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Red Line service shut again due to another person getting hit by a train
By adamg on Sat, 08/24/2013 - 9:14am
UPDATE, 12:30 p.m.: MBTA reports normal service resuming.
UPDATE, 11:05 a.m.: BFD reports "recovery completed" and station turned back over to the T.
Around 8:30 a.m. at Broadway on the inbound side.
The Boston Fire Department reports the person did not survive the impact. After Transit Police finished their investigation around 10 a.m., firefighters went through the process of recovering the remains.
Transit Police report the victim was an Asian male in his 30s.
Buses were brought in to replace trains between JFK/UMass and Park.
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Comments
confusion and chaos...
This seems to happen once a month and the T should get some kind of system in place. It was a dangerous and chaotic scene at JFK station this morning. They send one bus idling empty for 20 minutes, sending the waiting crowd into a near frenzy. I would say there were 200 angry people shouting and shoving to get on that one bus.
Someone at the T could've called the local cab companies or given us a crumb of information. It maybe would have prevented an angry mob.
If I knew what was going on I would found an alternative way to get to work. Even walking.. or a cab...or something.
Instead they just let the pressure build to the boiling point.
That seems to be pretty
That seems to be pretty shallow attitude. Someone dies and your complaint is your needs were not catered to in a satisfactory manner.
I disagree...there is no
I disagree...there is no question that this is a traumatic event. Someone violently lost their life in a public place. The problem is that these issues are fairly common and always seem to catch the T off guard. This puts a huge pressure on stressed out people in small spaces, it makes people late for work, it wastes huge amounts of money. The issue is such a problem in the London Underground that they have signs specifically asking suicidal people to not use the train as an option.
No they don't
http://www.printmag.com/imprint/london-to-londoner...
More pedestrians killed by T than all cars and trucks?
It seems like MBTA trains and subways kill more pedestrians than all the cars and trucks on all the roads of Massachusetts. Perhaps money wasted on curb extensions should instead go where needed.
Markk is onto something here!
If you are suggesting that the money used for curb extensions plus the other funds needed for automation of the MBTA rapid transit system (which would have to include the installation of platform gates) be authorized, that is something that I might be able to support.
We'd save a ton of dough on employee salaries, healthcare and pensions, too.
Of course, this would make us more like France (look to about the 1:25 mark for the platform gates, but the whole video is quite good - actually riding Ligne 1 is even better). Sacrebleu!
Smart Germans!
Excellent video! The best shot of the platform gates is at 3:10 where they also talk about them. Since the MBTA has been the #1 consumer of electricity in the whole state for many years, automation and real-time scheduling of trains by demand will indeed make a dent into the MBTA's carbon footprint.
Pedestrians killed in 2011
According to NHTSA, 58 pedestrians were killed by cars and trucks in Massachusetts, 2011. That's actually slightly better than in most years, in which typically 60-75 lives are lost this way. Non-fatal injuries aren't listed, regardless of severity, but they typically are estimated to be about an order of magnitude higher in number.
By comparison, in 2011, according to NTD data, there were a total of 3 fatalities over all the MBTA modes.
And APTA estimates that you are over 20-30x safer per mile of travel on various transit modes compared to motor vehicle.
Every death is a tragedy. But let's not fool ourselves. Cars and trucks are much more dangerous than any kind of transit. Given our limited resources, safety efforts need to be focused on our streets.
Apples to oranges
I'm going by media reports of fatalities in 2012-2013 for people hit by car, truck, bus and those hit by commuter train, subway, or street car. I'm not counting those riding in them as you do. Compare how many thousands of miles of roads and what, 1 million vehicles in Mass against a far smaller number of commuter rail miles and smaller still mileage of subway.
Yeah, the T ought to improve safety at platforms like those in France and stop wasting money on bump outs and slip lane removal that show little to no safety benefit. Worse, the stupid changes at Mass Ave and Vassar in Cambridge where truck routes meet resulted in a cyclist dying. The same sort of MIT people who give woman cash for phony checks seemed to have behind narrowing Vassar Street so trucks could not turn safely.
I'm going by Federally mandated data collection
The statistics from the NTD also count deaths in crossings or from those who intrude into the track area. It's not just riders, it's every incident involving an MBTA vehicle.
As much as I would like to see full automation and platform screen doors, I also know that it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit the T for those features. It's not even remotely cost-effective at this time.
Bump outs (a.k.a. curb extensions) do show safety improvement and they are relatively cheap. One of the reasons they are so effective, besides visibility, is that they force reckless drivers like you to slow down. That's why you do not like them, but that is the key to their safety.
Still no data
The link you provided has no data to support the assertions beyond the estimated cost to implement. Further, there is no data to show the damage to the environment from forcing traffic to slow down, and then resume speed more frequently while negotiating traffic frustrating obstacles.
If cost-effectiveness was a concern, money would not be spent in any transportation area. For example, accidental drug deaths in Mass run about twice as many per year as all traffic deaths. Narcan pens are far cheaper than bump outs.
Uh huh
And by all media accounts, 10,000 people died from shark attacks in the summer a year or two ago. I guess we killed all of the sharks because it doesn't seem like anyone's died that way this summer...yet. (dun dun.....dun dun...)