Paging Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, you're needed on the Green Line
By adamg - Tue, 10/20/2009 - 10:48am.
No trolleys along Comm. Ave. between Packards Corner and Blandford St. The T says: Take the 57 bus instead - and that they've added extra buses.
T spokesman Joe Pesaturo says repairs are being made to a section of the overhead wire on the outbound side near the BU Bridge, with the work expected to be done by 1 p.m.
- Add new comment |
- Send to a friend |
| 
| 
I do not understand this
I do not understand this headline
Stupid, I guess
The Green Line is without power. Who has power? Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
I see
I see
Who has power?
He-Man?
"I HAVE THE POWERRRR!!"
"By the POWER of GREYSKULL!"
What's Wrong With This Picture?
According to the MBTA, the cause of this outage is "repairs being made to a section of the overhead wire on the outbound side near the BU Bridge". This implies that this outage was PLANNED Scheduled Maintenance. So in the middle of the day the MBTA will shut down a section of the Green Line for two hours to make repairs with minimal advance notice or warning. Not because of an accident, not because of an emergency, not even because of a real power problem, but PLANNED MAINTENANCE. This is just like the time the MBTA accidentally knocked off power to the entire subway system in the middle of rush hour by hitting the wrong button during a botched, high-risk repair job this summer!
Isn't this type of maintenance SUPPOSED to be done in the middle of the night, when the MBTA is offline?
Not necessarily
I assumed from the description that planned work on the bridge led to unplanned cable damage on the Green Line.
I'm probably being too generous, tho.
Repairs are not necessarily planned maintenance.
The four separate T alerts I got about this latest Green Line fail all referred to a "power problem on Commonwealth Avenue". Sounds to me that this was not poorly scheduled routine maintenance, but an emergency response to an overhead trolley wire that suddenly broke in service. Based on similar past incidents, two hours to replace a broken section of wire is about right.
The larger issue here seems to be not maintenance scheduling, but the fact that the MBTA has a real reluctance to use proper descriptive terms such as "emergency repairs" when announcing problems in their alerts and comments to the press.
I still wonder why
None of the major local news stations have reported what really happened. If there was a construction mishaps on the BU bridge or if a power line broke during routine service one would think someone would have accurately reported it, including the MBTA itself. I was looking for a real explanation of this outage for a good hour, and still have yet to get one.
The fact that the MBTA used vague wording to address this "power problem" with a wire on the BU bridge rather than giving a clear, direct answer is somewhat shady at best and screams cover-up at worst. Considering that the MBTA has a reputation of poorly scheduling construction projects in ways that either interfere with regular service (ever notice Arlington station during a regular Green Line commute?) or risk causing major outages (like the subway power outage last summer), the lack of information surrounding a major, prolonged outage strikes me as suspicious.
Unfortunately, to the mainstream media,
MBTA delays hardly qualify as breaking news these days. Even the traffic reporters barely cover them, unless there's a car accident involved.
Remember that we're dealing with organizations that not only wasted time and resources last week chasing a balloon live for two hours, but are still covering the "important big (non-)story" long after it was determined the whole thing was a hoax - thus feeding the publicity frenzy the family was seeking in the first place.
As for why the MBTA does not give direct answers in these cases, there seems to be a policy of not using phrases or descriptions that management thinks would put the T in a bad light. I don't agree with this policy, but I wouldn't go so far to call it a vast cover up on the T's part.
BTW, I can't recall the last time we had a broken wire on the BC line. That sort of thing normally happens between Government Center and North Station.