State to spend $1.3 billion to replace ancient Red, Orange Line cars

It sure does! It's basically a hidden stimulus package to benefit the manufacturing industry in MA.

There's three different fleets. The oldest of which is from 1969.

I think there were benches. This would be in the early 1970s on the Ashmont line. I could swear there were long plastic benches.

The original "silver birds" which are now repainted red and are some of the oldest in the Red Line system, originally came with seating akin to that of a commuter rail car. They were also originally also slated to only run on the Braintree branch and operate much like an inter-urban line.

However, soon after their introduction there was outrage that no one on the Dorchester branch got to have the new cars. Public pressure forced the cars to be run on both branches.

Then not all that long after, it was determined that these commuter-style seating arrangements were not a good idea. In fact people seated in a seat by the window could not get off at their stop of the train was rush-hour crowded with other people holding on to seat handles (like on buses) in the access aisles. So they were rebuilt to return the cars to the same config as their earlier counterparts with the bench seating along the outer sides of the cars.

I was recently on those trains in Berlin, and while it's very cool to look down the looooooooong length of the train, I do think there's something to be said for having the ability to switch cars if there's a crazy person, homeless guy, weird stench, subway preacher, mariachi band, or what have you that's bothersome.

Articulated cars would stave off any need for seatless trains, but otherwise, your next solution is longer trains. Hmm, 8-car trains, or a couple rush-hour sets without seats in the middle?

A Green Monster is necessary for those Red Sox crowds.

I don't think there's much in the way of possibilities as far as the Grand Junction. It either continues to exist after the project, or it doesn't (and it will, of course, continue to exist). I'm positive there's a land swap deal here; Harvard gives the state a ROW along the tracks, and in turn they get a huge parcel where the tolls/interchange is. Everybody wins! No impact on Brighton Landing/"West Station," I would assume -- it's too far east of that. I'm just hoping they leave room for four tracks, not just the simple double-track (for a paralleling rapid transit line, to eliminate stops on the Worcester Line).

It is non-intuitive, I know.

In the "old days" the MBTA ran 2 and 4 car trains. 2 in off peak hour and 4 in peak hours and that was on the Red, Orange, and Blue lines. In fact it was possible for the original "Silverbirds" (now the older trains painted red) to run as a single car much like a Green line streetcar, and they did experiment with this on Sundays running single car shuttles on the Quincy branch early-on. These were later rebuilt into married pairs like the rest of the fleet.

Operating 2-car sets meant that at some point they would have to have a yard crew hook up trains to make 4-car sets, then break them apart to make 2-car sets. It was actually a cost savings in man-hours and overall operation cost and down time to stop doing that and just run all 4-car sets.

When the T determined that 4-car sets were inadequate, they implemented a station platform extension program on the Red, Orange, and Blue lines to allow for 6-car trainset operation. The idea was that they could accommodate more people that way. With a little observation power you can easily find where the platforms were extended on these lines where it was needed.

The MBTA of today does not look at all like it did back in the 70s and 80s.

So 6-car trainsets were implemented to accommodate more people, and with the elimination of having to couple and uncouple combinations in the yard they realized man hour savings.

Keeping trainsets moving is better than allowing them to rust sitting in the yard somewhere. The odds of a trainset breaking down does not correlate to how many cars are in a train set.

The T is tackling its electric consumption by implementing wind power and solar power but some of that is being resisted by communities that don't want that in their back yard. Blame them, not the T.

They also wanted to convert to all CNG buses like those running out of Forest Hills but no city or town wanted to license CNG refueling depots. So there are only 3 refueling depots for CNG buses all in Boston. They would be running all CNG by now (long ago actually) and have cut their pollution ratios down drastically but the PEOPLE said no. Blame them, not the MBTA.

While the T may be a big consumer of electricity they do not pay the same rate as a residential customer. They only pay pennies on the dollar.