Red Line service off by more than a smidge due to a disabled train in Cambridge

Not a derailment, one hopes, but the bustitution of Red Line service for Cambridge and Somerville is scheduled for most every weekend between mid-April and June.

The best comment in that Twitter thread: "You've turned ruining the weekends of Cambervillington residents into an art form."

The crossover which allows trains to change tracks at Kendall is a tight-radius track and has to be hand-operated, meaning trains have to go through very slowly and it is really only designed for emergency use.

Which is fine, but they've spent much of the past decade rerouting trains through it, especially during the Longfellow construction, while at the same time paying crews to stand in the tunnel and throw the switch. It really was just a matter of time before a train went off (although there are myriad reasons this could happen) and they're just lucky it didn't happen when they were running trains from Kendall north, which would have meant a populated train.

In any case, the fact that the T didn't look at the upcoming construction in 2013 and say to MassDOT "add a few dollars to the Longfellow bill and put in a crossover for us so we can run better, safer service" means that we are stuck today with this sort of poor infrastructure. It's almost as if there is no one there paying any attention to anything other than putting out yesterday's fires, which of course creates more in the future.

As I am reading this waiting for a train, the red line is still highly disfunctional; this is my third red line trip in two weekends and each time covering 4 to 6 mile is taking an hour or more. Communication is also terrible, except for the voice that keeps blaring face mask required way too loudly.
To my regret, I am finally joining the growing number of people for whom the T is becoming the transportation of last resort.