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Great: Now T riders have to worry about exploding trash barrels


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Comments

Let's assume someone wants to bomb the station. They pack a backpack full of explosive and head to the station. Do you think they're going to throw away the backpack and everyone's going to be like "ah, I guess he was done with all the stuff in THAT bag"?

He could just as easily leave it somewhere in the station and not lose all that explosive potential to trying to escape the trash can. When these things get reported, how long do you think the bag's been sitting there with the guy long gone? Once a bag has been reported, how long until responders clear the area while people still go about their business normally?

If terrorists want to blow up a subway station, they can do it. Hell, they don't even have to remove the backpack if they don't want to. Who cares if the trash cans are bomb-proof or not? The only factor is whether the manufacturer ripped us off or not.

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Who cares if the trash cans are bomb-proof or not? The only factor is whether the manufacturer ripped us off or not.

How are these two things unrelated Kaz? If the trash cans are not bomb-resistant, then we (riders and taxpayers) were ripped off.

What I'd love to see from WBZ - and the other local broadcast news - would be more in-depth follow-up to outrage-of-the-day stories like this. As it is, it looks like someone sent Ch4 the video, they spent a day or two getting background, and Shortsleeve blew an afternoon doing a location shot and two crazy-short interviews which really didn't tell us anything new. [color=#CCFFFF]fnord[/color]

What about some grown-up info? Ie, what were the specifications laid out in the T's original Request-for-quotation? If the company failed to deliver product that fulfilled the specs, does the T's contract allow for them to claw-back or sue? (reports back in 2002 said the cans cost the T $404,000). In short, are there any potential remedies?

<rhetorical>Does channel 4 plan on investigating this further, or are they going to blow it off and move on to the next cheap scare story?</rhetorical>

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I'm not claiming they're unrelated. The first question is in context to exploding a trash can in a field and vapidly wringing our hands and crying about whether the next time we won't just die because it happened for real in a subway station.

As you do a better job of extolling, the second question is about whether the questions of the report should have been about whether we got robbed by the manufacturer whom we thought we were buying "bomb-proof" trash cans from.

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What's with the baby blue "fnord'? I thought I was having a stroke or something...

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You don't want to let them know you've seen it.

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I didn't mention the tiny dancing elephants or erudite mayors...

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The MBTA and Bay State Taxpayers alike were ripped off. It was extremely shortsighted of the MBTA to purchase these supposedly bomb-proof steel trash barrels when the manufacturer(s) hadn't had them tested beforehand for affectiveness.

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Donkey Kong was unavailable for comment.

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Option a)

Spend tens of thousands of dollars on special trash cans that only work if a small amount of explosive is positioned in exactly the right place

Option b)
Spend $20 on a plastic holder for a clear plastic bag, which people can see from a far, so an item like a backpack sticks out as suspicious.

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Option b)
Spend $20 on a plastic holder for a clear plastic bag, which people can see from a far, so an item like a backpack sticks out as suspicious.

Why do you hate America? If it's expensive, it HAS to be good.

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I dislike the plastic bag hangers that the MBTA already has. Even if they got a design for the hanger that didn't suck butt, it's still putting trash on display.

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Like the Kardashian sisters?

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When will Joe Shortsleeves and the usual band of evening-news flunkies realize that muckraking is laughably stupid? I mean, starting off with "videos they never wanted you to see" and making me fear for "the safety of hundreds of thousands of riders" has just become expected sleaze at this point. So it's an over-expense that the T made along with hundreds of other public agencies in the U.S., and the T admits that this is only one line of defense... what more does Shortsleeve want?

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