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Unlucky riders were stuck for at least an hour on Orange Line train no longer under power

Insanity at Jackson Square

After an hour on a dead train, a shuttle bus.

A roving UHub photographer found herself in the middle of complete insanity at Jackson Square, where one shuttle bus just wasn't going to cut it for all the people just trying to get somewhere this afternoon after an Orange Line train - one of the new and allegedly more reliable Orange Line trains - croaked on the tracks near Green Street around 2 p.m.

One passenger reported being stuck on the train for an hour, which on the plus side gave her the chance to watch "a dude shoot up opiates and listen to rap music" - the latter via Bluetooth speakers somebody brought out.

Another rider, who also watched the dude self-medicate, liveposted while still stuck on the train:

T workers are walking back and forth along the body of the train like caretakers of purgatory. ...

Just saw my first live opiate injection as passengers find ways to pass the time, i would like to get off this train please. ...

A passenger is now calling on the train inboard radio to the front, asking if we could get some yearlong passes as reimbursement.

The roving UHub photographer adds the train's performance matched the overall performance of the new no-more-slow-zones Orange Line this week:

Not sure why it’s been every single day this week, signal problems or disabled trains, and there was a disabled train this morning, too, that caused delays. The Orange Line is going for some kind of MBTA bingo card this week, or something.

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Comments

I didn't have an outbound commute that wasn't screwed up in one way or the other. The worst was the half hour trip on Monday. A common theme was being stuck outside of Forest Hills because they didn't have a platform for my train. In 1988 they were advertising 4 minute headways during rush hours.

They have fixed the tracks, and nothing else.

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23

I think I wrote this before but here is a piece of unsolicited advice. Skip the orange line next time.

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I was at North Station and saw an Orange Line train standing still. A Green Line train pulled alongside so I hoped on as both work for me.
But then we sat on the tracks between stations for about 10 min.
Sometimes you just can’t win.

I did, however, blow right through the hellish exit gates getting off the commuter rail without showing a ticket.

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Yay! I'm in a Uhub picture

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33

Congratulations!

and walk out through the tunnels?

20 minutes would be too short. 4 hours would be long enough to justify it. Not sure where the boundary lies... but 1 hour is definitely somewhere in the vicinity.

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12

Yo this ALL wrong!! All forms of transportation suck in and around Boston more ever before in all my 36 years of living here.

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15

A few months before the conversion to the then new Southwest Corridor, I was stuck on a train outside Dudley station for the better part of an hour at morning rush hour because of a power outage. There were shuttle buses running but that was no help to us above the ground.

(The good news was the train didn't catch fire...)

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1. Is this a legacy issue of the CCP MA’s incomplete cars? (I find these imports demoralizing.)

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2023/06/15/report-the-mbtas-subwa...

(I woulda linked to the Herald, but there’s a paywall. I remember when the Phoenix was free, the Herald was a quarter and the upscale Globe was 50¢ That was not too long ago.)

2. I get that it’s wrong to work on personal vehicles during downtime (Cabot Yard Red Line) on the taxpayer dime, I wouldn’t do a thing like that, but was firing them a net positive? Why was progressive discipline not used? Or, was it? Was it a pretext?

2b) Did the firings and suspensions improve manageability, performance and morale, or did firing the workers degrade the MBTA’s ability to serve the citizens and guests of the Commonwealth?

(Do MBTA maintenance workers move from yard to yard? How do MBTA employees feel about the Cabot Yard incident?)

Does Boston and surrounds need a sleek, low footprint monorail?

The track could bend?

Us brain dead slobs?!

My UHub friend!

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Imagine this happening on Black Friday when you're loaded down with shopping bags from Downton Crossing. A quadruple nightmare in the afternoon.