Signal troubles on the Green Line downtown, dead train at Eliot, roadway problems on the 5 Silver Line, dead train somewhere on the Red Line between JFK/UMass and Park Street, but at least the Orange and Blue lines are running OK.
Laura Vogel reports:
New record: door (North End) to door (Kendall Sq) travel time is 51 mins due to Red Line "delays." To be fair, it IS 2.6 miles.
Curse you, malfunctioning signals!
Dan Dunn reports a nearly hour-long ride from Davis to Kendall.
Hoppzor wonders why these signal problems so often occur when it rains:
every time it rains there are mbta signal problems at harvard or alewife. pretty sure these stations are underground.
Also, I probably only find the following funny because I'm sitting nice and dry inside: The T reports it has to divert some Silver Line service in South Boston because of a ship docking at the Black Falcon Pier and advises: "Passengers are encouraged to walk out to Dry Dock Ave. for bus service." Dry Dock Ave.? This morning? More like Wet Dock Ave., amirite?
The MBTA says new Silver Line 4 service will get riders from Dudley Station to South Station in 30 minutes, with the first, ceremonial, run scheduled for 1 p.m. on Tuesday.
Buses are scheduled for every 10 minutes during rush hour and 15 minutes the rest of the day. T officials say federal stimulus money was used to get the service started.
The existing Dudley-to-Downtown-Crossing service is now SL5. SL3, which served part of the South Boston waterfront, was discontinued.
Kalunlee posts a photo of three Silver Line buses in the wild, all bunched together in a convoy; adds:
This is a typical occurrence-30+ min waiting & then 3 buses blow by.
Ed. note: It's hard to break them of this natural habit, which protects them in the wild from roaming packs of busiraptors.
$2.8-billion project cut from state wish list, Wicked Local Cambridge reports.
Also gone forever: The long-fabled Blue Line extension to Lynn, our own Arborway reports.
On the plus side: The Silver Line is still going to become an even longer bus route.
T workers weren't even done putting up a new map at Government Center when somebody rushed over to figure out how to get from A to B.
The MBTA today kicked off a two-year, $500,000 project to replace every single map at T stations. Download a hi-def copy of the new map (870k PDF).
Highlights: The updated maps show a new Sliver Line 4, which will provide direct service from Dudley to South Station starting next month (on surface roads; no, the T didn't build a secret tunnel), and, on the Green Line, riders will get to see which line actually goes all the way to Lechmere (the E) and which end before Lechmere:
The MBTA says it's shutting down its GPS-based arrival system along Washington Street tomorrow to comply with a federal mandate to change the frequencies used by the system.
The T says it expects to have the system up and running by Sept. 24. The FCC is forcing the T to change frequencies to keep the system from possibly interfering with public-safety services. The T adds:
In addition, Global Positioning System (GPS) technology will be unavailable to dispatchers in the MBTA's Bus Operations Control Center. As a result, bus dispatchers will not have the capability of making real time schedule adjustments. As the MBTA’s mobile radios are reprogrammed, they will begin to migrate over to the new frequency set and begin to populate the data system. Completion is slated for September 24th, but communications personnel are determined to complete the transition before that date.
Takes the 28 this morning to see just how much marvier life for riders will be when it transmogrifies into the 28X Super Bus, which I know because Alex Owens is live-twittering the ride:
... Aloisi and Chang-Diaz getting breakfast @ Brother's...
Ed. question: Is there any station in all of T-land with a better name than Ruggles? I'd rank it even higher than Wonderland.
This week's Friday-afternoon issue: Disabled Green Line train at Haymarket.
Also heavy delays reported on the bus rapid transit line due to traffic on Washington Street.
It's a short list, Lynne tweets: someone PULLING A KNIFE ON THE BUS DRIVER ON THE SILVER LINE AND THREATENING HER.
She adds:
Said person was off the bus with her toddler when this all went down; situation resolved by driving away from inbound Herald St stop.
They have lots of gravel roads in the country. Bill Daras posts some photos showing that the Silver Line tunnel past South Station is becoming a gravel road as well:
... If someone paved your driveway so that it felt like a dirt road, was flooded 24/7 and started to turn back to gravel after five years you would have the contractor rip it up and start again. In Boston you just let it go, and ask for over a billion dollars to do it all over again.
Josh Stevens ranks various airports on their ground transportation and declares Logan "most bewildering" because of the Silver Line:
If a camel is a horse designed by committee, then Boston's Silver Line BRT (with scant emphasis on the "R") is a transit line designed by a committee of camels. In the course of a 20-minute trip to South Station, the Silver Line seems to pass through every stage of man and a few states of matter to boot. ...
Via Robert David Sullivan, who wonders if Stevens would have appreciated the Silver Line more if he'd also tried either a cab or the shuttle bus/Blue Line.
At the rate cost estimates for the "Little Dig" Silver Line project are rising, it will eventually surpass the Big Dig - in cost, at least.
And if the project never gets funded? Well, turns out the MBTA has plenty of other tunnels to play with.
UPDATE: The 28X project is dead.
The state will use $114 million in federal stimulus funds to build enhanced bus corridors along Washington Street and Blue Hill Avenue over the next three years, officials announced at a Dudley Station ceremony today.
Most immediately, Dudley will get a direct Silver Line connection to South Station this fall - which brought exclamations of joy from state Rep. Bryon Rushing, because the plan does not involve a billion-dollar tunnel under the Common.
"The tunnel is dead! The tunnel is dead!" he yelled.
Here's a longish interview with Walter Hook, director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in which he extols the virtues of "bus rapid transit" systems as being able to provide as good service as trolleys at a fraction of the cost in crowded urban areas.
Well, in most cases:
... Of course, you can mess up a BRT system, and Boston's Silver Line proved that you could waste almost as much money on BRT as you can on a rail system. ...
Via CommonWealth Unbound.
P.S. MBTA, I think I was a bit too hard on you in my previous letter. Today my commute was quick and painless. Miracle of miracles, when I arrived at my usually crowded above-ground stop on the green line this morning, an EMPTY train was waiting, and mind you, that station is not at the beginning or end of a line. How did you know that I couldn't have asked for a better occurrence on a Friday? Did you read my post from my yesterday? Not only was the train not overly crowded but the ride was relatively smooth and non-jerky.
The Kane County Chronicle reports the suburban-Chicago county is looking at the Silver Line as a way to improve bus service along a crowded corridor. Officials there are looking forward to dedicated bus lanes and manipulating traffic signals to speed buses.
Wait, what did you say?
Because they don't think the in-debt-to-its-eyeballs T can come up with its 40% share of the $1.5-billion bus tunnel, the Globe reports.
The Outraged Liberal can't wait, says this might finally be the kick in the teeth the state needs to come up with an actual, serious plan for dealing with all of the region's transportation issues:
... But then again, this is Massachusetts. If we could tax words, we would be swimming in cash.
On Switchback, Bill picks up on something in that recently released proposal for improving Boston Common: That city councilors Mike Ross, Bill Linehan and Sal LaMattina really wish the MBTA would stop with all this nonsense about putting a Silver Line tunnel under the park. They write:
The Silverline project will rip up the entire stretch of the Common along Charles Street for up to 10 years, for the staging area for heavy equipment. It will snarl traffic as they close a lane for the construction of a new tunnel, and it will make an entire stretch of the Common nearly unusable during that time. All of this will be done for the purpose of putting in bus transit that is unnecessary, when tunnels already exist for light rail, and when it is nearly universally agreed that the bus system as set up does not work, and is not nearly as effective or efficient as light rail.
The Silverline Project is a mistake. The plans in place will disturb sacred grounds, such as the historic graveyard. Unused light rail tunnels already exist below ground, and the MBTA, with its multimillion dollar deficit, should be looking at ways it can build a system around what is there, and ensuring that we have opportunities to become a greener, more efficient city while not tearing up our precious parks system during the construction.
Ed. note: The T has a multi-billion dollar deficit.
Train Rider managed to get wet hair without even stepping out of South Station this morning:
... While I was waiting for the Silver Line, another commuter dropped their orange juice all over me and some guy. The person was walking down the stairs and the OJ fell over. It actually spilled on my head. So my hair is all crusty now. ...
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
