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Bridgetenders fired for raising Chelsea Street Bridge with car still on it

Karyn Regal at WBZ Newsradio reports the company that runs the Chelsea Street Bridge has fired the two workers on duty when the bridge's center span rose with an occupied car on it on Friday.

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A woman was crushed on the meridian street side a few years back. Something in the water over there in Chelsea creek these bridge tenders need to be better vetted

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these bridge tenders need to be better vetted

Maybe it’s the bridge tenders. Or maybe it’s the designers.

https://humanisticsystems.com/2018/02/25/human-factors-and-ergonomics-lo...

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The people in the truck knew the bridge tenders and it was a pre-arranged stunt.

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I guess everyone is a stupid idiot who sucks, then.

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there are plenty of bridge tender's jobs around.

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File under... Duh

Firing them was an absolute. I still would like to know why they don't have digital fail safes in place.

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The video shows that multiple gates came down across the road at that end, and presumably at the other end, too. But there were no gates on the part of the span that went up. She could have easily driven (or walked, or jumped) right off the end of the roadway.

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What are they supposed to do if some person drives onto the bridge and refuses to get off? I bet this person was looking at their phone and WHOOPSIE!!! Give the bridge tenders back their jobs and take the driver's license away.

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What are they supposed to do if some person drives onto the bridge and refuses to get off?

Don't raise the bridge when there's a vehicle on it? I admit to complete ignorance of how this works, but wouldn't you think they'd visually verify that the bridge is clear before pushing the bridge-go-up button?

ETA: assuming there IS a bridge-go-up button...I sure hope so, and not that there's one button you push that activates the barriers and waits a set time and then just raises the section regardless of what's going on.

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What? Are you suggesting that even if they saw the car there they should raise it anyway?

This ranks right up there with driving into a crowd blocking the highway because "hey you shouldn't be protesting on the highway."

Even if the driver has any fault in ending up on the bridge , raising it would be reckless. If they saw the car and it wouldn't move, the proper response is to call the police and a tow truck. While the operators clearly were negligent here, I know they wouldnt lift it if they thought someone was on it though.

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Shouldn't the driver lose their license and the bridge tenders be fired?

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What are they supposed to do if some person drives onto the bridge and refuses to get off?

Call the cops? Or literally anything else except raise the bridge?

Unless there's a boat with a wounded orphan aboard who's trying to get to a hospital, I can't image it would ever be that urgent.

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Unless there's a boat with a wounded orphan aboard who's trying to get to a hospital

With a puppy. Gotta be a puppy in there.

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Pictures of the puppy, or no deal.

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will be those who left that railroad crossing deactivated in Wilmington.

Right?

(BTW, that deserved to be covered here)

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that a signal maintainer was to blame, there are still some unanswered questions.

Witnesses indicated that the gates didn’t come down before the crash. Yet, news footage of the scene taken after the crash shows that the gates were fully down. I don't doubt that the witnesses accounts are accurate, as it would explain how the woman ended up on the tracks. However, the question remains: How were the gates activated after the crash?

Railroad grade crossing systems operate on the principle that electricity is required to keep them deactivated (lights off, gates up). When a train approaches, it "shunts" the circuit, cutting off the current, and causing the signals to activate. It's designed to be "fail safe" - if there's no power for any reason, it activates.

Normally during maintenance or repairs, which could be anything from adjusting the resistance of a track circuit (this is often required in cold or snowy/rainy weather) to replacing components, signal technicians will intentionally energize the master control relay (usually with jumper wires) to prevent the lights and gates from activating while doing their work. This is done to minimize disruption to road traffic, but prevents the detection system from working as designed. However, overriding the ‘fail safe” in this manner disables the entire system, not just a portion of the system.

In rare occasions, including an especially tragic collision in McClean, Illinois in the late 1980s, signal technicians have been known to inadvertently leave the jumper wires connected, thus disabling the “fail safe” protection and rendering the crossing detection inoperative. While the signal technicians were eventually found in fault in these cases, this was only after weeks, if not months, of investigation by the NTSB or other agencies. Yet the MBTA assigns and announces fault in less than two days, and over a weekend to boot.

Not rushing to the signal maintainer's defense, but something doesn’t quite seem to add up here.

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Front page stories Sunday and Monday.

And social media north of the river got it too. I'm in Arlington, Wilmington is something like two towns up, and people around here do get off at West Medford and would have been delayed. So it was news.

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Have deleted that portion of my comment. Initially got a couple of stories about it on my Facebook feed Saturday morning, but they had been pulled when I went back to read them later

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People have been caught on the tracks with the gates coming down because it never occurred to them to not sit in traffic on the tracks.

That happened in Belmont a few years back.

Bottom line: if traffic is stopped, don't go onto the tracks until you can completely cross. Even if some jackass goes around you for not moving onto the tracks, don't do it! (yes, this has happened to me at West Medford before).

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The person is on leave pending investigation.

Because it may not have been their fault.

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What do you call it when a draw/lift bridge goes up while you're still on it? Is there a word for it?

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An uplifting experience?
A letdown?
A mood swing?

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When to raise it. Know when to drop it. Know when cars are still on there. Know when they're not. with apologies to Kenny Rodgers

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