Green Line picks up where it left off; Red Line joins in

By adamg on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 7:40am

Dead train at Boylston means delays on all trains outbound from Park. At 7:47 a.m., Vilma Torres reported:

I've been stuck btween park st & boylston for over 30 mins.

A cranky Red Line didn't want to be left out. Joe Pitha tweeted around 7:40 a.m.:

Stuck just outside of Park because of disabled train. So close to the station I want to ask the motorman to open the door and let me walk.

Another Red Line commuter, stuck on a train somewhat north of downtown, reports via e-mail that the T has yet to start announcing the delays, but is continuing to play Rachel Kaprelian's warnings about texting and driving.

Meanwhile, speaking of the Lord of the Flies Local on the Worcester Line last night, Channel 5 reports the breaking news out of Worcester this morning: A train left on time.

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Comments

Gosh...

By Trixie on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 10:57am.

And to think that I even *considered* taking both the green or red line this morning prior to turning my car on this morning is astonishing. I definitely made the right decision by sitting in traffic this morning.

For once, the Green Line dispatcher did the right thing.

By roadman on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 12:17pm.

This was last night about 5:50, when they were dealing with a disabled train westbound between Government Center and Park Street that ended up having to be pushed into Park Street by a following train.

Normally, when they have a backup due to a problem like this, they short turn most of the eastbound trains at Park Street to "maintain schedule" (note - the employees' schedules, not the train schedule). However, this time, the dispatcher made the decision to send all eastbound trains past Park Street and Government Center and turned them at North Station and Lechmere instead.

Apart from the slightly larger crowds on the platforms, and the station announcements, a causal observer probably wouldn't have realized there was actually a disruption in service.

Now if management could just figure out that this is the way they should be running the trains during a normal rush hour, it would be a huge win for the Green Line passengers.

I hope I'm wrong about this, but...

By issacg on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 2:02pm.

I'm sorry to say this again, but it really is going to take the death of a lot of people in a horriffic accident to get an appropriate amount of resources devoted to the maintenance of the public transit infrastructure around here.

Clearly the economic loss brought on by the staggering T-induced decrease in productivity of thousands of people every day is not enough.

indeed

By anon on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 4:41pm.

Seriously, what is it going to take for the state to fund the T for real? It's the idiotically short-sighted forward funding and the $3b of state debt that brought the T to its crushing levels of debt, after all, and it's time the state took responsibility for that.

I mean, it wasn't enough that D'Alessandro's report found the Red Line had some seriously unsafe maintenance issues, it isn't enough that our 40 year old trains are regularly disabled by snow, and it isn't enough that the MBTA has basically exhausted all of its rainy day funds and land holdings... I mean, the T administration is doing a great job with what it has (see the Orange Line video from a few days ago). But the state need to improve the debt situation pronto.

Can we just put bumpers on

By J on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 3:58pm.

Can we just put bumpers on all the trains so that being disabled is no longer an excuse?

If Mr type 7 is dead between boylston and park, no worries, the next train is only 45 seconds away, and just need to hold steady and bump it along. If someone is taking too long to load at a station, the schedule will be kept, because the next train will simply shove it out of the way.