The T

The Washington Post reports the federal government is looking at taking a far more active role in ensuring the safety of subway riders across the country, following a fatal Washington, DC subway crash in June:

... The proposal would affect every subway and light-rail system in the country, including large systems in Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. ...

Via the Outraged Liberal.

Channel 7 reports a driver in a westbound trolley stopped short tonight, sending passengers flying. Interestingly, the trolley continued to Government Center, where some passengers were removed on stretchers, the station says.

Dan Tobin was facing the Citgo sign on the way home from Cambridge this evening:

... It's a landmark I invariably associate with the Red Sox and tonight I realized that, no matter how the season ended up - with us as champions or the hated Yankees taking the crown - this is the time of year when baseball is in hibernation. It won't be long before being outside itself is a chore and means braving the nasty winter that comprises half the Boston year. It made me a little sad facing up to this reality. But it also made me thankful to know that one day the Sox will come back, the cold weather will lift, and the city will become a beautiful place once again.

At a conference announcing a trial of real-time bus-location data today, state officials asked developers to build applications that can be used by more than people with the latest hip smartphone. Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) board member Liz Levin said not everybody can afford - or want to use - an iPhone or competing next-gen gizmos. Read more

The state Department of Transportation says it has started publishing raw, live location data for buses on five routes - which will eventually lead to applications that let riders see how far away the next bus is and when they can expect it to show up. Read more

Every single MBTA commuter-rail line is reporting "weather-related delays" this morning.

Red exclamation points of doom across the board

Ed. remainders note: Have you noticed how media accounts all seem to refer to the storm as "remnants of Hurricane Ida?" Sounds like we're under attack by what's left of the elite Republican Guard.

Massive delays.

Ben Jackson, a regular, tweeted:

For the THIRD TIME THIS WEEK, the 6:58 inbound middleboro mbta train is disabled and we might have to push it into Boston.

At 8:50, Conor Yunits tweeted his train was late and the message boards were useless:

Hey mbta, remember that Brockton to South Station commuter rail train that was supposed to come 20 minutes ago? How about an update?

Channel 4 reports he was a 24-year veteran and was in the second car of an E train.

Because this evening, both are providing something less than the "enjoyable transportation experience" the T now hopes riders have.

Some sort of accident at the intersection of Huntington and Parker around noon, Victoria Ryan tweets. Although the accident stopped trolley traffic, T spokesman Joe Pesaturo says no trolley was involved.

You know, so if, say, a drunken woman has just fallen on the tracks, the operator can apply the brakes immediately. They'll be using wireless-mesh technology (basically, lots of little wireless access ports all over the place) to give drivers real-time views (in Seoul's case, the impetus was not somebody lying on the tracks, but a train that entered a station just as another train was being engulfed in an arson fire).

Via The Transit Wire.

UPDATE: The video made the news around the world. See examples in the comments.

Maybe the author of this Missed Connection will have more luck than the reporters who tried finding Our Lady of the Pit on Twitter yesterday.

Via Chessie Monks.

Yeah, it's cool watching the woman fall on the tracks from three different angles (yes, yes, horrifying, but come on, cool, especially with all those moving rectangles). Imagine if there'd been three Zapruders in Dallas that November morning.

But do we really need all those cameras watching us? Brookline fights over a small bunch of cameras and here the T already has enough cameras to do a director's cut of a drunk narrowly avoiding death.

Channel 4 reports.

Upstatement, a local Web design team, took 24 hours of MBTA boarding data (specifically, Sept. 8) and used it to create some music.

We're still waiting for somebody to take up Spatch's idea for a composition based on the order of Green Line trolleys.

Upstatement's piece is an entry in the 2009 MassDOT Developers Challenge - the best applications for visualizing a day in the life of the T and for using open MBTA data win a year's worth of CharlieCards. Winners will be announced at a developer's conference on Saturday.

Brian Hopkins, a New Yorker up in Boston for a little barhopping a few years back, sued Amtrak in 2008, alleging the railroad failed to alert him that climbing on top of a train at 4 a.m. and grabbing hold of the overhead wires might result in such severe burns that he'd lose one of his arms.

Hopkins has since added the MBTA to his lawsuit (of course). As is often the case with federal lawsuits, the wheels grind slowly. Hopkins' lawyers now want Amtrak to hand over all the documentation they have on people who have ever been electrocuted by grabbing catenary wires in general and dating back to 1991 at South Station specifically. Read more

Still from an MBTA surveillance video just as the train stopped.

Channel 4 posts copies of three separate MBTA videos (three? Yes, three) of the woman falling off the platform - looks like one of the people waving at the oncoming train almost fell on the tracks himself.

Onlookers waving at the train to get the driver to stop: Read more

Don't think of those delays caused by yet another disabled train as a problem. Think of it as an opportunity - to get to know your platformmates! Well, except maybe some of those gloomy Gusses whose mouths will freeze that way if they keep frowning like that.

The Outraged Liberal wonders if Deval Patrick is sleepwalking or something, based on two days' worth of bad news about transportation issues in the Globe.

The Boston Fire Department ordered power shut on the Orange Line between State Street and Downtown Crossing shortly after 10 p.m. when smoke appeared in the State Street station. Power was restored not long after when firefighters discovered the smoke was coming from one particular train, not another track fire, according to Boston Fireman and Local 718.

But rescue crews didn't discover until they got to the station that it was some kids fooling around.

This time in Franklin this morning, MBTA Transit Police tweet. NECN reports the man, in his 40s, was struck at the Fisher Street crossing. Train 1028, outbound.

Rick Sawyer reports he was on the inbound Orange Line platform at North Station last night when a woman fell on the tracks - just as a train was approaching:

... It was like a movie. The train stopped inches away from the woman's unstirring body, the frontmost part actually hanging over her. For a nauseating moment, we thought she had been killed—by the train or by the third rail. The conductor burst out of the front train compartment, the color draining from her face, repeating "Oh my God." ...