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No CHUDs emerged, so we're probably safe
By adamg on Wed, 06/22/2016 - 8:57pm
Madeline Donohue was walking down Boylston Street near Dartmouth around 7:30 p.m. when she noticed this Green Line emergency exit opened:
Alarms going off and no one is coming out.
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This happens all too
This happens all too frequently. They’ve linked with it here and there. But of course never actually fix it.
I've always wondered what that was
I always thought it was an electrical substation, but the lights now give the hint that it's actually an emergency exit.
I love you for the CHUD
I love you for the CHUD reference
This hatch was open for a
This hatch was open for a really long time. I went by there closer to 7:10, well before that picture was taken. Strobe lights flashing, constant alarm buzzing... and no T employee to be found.
I've seen this too
When the station was upgraded they put in this futuristic-seeming hatch that opens like an alien spaceship. It's pretty well disguised otherwise except for the bollards around it to keep Massholes from driving on to it, I guess.
There's an older-style metal grate on Main Street in Cambridge that opened from time to time. Rather than leading to a station, it led down rickety metal stairs to the Red Line trackage. Not that I went down, but you could look straight down and watch the trains go by.
or
Or perhaps from those driving cranes or lifts onto it. You know, for working on the adjacent building. Not all of Boston's sidewalks are hollow, but some are and they are signed as such.
The bollards are there for pedestrian egress safety as well: the stone (granite?) at the bottom of the picture is carved "Exit Keep Clear" for a reason. I suspect that the station needed to increase exit capacity ('exit' or 'egress capacity' in the building code definition not in the 'here's a door out' definition) based on the amount of work performed on it. Not all rehab work requires a space to be brought up to current code, there are different triggers that cause it to occur.
Sweet, so in theory
anyone could have had access to an area of a major T station that people don't normally have access to.
I'm one of those confounded liberals and find myself on the left of most "security" debates, and am rarely surprised by the incompetence that runs rampant at the MBTA, but wow.
Perhaps
I agree - but in this case I'd give a side-eye to the contractor who installed it. Some wire was crossed or something if a true emergency didn't set it off.
Oh I'm not talking about it being open
I totally get that part, things like this can happen for any number of reasons. What I'm talking about is the fact that, based on the photo/time Adam posted and CB's comment, this was open for at least 20 minutes with nobody from the MBTA around to secure it.
Am I famous?
What's really funny is folks that decided to tell me how I should tag the MBTA on my tweet "for security purposes". Ummm I told a human being... It was odd that no one seemed flummoxed. It was just a shoulder shrug. Now when the one person falls in because they are on their cell phone with their earbuds in and sues the city, I am sure something will get done!
Don't worry, this doesn't mean you're famous
And yeah, if you're going to bother to tweet it to UHub why not let the T know as well?
How do you know she didn't?
One thing I've found, thanks to folks like you who always post stuff like this, is that local Twitter users are not as stupid as smug non-users think: They tweet me *after* alerting the authorities
Glad to hear that 100% of
Glad to hear that 100% of local Twitter users do the smart thing 100% of the time. I'm not the guy on Twitter who mentioned it to her, I just don't quite understand the excessive bristling at the suggestion that she ought to tweet to the T as well. Seems like a very low cost and harmless suggestion.
But ...
in her own words she'd said she talked "to an actual human" - I'd contend that's a step better than tweeting. Or at least it should be. But by the reaction she got, maybe tweeting gets the issue in front of eyes that *might* care more. Sad.