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Dead train at JFK/UMass proves a royal pain in the ass

And it is, of course, an inbound train.

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Its the sounds of fares increasing while we have a daily occurrence of break downs and delays. They say increasing fares will fix some of this.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

And I have some beautiful ocean front property in Williamstown to sell you, if you believe that.

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if you've got some beautiful property in Williamstown (particularly if there is view to The Hopper) to sell at a reasonable price for the area I might be interested!

Kidding aside, really, this is becoming untenable with the T. I wish there was a way to get reliable data on how much of the (noticeable increase in) traffic on the roads is attributable (say, >50% of the reason) to the T's still further decreasing reliability.

I've said it before, and I will keep saying it. We are choking on our own success around here, and if we don't fix the transport system very soon, that success will go elsewhere.

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is on the road, when it's warm enough, because the T is unreliable. (that would be me. sadly, the cold weather has kept me off my bike so far this month. :( Yeah, I know, I need better cold-weather gear.

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If the people who run the T just simply increase the fare without really stepping up to the plate and fixing the problems, it's going to backfire on them one of these days, because more and more people will be fed up with the T, and either drive (thereby increasing our already out-of-control vehicular traffic congestion), or walk/bike to their places of work, appointments, errands, etc., leaving the people who manage the MBTA scratching their heads and wondering why use of the T in order to get around has declined so precipitously.

Moreover, if the problems that have abounded on the T (which have been forever!) continue long enough, or become bad enough, Boston could cease to function as a real city. That, imho, would be a disaster in itself.

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never underestimate the power of double pants!

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It's generally the extremities that get cold when biking. I use two pairs of thick socks AND leave them and my sneakers on the radiator over night so that I start off with pre-heated feet. Same with gloves: a liner and then gloves, hot off the radiator. Add a face mask and you're good to go! (Haven't missed a day this week.)

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What do you do about ice? That's why I prefer not to bike in the winter. (I have a road bike. Yes, I know, get a mountain bike :-) )

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But being married to one, I've never understood the cold as an impediment to being on the bike. I walked the 1.5 miles from my house to Forest Hills Tuesday morning (and got there quicker than if I waited for the bus) and saw a few cyclists. The exercise keeps the blood circulating, which leaves you warmer than those who are just standing there. Perhaps when the wind chill is well below zero, but for the most part the temps in Boston would seem to support cycling year round.

That said, as you point out, ice, snow, slush, and, if you're vain like me, road salts would be a huge impediment.

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Some of us suffer from cold-induced bronchiospasm and have asthma attacks when exerting in very cold weather. For me that point is at 10F or so.

Also? You make your own wind chill on a bike - runners do too, but there's a considerable difference between 6-8 mph and 12-15 mph when the brass monkeys get neutered.

That said, I recently spent some winter days in Alberta and there were plenty of cyclists in Calgary and Edmonton with their studded tires ticking away.

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Especially around the Boston Area with frequent stops and slow-rolls due to stoplights, potholes, wayward pedestrians, motorists, etc., it's very difficult to exert enough energy on a bike when it's really cold to keep you decently warm if you're at all under-dressed. This is in contrast to walking and running where you rely solely on your own body power for locomotion and, thus, quickly warm up because of the much higher average heart rate/energy expenditure.

For example, with a brisk walk from my house to Dudley Square Station at 30 degrees (F), 0.6 miles, my hands are toasty by the time I get there and I'm pulling my gloves off; meanwhile if I bike all the way to work, 6.0 miles, ten times as far, my hands don't feel as warm even by mile 5.

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Ice is the worst risk, especially if you don't see it coming. My boss has Norwegian studded snow tires that he swears by, but I haven't gotten to that level yet. Generally if you hit ice straight on, you're OK. It's when you try to turn or maneuver on ice that you go down. I take all corners with much greater caution even when it's just cold....you never know when there will be a small icy spot and that's all that it can take to send you sprawling.

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ive done multiple winters in 25mm road slicks. ive only crashed a couple times, once on black ice, and once turning on a snow covered road-construction-cover-thing.

snow is fine and easy to deal with (until a certain point), but ice will get you regardless without studded tires, which i usually pass on every winter.

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Moved here in 99 from the burbs, stopped messing with the T in about 2001 and never looked back. Driving a car, even paying for parking and the higher insurance, has been worth it in every possible way. Time, money, convienence...everything. Even with the traffic. Now, that is pretty sad. Went to Philly for New Years and took their subway and just shook my head in disgust. Leaps and bounds better than the T.

Leaders in Massachusetts need to start listening. The old adage that rehabbing existing systems/infastructure isn't "sexy" politically is tired and total bullshit. Fancy new projects fallinn flat on their face....what if all the money spent so far on the dead Green Line extension had been put into say, rehabbing the Red and Orange Line trains, rails, stations. I think folks would be a lot more satified. Instead they are gonna go a billion over budget on a basic line extension people have been talking about for decades.

They start late night service only to give it no time to take off, do no promotion for it, and run it into the ground, so they can have reason to end it....again....

It's just mis-management at every turn, and Transportation in MA is shaping up to be the #1 political issue of the time. Politicians take note you idiots...

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Went to Philly for New Years and took their subway and just shook my head in disgust. Leaps and bounds better than the T.

I have many, many, many friends in Philly who have their own set of issues with SEPTA. And a few who have come here and rode the T and said the T was far better than SEPTA. I've rode both and personally feel that SEPTA and the T are almost one in the same in terms of problems.

Its the same anywhere.. I think almost all US transit systems are riddled with some sort of problem. Whether its the WMATA, BART, MUNI, MARTA, DART, CTA.. they all have the same sort of problems.

Until the government, both local, state, and federal, start to really equate transit to the same as roads in terms of funding, we will continually be a third rate country when it comes to transit.

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I didn't see one Septa train that looked like it just got dragged out of a junkyard and slapped on the tracks. I have seen Orange line trains with body rot on the roof right through to the interior cabin, rustier than my old VW! Stations were cleaner, etc etc. Now, they have their own set of problems (like you can't get change from a cashier in a booth....who is collecting money all day...) but I feel like the system itself isn't nearly as decrepit as the T. The other factor is that their winters aren't nearly as brutal as ours, but still

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Well, it is 60 years newer than the MBTA, which is the oldest subway system in the country, so I am sure that helps. The MBTA also has almost double the ridership, and almost double the track length (when including the Green with the Red, Blue, and Orange lines).

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But the Philly friends I take here.. I take on the Green Line . They love it. They wish their Light Rail was like ours.

But the orange line is the worst line right now. the BL cars are new, and the Bombardier cars on the red line are decent inside. And the green line.. especially now with the refurbished Kinky Cars.

Like I said.. its a toss up between the two systems.

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That's cute...calling MARTA a transit system in the same breath as WMATA et al...

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MARTA is a transit agency. Your opinion of it is irrelevant.

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Lol, that was a good one, but seriously Philly/SEPTA is better because you took it one time when you visited? Riiiiiight.

BTW, brand new Orange and Red Line rolling stock was ordered awhile ago, and is currently being made. Most stations are being rehab'd due to ADA. The GLX, and its funding, is completely separate from all of these things and legally required due to Big Dig remediation agreements - the MBTA has no choice in doing it, and the money (with over a billion from the Feds) couldn't be used for anything else anyways.

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That both the Limousine Liberals and Republicans in the State House count on to keep under-funding the system. I mean, it's great that you "gave the MBTA a try" for two whole whopping years--I've been riding the system for over 30 years. I could drive everywhere anytime I want to too, but I don't give up the system because I believe in it and want it to improve.

And, for what it's worth, the GLX is not a "fancy new project," it's a badly overdue project to bring rail service to an area over-saturated with bus service that's obviously not getting any faster. People such as yourself play right into politicians hands--they practically let incidents like the Red Line runaway train happen so they can say, "See--we can't let the GLX continue--any available funding must go to rehabilitation!"

No, the real solution is both: make the necessary improvements to the current system while also increasing the coverage by light and heavy rail of a system that relies far too much on it's commuter rail to cover areas not even that far from Downtown. I mean, how is it, on one fare, I can get all the way from Downtown to Riverside, and yet the Orange Line terminates barely six miles from Downtown, not even in Roslindale, let alone Hyde Park or West Roxbury? It's pretty much the same concept with Green Line only going as far as Lechmere.

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I've said it before, and I will keep saying it. We are choking on our own success around here, and if we don't fix the transport system very soon, that success will go elsewhere.

Imagine if we had a 'world class' transit system instead of a broken one today where we would be in terms of success.

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They could spend some of the fare increase on buying new trains for the Red Line.

And while we are on the subject, the Orange Line trains are looking long in the tooth, too.

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New Red and Orange Line cars are on their way, but it's not as if you can just go to your local car dealer and buy some. So they won't be here for at least three more years.

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And it's not like the trains we have now will be running better.

It's frustrating for us, but delayed maintenance and delayed capital expenditures are not quickly resolved.

My point is that while repeated breakdowns will be making people less likely to support fare increases, keeping the fares as is definitely won't be doing anything to help the situation.

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100% of the fare increases are going to operating costs, to close a budget gap. From the T's own statements, op costs, especially health care for employees, have been outpacing revenues for years. After last winter's meltdown shone a spotlight on the T, they've also been revealed to be underplaying operational costs by paying lots of employees out of the capital budget, too, which they're now no longer allowed to do.

Whereas new RL and OL cars are on order using previous appropriations, none of the fare increase is going toward the $24.8B "state of good repair" backlog.

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Why are those operating costs so high?

It wouldn't have to do with a certain Kochpuppet dumping highway project overruns on the transit system, now would it???

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The Orange Line train I took in this morning had three sets of doors where only one door would open.

I also hope that there will be no upholstery on the seats in the new cars.

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I think the reason why I keep ragging on this is because not only is it silly to raise fares right now when the trains barely run as is. But to brush it off like "oh this will improve things" when in reality it won't.

It never has. A long list of previous governors (both democrat and republican) have tried to 'fix the T' and they has failed every time. Many have raised fares and the service has not improved. Its SOP for a new governor now.

But I think the biggest thing is this.. Let's remove the thought that the fares will go to the operating budget for a second. And let's just say that they will be applied to the backlog of maintenance because that's what makes the trains fail.

Now let's do some math.

7.2Billion in backlog
48 Million in new fare revenue (if we give them the largest option)

48 Mil divided by 7.2 Bil = .006666666667

So roughly ~.06% of the total backlog maintenance. LESS THAN A PERCENT.

Sure fares will really go toward the operating budget, and some money will be transferred over fixing the backlog also.. but still. It's still less than 1% of that backlog and we're not talking about how that number will increase over time as we continue to kick the can down further. In short, it just wont help very much at all.

So the argument that a fare increase will 'fix things' is one of the biggest farces today.

Baker and his team need to look outside the box at additional revenue sources and funding to really fix the problem. But IMHO, as it stands right now.. he's just making himself like he's really doing something, but in reality he's not doing any thing more than anyone else in the past has done.

PS - I have not even begun to start my rampage on the whole "Well a monthly pass isn't a fare' thing that Pollack said yesterday to why passes were going up more thn 10%. What a crock.. read for yourself:

http://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/t-passes-exempt-from-fare...

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$7.2B is actually $24.8B, according to the T's own report (p. 3). That is, in order to get the T to a state of good repair, over a working period of 25 years, it will cost - to actually appropriate the monies, perform repairs, purchase equipment, pay for the labor to install or deploy new equipment, and of course pay off debt service and account for expected inflation - $24.8 billion.

That's bigger and longer than the Big Dig, by the way. And this is the initial figure, not the one we'll inevitably learn about in 5, 10, 15, etc. years after the "cost overruns" shenanigans begin.

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So it even furthers my point..

So 24.8B over 25 years is about 992 Million per year

Now let's re-apply what I did above...

48Million divided by 992Million = .0483870967741935

Or ~ 4% of that per year. Still not a big dent. Add what you've said above about inflation.. and it'll be closer to 1-2%.

Just furthers my point that raising fares is nothing more than smoke and mirrors from baker and co.

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No rhyme this time?

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OK, it's getting harder and harder to come up with new rhymes (well, rhymes that make sense), but, um, UMass and ass rhyme.

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You nailed the meter dude, you own it

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try reading it again. out loud, maybe.

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Maybe he read it as....

Dead train at JFK
UMass proves a royal pain in the ass

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Dead train at UMass - pain in the ass

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The whiffs of delivery failure from Morrissey Blvd to JFK Station.

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Raise the Mass State Tax Rate temporarily and dedicate those funds to repairning existing infrastructures and rolling stock of such in an ultiltarian manner. No grandiose remodels or art of bizarre color schemes, just get it done.

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You'd need a governor who is willing to tell the people who live west of 95 how a functional T is important to them too, and nobody is willing to do it.

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Create a lottery scratch ticket for the T, maybe where you can win a lifetime pass of free rides for all trains busses, boats, etc. Free Parking at T garages, and then some $1 million prizes. Then you don't have to beg the western MA crowd, desperate gamblers willingly donate to the cause.

The T also makes terible use of their property. Rent out more vendor spots, install windmills or solar panels on your right of ways and buildings, power your own trains, cut the electric bill/operating costs.

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I was on that train. It was disabled due to "Power Issues" and was sitting between NQ and JFK for a while.

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