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It's not just the trains that burst into flames, the tracks that crack, the decades of deferred maintenance
By adamg on Fri, 12/15/2023 - 12:02pm
Wendover Productions takes a look at the state of the T and, in addition to the stuff we all know about, gets into issues such as the "radial" nature of our subway lines (no crosstown service to allow for alternate service during shutdowns, no service to help people get around if they're not going downtown).
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Comments
This is excellent.
.
Uninformed drivel
There is basically no information in this other than slick production value.
Yes, it's a radial system. As are … most systems. London and Paris are more orbital systems, but they're also slightly larger cities. Buses don't exist in this video, a trip from Cambridge to Somerville requires going to Park and transferring. (Not that the buses are great, but they exist.) And the urban ring, a solution desperately in search of a problem … if you are going to spend 10 billion dollars on a subway build tunnels between North and South Stations. Plus the Urban Ring as imagined by the T wouldn't really help a trip from Harvard to Winter Hill, which would require an extra transfer to a bus (or whatever) between Kendall and East Somerville and taking the train to Davis and waiting for an 89 would still be faster.
And then the mumbojumbo about how the real problem is that too much attention has been paid by the board to Commuter Rail which makes it pretty clear this guy has never set foot in Massachusetts.
Then there's just the laughable stuff. The Orange Line running from "North Boston" to Forest Hills. (Is that like 10 miles west of Boston?) The "low income" map which shows low income areas centered:
Quincy is "likely to be substantially reliant on Commuter Rail" instead of the Red Line. (I mean, sure, maybe after 8 years of Bakerist slow zones.) Lynn being on the Commuter Rail system "exclusively" as if there isn't a bus garage there.
Then: "The Commuter Rail is only 10% of ridership; subway ridership is half." Yeah, and the other 40% ride unicorns, I guess? "While it's hard to prove this board is disproportionately focusing resources on the Commuter Rail it's a lot less hard to believe." Sure, if you've never waited two hours for a train or tried to get a train for the past year in, IDK, Lynn.
Nothing about the long-term structural issues at the T. Nothing about the Baker admin not doing any paperwork for 8 years. Debt restructuring? Operating practices? Ridiculous bus garage costs (oh, wait, buses don't exist). Look, 26 minutes isn't enough time to really explore how messed up the T is, but you could at least get some information right.
This is just well-produced, ill-informed clickbait.
By the way: there is a way to help people get around when the subway is shut down, which is the Commuter Rail system he shits all over. Will the T run a shuttle train from Porter to North Station every 30 minutes when the Red Line is closed past Kendall? That's basically what London and Paris (and Berlin) have, a separate, redundant system overlaid. Nah, just complain that the T hasn't built a duplicate subway system from Cambridge to Somerville.
"North Boston"
Is also where the FBI report on the mafia was located Boston in the 70's.
Save for the lack of disclosure that the Boston FBI office was already running their own legion of killers.
Also, just went North Station to Back Bay and Copley to Park - No issues. The T is coming back baby!
Good points
As long as we're piling on: The A in "MBTA" doesn't stand for "agency" and Quincy isn't a town.
I wouldn't consider buses or
I wouldn't consider buses or Commuter Rail to be an adequate substitute for a well-running subway system.
They really are pretty clueless
They make a big deal at the start of the video about how the MBTA was created to consolidate transit among Boston and 77 other cities and towns -- and yet the reason for that consolidation was the decision of the railroads to cut loss-making passenger service in the late 1950s and 1960s. Commuter rail service was one of the key drivers for creating the MBTA; the MTA, which it replaced, already included every community with subway service today except Quincy & Braintree. Many of those additional cities and towns only get commuter rail service.
And complaining about a radial structure? NYC has one crosstown line in the outer boroughs. The Washington Metro, CTA, SEPTA, MARTA, etc. are all radial because historically public transit has been focused on connecting people to jobs in cities.
In a period where the subway/green line and bus service has been a daily shit show, the commuter rail has been surprisingly the most reliable.
...the Insterstate Highways
...the Insterstate Highways Act of 1956 and bringing I-93 through the middle of the city...
The elevated Central Artery predates the Interstate designation by a couple of years (and yes, it was congested as soon as they built it)
He doesn't get to the
He doesn't get to the important preparedness, flexibility and response-time issues.
Think! What would happen here if a bull escaped from a slaughterhouse and walked in along train tracks for at least 1 & 1/2 miles to a commuter station that's 20 feet above the street?
It took those slackers at Amtrak 45 minutes to restore service!!!
I’m hoping people don’t miss the point
The MBTA is the most dangerous right now, but it inherited the crown- from WMATA, which I kept on mentioning was in worse shape that the T was 5 years ago and at the time was in worst shape than the T is in now- and will pass the crown on to another system that has skimped on maintenance down the road.
Point 1- ignore upkeep at you own peril. I get mailers from the AARP yet am younger than some of the Red Line cars. Eng talks a good game about this, but so did his predecessors.
Point 2- mass transit needs to evolve into something other than a commuting mode. That’s a expensive task.
And yes, there were faults in the video- people in Quincy take the Red Line over the commuter rail, for schedule and cost reasons, and the T has a system of buses that are more efficient to get between Central Square Cambridge and Somerville.