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When are those new Red Line trains getting here again?
By adamg on Wed, 10/23/2013 - 9:26am
Berfun shows us the scene after the alleged end of morning rush hour at Quincy Center this morning, caused by, oh, who knows, the Red Line being the Red Line. Imagine if the fire department monitored T stops for overcrowding like they do nightclubs.
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Comments
urdoinitrong
Guys, you're not doing it right! In Japan they jam themselves into the trains, not the platform.
And how much do you want to
And how much do you want to bet that the morons at the bottom of the escalator are just standing there and not giving others any way to get off the moving stairs? They should probably shut down the escalators in times like this for safety reasons but that would require actual thought on the part of multiple T employees, so forget it.
Usually I'm right with you on
Usually I'm right with you on that, but look at the photo. Where do you want those people to go?
That's why they should stop
That's why they should stop the escalator, duh.
Or, just, people should see
Or, just, people should see the crowds and not even bother going down, duh.
It's up to the T, really?
A T employee who might not only not know the situation, but might not even be at the station? How would they stop this then, exactly? Can the riders not rub two brain cells together and push the emergency stop button? Are they that incapable of doing anything for themselves that we require an employee to do everything for them? Does a T employee hold a towel for them in the bathroom, too?
That's also not an escalator. I don't know if there are any 'down' escalators in the station.
Pretty much every situation
Pretty much every situation involving the T is left up to the riders to solve, including risking their lives to rescue people from the tracks. Why is there never a T employee around in thos situations?
Well,
the MBTA never posts video when it is the T employees pulling people out. It happens all the time. But it makes a good story when John Q Public helps someone out of a pit, restoring faith in humanity.
And you're also proposing that there be an MBTA employee be every 2 feet to be closer to every possible situation than passengers can be? Then you'll be complaining the MBTA wastes money on people standing around waiting for something to happen.
Makes a great scapegoat though. But hey, let's not let reality get in the way.
"It happens all the time."
"It happens all the time."
Really? How often?
The rest of your post is hyperbole, and not worth repying to.
Consider.....
Who is likely to be standing on the platform waiting for trains? T employees or other riders? I think a good assumption would be that in most platform incidents the "first responders" are likely to be riders.
Would the guy at the OCC who can see what is going on behind the camera count as someone who "helps"? This is someone who can see what is happening and inform the next train of the situation, preventing the NEXT accident. How about considering it from T standpoint, is it safer to warn the next train (call the OCC) of the upcoming situation or to jump in the tracks first? Or would you simply jump down on the tracks...?
My post isn't hyperbole
It isn't hyperbole, because that's what it would take to satisfy your desire for employees to be making all the rescues, instead of passengers who are right there.
Holy dangerousness, Batman.
Wow, I was thinking the same thing. The only escalator related nonsense more dangerous than this is when people are stuck at the top and there is no where for the people on the escalator to go...except back down on their heads.
The T police should really be out there prohibiting anyone else from entering the station - God forbid there is one of those "red line special" fires. It would be like the station (Rhode Island) all over again.
Stop people from adding to the mess
I agree that the T staff/police should prohibit people from going down to the platform once it's crowded. I was amazed a few years ago when I saw it done in the Washington DC Metro during a festival; people had to wait above until a train came in and took away the crowd. It prevented aggresive behavior and brutal over-crowding.
Crowd Management in London
We can only dream about how things are done in other cities, but how difficult can it be to simply stop more passengers from entering the station when the platforms are already crowded to the max?
The T's management should be required to watch this entire series!
Public Health Issues, too
Call me an epidemiology nerd, but all those people crowded in together at the start of the virulent airborne respiratory disease season isn't a comforting sight.
They do crowd control for Sox
They do crowd control for Sox games, the St Patrick's Day parade, etc.
But since it's the T, they generally screw it up. Stuff I've witnessed:
- Holding half-full trains at Kenmore for 10 minutes, while the platform is empty and a crowd builds upstairs, and more trains back up behind it in the tunnel
- T Police closing half the *exit* at Broadway before the parade starts. The crowd trying to exit backed up until the platform was jammed. Then arriving trains took forever to leave the station, as people got stuck in the train doors because there was no way to get off. It makes sense to keep people from entering the station. But why the eff would they narrow the exit, when the station is jammed and the street outside has space?
Thats not an escalator.
Thats not an escalator, thats stairs. There is only one escalator at Quincy Center and it goes up.
Up Escalator
As noted, the only escalator at Quincy Center goes up and the people on the escalator in the picture appear to be standing there which leads me to believe that the escalator is already turned off.
The T does turn off DOWN escalators when there are crowds
Nothing in that picture makes it look to me like that escalator is actually moving down.
The escalator is on the
The escalator is on the outbound side of the platform, not the inbound. What you are seeing there are actual stairs, not moving ones.
Lots of Trains in the Yard at rush hour last night
I noticed at least 5 trains in the yard next to the Broadway Bridge last evening at 530 whilst jetting by on my very nice, but crowded commuter rail train. Could the T being having an above amount of trains out of service, compounding things at the Father Bill's House day dormitory (a/k/a Quincy Center Station)?
I know this is in Quincy
... but I would love to see the MBTA hauled before the licensing board for "people falling in the pits" and "overcrowding" and "patrons kicking out windows".
How long until someone dies?
We spend all this money on
security theaterbag searches which do nothing to improve safety, yet the MBTA allows this level of crowding. Regularly. It isn't too much of a stretch to imagine the crowd to start to push forward as a train arrives and someone being accidentally pushed in front of a train...Choose Desired Option From "Text format" Pulldown
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Shiny!
Thanks!
Well, one step toward
Well, one step toward avoiding that would be to install platform screen doors along the edge of the platform. They also help with climate control, and given how miserably hot the underground T stations get in the summer, that would be very welcome. Of course, they do require that the trains stop more precisely to align the train doors with the platform doors, but this is not too hard.
Operationally difficult
Red line trains of the #1 and #2 classes have their doors in different places (3 doors per side per car) from the #3-type trains (4 doors per side per car)... I don't think you could have platform screen doors with that kind of variation. (Or if you did they would have to be some costly system that detects the type of car and knowing the MBTA would fail half the time)
I still don't understand why
I still don't understand why there is only one dedicated entrance/exit at Quincy Center. It's a nightmare at rush hour and there's plenty of room for another exit at the other end.