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Red Line halted as third rail catches fire at Broadway
By adamg on Sat, 08/31/2013 - 10:12pm
Update, Sunday morning: Bustitution continues as workers repair the third-rail damage at Broadway.
The Boston Fire Department ordered the Red Line shut in both directions around 10:05 p.m. as the station filled with smoke from a third-rail fire.
Firefighters initially responded to the Gillette complex, where the smoke was first detected.
The T did not shut the power off to allow firefighters onto the tracks until 10:45 p.m., first to let a train in the tunnel between Broadway and South Station get to the South Station, then because for some reason workers couldn't shut the power remotely and had to do it by hand at the station.
Once that happened, firefighters quickly knocked the fire down, although the third rail continued to smolder.
Crowds of frustrated riders quickly grew outside Red Line stations as the T tried to assemble a convoy of shuttle buses for the rest of the night.
Firefighters finally left the station around midnight.
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Comments
11:30 update
At Park St. Total clusterfxxx. Been here for 45 minutes. 4 busses have gone by. That's all. Crowd just keeps getting bigger
Shuttle bus = Sardine can
I bet many have decided to take a cab by that point. Of course, what are the odds of getting a cab that late?
Cabs
Infrastructure and the cause of the fire aside, the scary thing was the total lack of planning and/or execution of a back up plan when the fire did occur. I arrived at DTX, expecting to connect with the Red Line. The message boards and the loudspeaker announcements informed us of the problem and told us there was a shuttle bus from Park to JFK. There were no T employees to be found. Does the shuttle stop at DTX or any other station before JFK? Do we have to walk to Park St? Who knew? There was no one to answer questions inside or outside the station.
I decided to walk to Park St. Huge crowd, only 2 T employees, one woman posted on the street attempting to direct the bus traffic for the handful of busses that arrived, and one man on the other side of the street watching. A Transit Police car was parked with its blue flashers on. The woman was able to answer some questions from the crowd near her but since the crowd stretched down the street, at the other end of the crowd, you could not see or hear her.
When the occasional bus would arrive, the route sign said "no service" and the bus would stop, doors closed, and wait for 5-10 minutes while people crowded around the doors. Then the bus would drive down the street, leaving everyone who thought they were about to board behind it, and enabling a different group to board.
So a total lack of employees, communication poor to none, and not nearly enough busses. And the T website reported "minor problem" and did not mention shuttle busses through it all.
WTF?
re: Cabs
I just posted this, originally intending to also talk about the numerous cabs that went by, all full. But I was interrupted while typing my post, and didn't edit it before I posted. Thus the title that had nothing to do with the posting.
Shuttle bus cat-and-mouse game
"When the occasional bus would arrive, the route sign said "no service" and the bus would stop, doors closed, and wait for 5-10 minutes while people crowded around the doors. Then the bus would drive down the street, leaving everyone who thought they were about to board behind it, and enabling a different group to board."
The T always plays this bizarre cat-and-mouse game whenever there is a shuttle bus emergency. No one ever explains why. All T employees always act like they are completely taken by surprise and without information anytime an emergency arises.
T bus drivers should be
T bus drivers should be trained for emergency subway shuttle routes.
If that isn't possible, every T bus should have a 3-ring binder with shuttle directions and exact stop locations.
Buses
Bus plural is buses, not busses. wtf.
Required equipment for language sticklers:
A dictionary.
Both "buses" and "busses" are acceptable plurals of "bus". You'd know that if you were properly equipped.
Why MBTA communication was bad
Because the employees have no incentive to try. If your contract makes it difficult or impossible for you to get fired, and you have no personal pride that would force you to do your very best work and serve customers, then for what other reason would you possibly care?
I'm still waiting for somebody to explain to me why we guarantee the employment of these people. Is somebody telling me with a straight face that T workers are doing jobs that nobody currently looking for work can or will do?
MBTA lies
The MBTA posted an alert at 10:19PM about "minor problems between DTX and Andrew". They just rode with that lie all night long. Never changed the message , still there as of 1:21 AM. Lying or incompetent. You be the judge.
re: MBTA lies
I see the T website finally got around to admitting they had a real problem and shuttle busses at 3:31 AM. How timely!
1:15AM, Just got home
I wound up on Park Street at about 10:05PM to a massive crowd of people. The whole thing was handled pretty poorly, but I can't tell if that was from a lack of clear planning or on-hand personnel. Everyone was standing outside the entrances watching the few shuttle buses that came pass right by to further down in front of St Paul's cathedral -- a place where no one was told to wait for them at. The more observant of us caught on and moved toward the "platform" area, but the tension in the air from people desperately trying to get on the bus made many of us just want to hold back for fear of getting punched in the face for boarding supremacy. If you ever wanted to know what it must have felt like waiting to get on a lifeboat on the sinking Titanic, this'd have probably been pretty close.
There was a lot of outraged screaming at people who were given privilege to get on the bus first (disabled, children, etc,) and to the MBTA woman who had the unfortunate task of flagging the shuttle buses down. Still, the buses constantly pulled up in random places along the stretch, so some of us who were patiently next in "line" was suddenly last in line and had to wait for another bus. I ended up getting on a bus by sheer dumb luck at about 12:20AM, got to North Quincy for about 1:05AM.
The unfortunate part about all this is that I have absolutely no confidence that it won't happen again and be coordinated better when it does. I sit here knowing that there's probably STILL a good sized crowd outside of Park Street as of this moment.
The T has always been pretty
The T has always been pretty fucked-up, but I have never seen so many service stoppages as I have since Scott has taken over. Is there any website that is tracking these major incidents?
What do you expect? She was
What do you expect? She was such a royal screw up in Atlanta they wanted to get rid of her and Deval was dumb enough to do someone a favor and warehouse her here. Look at how high profile, hands on, and personally responsible Daniel Grabauskas and Richard Davey were in comparison. Ms. Scott might as well be invisible.
Mssrs. Grabauskas and Davey
I would bring back Mr. Grabauskas or Mr. Davey in a heartbeat (and I acknowledge that I have been critical of Mr. Davey in the past, however, that was mostly with respect to his elevation to head all of DOT, as opposed to just MBTA, for which I believe he was better suited and could have made a bigger difference).
I think that Grabauskas in particular always got a bad rap because of the (R) after his name. Speaking of which, that old idea from you-know-who of "fix-it" first doesn't seem too bad just now, does it? I have to believe that Grabauskas, sitting on Oahu just now, is still smarting just a bit.
While I supported (in large part) the Governor Patrick's transport plan which the legislature subsequently gutted, I think that we really do need to get what we already have up to snuff before we undertake too much (very expensive) expansion. The body politic simply will not go along with large projects until the T can demonstrate that it can operate what it already has.
There should be an investigation
A small fire turns into a potential disaster.Firefighters safety and the safety of the passengers were jeopardized. What would have happened if this was a five alarm fire during rush hour. Where were the police and csa's .Who is responsible for evacuating blind and disabled passengers or is it every man for himself?
DHS
Thank goodness we have a government agency -- DHS -- in charge of this very problem.
Hint to terrorists: want to cause mayhem? Cause a track fire that knocks out a large portion of an entire line, and attack the throngs of riders who will be pouring out of stations.
Saul, you haven't figured out what terrorists do yet have you?
They could do that, but odds are they won't
They also don't voluntarily
They also don't voluntarily submit to have their belongings searched, and would choose a station with multiple entrances or board from a street Green Line stop.
So what's your point, Pete?
The point is that if only maintaining infrastructure were viewed as "critical" as the bottomless pit thrown at keeping those pesky terrorists at bay, maybe we wouldn't have incidents such as these as often as we do.
Searching people isn't that expensive.
But just say want you want to say instead of making up things.
Just say what you think.
Statistics Please
How many bag searches have been done and how many have turned up dangerous bombs? No "just so" stories please - numbers.
Ditto for all of these programs - false positives, false negatives, etc. are all good, easy statistics to tell what is working, and what doesn't. They should be calculated, and freely available to the public as value for the tax dollar is important - as is evidence-based deployment of resources.
Oh, and please do tell us what terrorists do, since you seem to know. Unless, of course, you think it is okay to just make things up and tell stories.
"I can't tell you if it works or not because TERRORISTS" is not an acceptable reply, either.
Ah yes, the "it doesn't cost so much"
defense. Any money spent on security theather is still money unnecessarily diverted from other things. Like maintenance and repair.
They already gave up, Saul
http://www.theonion.com/articles/alqaeda-claims-us...
If they did attack, how would anybody notice?
Police and fire didn't want
Police and fire didn't want to go into the stations or tunnels because the MBTA couldn't provide them jack-shit information wise. Fire didn't even trust the MBTA to tell them the power was shut off unless someone officially showed up in person and took responsibility.
No one trusts the MBTA's capacity for competence. Situations like this make that quite clear.
With all the toxic crap in tunnels and stations any other workplace would have been shut down by OSHA and deemed a Superfund site to be decontaminated. All the airborne lead from fried paint has to be super healthy for MBTA employees and passengers year round.
Know your surroundings
I long-ago established the need to carry on the T subways
1) cell phone
2) flashlight
In the summer the flashlight is a small key chain device and in the winter (more pockets) its a decent 9-LED midget that is pretty bright. The cell has an app that will turn it into a flashlight as well.
With only one person to operate a train, there is no "crew" to assist you out of the train and down the track if that were necessary. In the "olden days" a typical 4-car train had 3 crew; one operator and two door guards/operators. No more.
Of course, in the knee jerk reaction by the public and legislature after the Green line incident which found an operator was texting, none of them can carry cell phones now, and if their cab radio is not working, (and sometimes it doesn't) you are SOL and all alone down there. Legislation was never necessary. The T had rules to prevent such usage, but when they tried to enforce it the union slapped back. Now it's worse.
All tunnels have emergency exits that will reach the street. They are peppered at specific distances between stations of there is any reasonable distance between stations. For example the stretch on the Red Line between Andrew and Broadway has several. However between Broadway and South Station, there are few to none because a lot of that is under the Fort Point channel, indeed under the "Ted" connector in places. That's on stilts over the Red Line down there.
So, know your surroundings.
Although they cut blue line from 2 crew to 1....
last night, at the airport station, I counted one T employee in the customer service booth, one in the dispatcher booth on the inbound side, and 5 more milling around on the inbound platform. I assume there were other employees that I couldn't see (e.g. on the outbound platform).
We don't need to go back to a
We don't need to go back to a 3 person crew. That would mean we have 1 person doing an actual job and 2 people around at all times dong mostly nothing while they wait for an emergency.
As you noted there are plenty of T employees milling about during an emergency. What needs to happen is that in an emergency those employees get moved to where they are useful.
In olden times...
Labor was much cheaper. You could have a conductor and a driver for every trolley too.
As we become a richer nation, labor becomes more expensive. That's why part of progress is replacing labor with automation.
So take your pick: more staffing per train, or fewer trains per hour? They got OPTO by promising the conductors new jobs in the system. But in a few years, after the transition completes, the choice will be between staffing and service levels.
We get what we pay for.
Around completion of the Big Dig, Charlie Baker and Mitt Romney used "forward funding" legislation to transfer the debt left over from the Big Dig to the MBTA in order to clean Baker and Romney’s books and budgets. This is why the MBTA is currently carrying a deficit of 161 million dollars.
http://bigdigbaker.com
And before that we had Billy
And before that we had Billy Bulger stuffing MBTA management with every crooked friend of his. Which has created a massive problem with top heavy management and pension costs for a system which desperately needs the the money to pay maintenance staff.
Charlie Baker and Mitt Romney?
$800 million? Sure, blame Baker and Romney for the way they mopped up the Mike Dukakis, Fred Salvucci, Tip O'Neill disaster that eventually cost $21 billion +. President Reagan was right when he vetoed the project in 1987 as "too expensive." Of course, O'Neill had the votes to override the veto and get a tunnel named after him. Also, I'm sure the MBTA's problems have nothing to do with the fact that more people are collecting T pensions than are actually working. Credit to the unions for negotiating the 20 years and out retirement plan and essentially a ban on any privatization.
Once again...
and as many of us have been saying for some time, it will, very unfortunately, apparently take death for the legislature to fix the financing problem it created and force the T to properly maintain its infrastructure.
Here come the judge
Was it Judge Arthur Garrity who ultimately forced the cleanup of Boston Harbor? I know he presided over the bussing re: Boston Schools. So can we a Federal Judge to tell these lovely Mass Legislature types where to get off? (and I don't mean Wonderland)
I have this movie idea that centers on shutting down the entire T system until the appropriate maintenance was completed. Think of all the people who'd be biking who aren't now. Woo-hoo!
Calling all candidates
It would be nice to hear from all the candidates running for elective office to comment about public safety from crimes to fires on the subway system. How many candidates ride the T?
Politicians only ride the
Politicians only ride the MBTA as a publicity stunt.
At least one exception
Not Mikey D. He was and still is the real deal.
Real curious about this.
Real curious about this. Since the T is a state agency, or at least falls under one. Do they even care what the city level reps have to say? Or do they take Boston's opinions seriously since that's where the majority of their existence is?
Fewer undercover T cops would
Fewer undercover T cops would be nice. I'd prefer to have a visible police presence. And while I'm not saying bum grabbers shouldn't be caught and prosecuted to the fullest extend of the law, it's hard for me to understand why that is a priority when there seem to be far more serious matters that deserve attention.