stopped waited, let more people onto a train that was full and pulled away and stopped in the tunnel for a while. 25 min train ride was just under an hours today. That was fun!
How's that car-free Cambridge
How's that car-free Cambridge shaping up for people?
Like this
Cambridge and Somerville are some of the bikiest cities in the US. You pretty much never could rely on a car to get anywhere around town in either of them.
Perhaps that could be a new book title
Zen And The Lack Of Red Line Maintenance
You've been a great audience. Don't forget to tip your waitress
Not a surprise Delays on the
Not a surprise Delays on the Red Line. I need to leave earlier everyday to get on the bus and then the Red Line Always delays on both. Too many people getting on old trains that need repair. If I lived closer to work Id bike for sure