6 ms·

Narrow tracks forcing trains to creep at walking pace on Boston's newest subway

48 points by mhb 3y ago

hprotagonist 3y ago
welcome to the joys of the first adopter paradox. and the ear-splitting squeals coming in to copley, park street, arlington, boylston,…
- mhb 3y ago
  How does that apply? It's an extension of an existing rail line.
  - AndrewStephens 3y ago
    The Boston green line is one of the oldest subways in the world and it shows.
    - gottorf 3y ago
      The GLX, which is the part in question, is brand new. It definitely should not show.
      - hprotagonist 3y ago
        it’ll show if the rail gauge matters for speed, which it does. doesn’t matter how old the carriages are. https://www.universalhub.com/2023/out-mouths-babes-green-line-extension-edition https://www.universalhub.com/2023/out-mouths-babes-green-lin...
        gottorf 3y ago
        I'm not sure I follow. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Green Line (all of it, old and the Extension) use standard gauge tracks. The current problem with the Extension is that the brand new tracks are unstable and the parallel rails are collapsing into each other ("narrowing"). So it has nothing to do with the age of the rest of the system or the carriages, and everything to do with shoddy construction.
        pivo 3y ago
        Yes, that’s my understanding, and my experience. The green line on the older tracks seems to be normal.
        hprotagonist 3y ago
        fair enough. what i was getting at was that even well made new construction inherits many constraints from the rest of the line, though it does ease others.
    - martinald 3y ago
      ...but the actual oldest subway line in the world (between Paddington and Farringdon in London) works great. Recently got CBTC enabled so can handle 32tph (though doesn't actually run at that, though the not much newer southern half of the circle line does).
      - cpursley 3y ago
        Yep, and the old ones in Hungary work well as well!
      - hprotagonist 3y ago
        i bet you’ve upgraded your rail gauge geometry since original construction. i’m much less confident that we have. or redone the tunnel layouts, hence all the squealing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
runeofdoom 3y ago
https://archive.ph/cBV45 https://archive.ph/cBV45
gottorf 3y ago
Really makes you wonder if they have a point about elite overproduction. Greater Boston has 70+ colleges and a very highly educated population, arguably the most well-educated among all large metros in the country[0]; yet with a budget of half a billion dollars per mile, they ended up with something broken, with something as fundamental as the track gauge! [0]: https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-public-affairs-and-community-service/governing/stories/educational-attainment-data-for-metro-areas.php https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-public-affairs-and-commun...
- paleotrope 3y ago
  It's about regulatory capture. The chief thing to understand about the MBTA (and many other things about metro Boston), is it's a patronage system at heart. Jobs to friends, and jobs to allies. That's it. Stripping the system and the public in order to pay for nice homes on the Cape, and to pay for nice retirements in NH and Maine.
  - grotted 3y ago
    MBTA administration is day camp for the adult children of Boston Brahmins. The operations department, OTOH, is full of the hardest working and most passionate people you’ll ever meet. Naturally, those operations jobs tend to attract more transit riders and lovers, who are disproportionately POCs, low income, or disabled. But the working conditions are abusive and exploitative - especially for anyone who cares enough to speak up about the dysfunction. Check out the FTC’s report on dispatcher shift lengths, for example. Or TransitCenter’s report on obstacles to operations hiring. The T can’t hire bus drivers, even with a $7k signing bonus, a massive ad campaign, and a recession. It’s worth asking why. If the T ever improves, it will be because the people who rely on it are in charge. But your assessment is bang on. Given how much power those in charge have amassed, I don’t see it happening.
AndrewStephens 3y ago
Boston public transport is a mess due to long years of underfunding and neglect. The pandemic and the general crappiness of service has hit rider numbers hard and I fear that the Boston subway system is in a death spiral. The new line extension was a rare bit of good news and a welcome addition but having badly laid track is all to common here. I actually rode the tracks in question last month and remarked how smooth they seemed compared to the rest of the green line. I guess that was too good to last.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > due to long years of underfunding and neglect I'm not sure how much more funding it could possibly get? Even before the pandemic, the T was only pulling in roughly a third of its operating expenses in revenue[0], meaning the other two thirds was paid for by other sources. Notably, operating income wasn't even enough to pay wages and benefits for MBTA employees. The majority of those "other sources" was transfers from the state sales tax[1], meaning people living in Worcester, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Chatham were contributing to a system they don't use. Since the pandemic, public transit systems all across the country took a huge hit in ridership, and received federal funding as well, so now you have people living in California, Kansas, and Mississippi all chipping in, too. Now I understand that taxation provides for the common welfare, and everyone subsidizes everybody else at some point, but with Greater Boston having the fifth-highest per capita income of all metros[2], I find it a little strange that the T requires such a great subsidy. [0]: https://www.mbta.com/financials/audited-financials https://www.mbta.com/financials/audited-financials [1]: https://www.mbta.com/financials/mbta-budget https://www.mbta.com/financials/mbta-budget [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/610026/us-metropolitan-areas-with-the-highest-per-capita-income/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/610026/us-metropolitan-a...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - nobodywasishere 3y ago
    The funding for the T has to come from the state due to how it's structured, meaning the only possible way for funding to increase is for it to come out of the state budget. I agree that it should be handled at a city/local level.
cpursley 3y ago
Meanwhile: "Operated as Line 11 of the Moscow Metro, the BCL has a total length of 70km and is 13km longer than Line 10 in Beijing. Line 11 now serves a total of 31 stations" - https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/metros/big-circle-line-completed-in-moscow https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/metros/big-circle-line... - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spotlight/moscow-metro-launches-the-worlds-longest-circle-line-the-big-circle-line/articleshow/99788050.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spotlight/moscow-metro-l... - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCRvODzM5Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCRvODzM5Ck And even Africa is laying track and opening more metro stations than the US: - https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/start-lagos-metro-offers-dramatically-reduced-journey-times-2023-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/start-lagos-metro-offer... - https://www.africanews.com/2023/09/05/nigeria-lagos-blue-rail-line-project-begins-operations/ https://www.africanews.com/2023/09/05/nigeria-lagos-blue-rai... - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I43y3BwmIFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I43y3BwmIFk
- huytersd 3y ago
  Don’t forget India. It’s putting massive metros in all its major cities and connecting them with semi-high speed medium and long distance trains as well at a crazy pace. All indigenously built. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_India?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_India?wprov... https://themetrorailguy.com/metro-rail-projects-in-india/ https://themetrorailguy.com/metro-rail-projects-in-india/
- cpursley 3y ago
  Why can’t we also have nice things like this: https://youtu.be/HACaRm2KP6Q?si=jVU5MuflfJsPKWN6 https://youtu.be/HACaRm2KP6Q?si=jVU5MuflfJsPKWN6
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  Often overlooked is the number of Latin American cities with large metro systems. It was a pleasant surprise when traveling there.
- sofixa 3y ago
  Similarly, Paris is building 200km+ of new fully automated, fully grade separated, mostly underground metro covering the Paris metro area, and using the opportunity for urban redevelopment as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express
light_hue_1 3y ago
The MBTA is a disgrace and shows the incredible level of corruption in Massachusetts. Half of all rail accidents are due to the MBTA and over 90% of all injuries. Workers routinely fake results. Corporations fake work. The MBTA and more broadly MA infrastructure is falling apart. I've never lived in a state with such disastrously bad drivers and roads. Oh and the police refuse to enforce traffic laws here (the state tried to literally pay our city to ask the police to enforce traffic laws and they refused so we had to return the money; sitting around construction sites doing nothing is easier). Our city tried to sue one of the DoT contractors that damaged city infrastructure and caused many safety violations. DoT stepped in behind our back at a closed meeting the city wasn't allowed to attend and gave the contractor a special exemption that cleared their record and made them immune. Even though the law says they shouldn't be allowed to get new contracts for several years after such shoddy work.
xnx 3y ago
One of a hundred ways buses tend to be the better choice for public transit. No specialized tracks, flexible routes, flexible capacity, etc.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Flexible routes = unpredictable. Flexible capacity = attempts at over optimization = not trusting that capacity will be there = unpredictable. Shared infrastructure with roads and following road laws = all the inconvenience of traffic jams. Flexible routes may be nice on a multi-year timetable but still runs into the jam issues above. So if we are going to build dedicated lanes with special signal crossings and high capacity to encourage a large population to use it, let's make it as efficient as possible - a rail track is much more efficient than tires, and electricity is better than directly burning fuel, and delivering electricity through rail is better than battery.
  - Robotbeat 3y ago
    Bus rapid transit exists, is much cheaper than rail, solves nearly all these problems while making the infrastructure far cheaper (due to ability to climb grade, etc). They’re often lighter than trains, they can be much more granular (so you don’t need an entire train at low rider volumes), so the efficiency can be closer to a wash than people would like. Especially with trolley buses or battery electric buses (or BEST, the combination ones).
    - dwallin 3y ago
      It’s not an either/or situation. You have a bunch of tools with pros and cons and you have to use the proper tool where each one is most appropriate. The best transportation systems are a blend of transportation types. Use rail where the benefits are worth the cost and buses where they are not. There also many incremental options in between.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  Narrow buses (or long transit vans) in sewer tunnels. Get ‘er done.
MrFoof 3y ago
This is just the new green line extension, which for a brand new multi-billion dollar line extension, is bad enough. Take the Red Line? You might be seeing 56-88 minutes of delays (compared to years ago) compared to years prior, per data published by Transit Matters (https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/red/ https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/red/). Long distance trips (as in, much of the entire line) that took 40 minutes taking more than twice as long now. In 2019 a train derailed taking out a signal house (https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2019/09/16/red-line-derailment-report/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2019/09/16/red-line-dera...). Per the TransitMatters chart, immediately after the derailment the average delays were about a half hour, but it’s since grown to twice to triple that! The result is Red Line service is now under 60% of pre-pandemic service levels, with only about 45-50% of its previous ridership. (https://recovery.transitmatters.org/ https://recovery.transitmatters.org/)
nerdjon 3y ago
The MBTA is a joke at this point and it is going to hurt the city. Parts of the red line run horribly slow due to signaling issues (no idea when that is being fixed). Those same parts are shut down on weekends and after 9pm (something like that, I don't know the exact time) and replaced with shuttles. The green line extension has been great when it worked but its been a mess. Taking the green line and being stranded in a tunnel with no updates. Eventually multiple if us just got off and took Lyfts to where we were going. The new trains had multiple issues. The Fires and I am sure plenty of other things I am forgetting about. I made a conscious choice to not own a car but I am finding myself spending more and more on taking Lyfts because it just isn't reliable. Then traffic gets worse and it is just a really bad situation.
- selectionbias 3y ago
  I used to live in Boston and visited recently for the first time in a while. The red line was so slow between Central Square and Harvard that I thought there must have been some kind of mechanical failure, but when I mentioned it to friends afterwards they said that it had been like that for months.

48 points by mhb 3y ago

welcome to the joys of the first adopter paradox. and the ear-splitting squeals coming in to copley, park street, arlington, boylston,…

mhb 3y ago
How does that apply? It's an extension of an existing rail line.
- AndrewStephens 3y ago
  The Boston green line is one of the oldest subways in the world and it shows.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    The GLX, which is the part in question, is brand new. It definitely should not show.
    - hprotagonist 3y ago
      it’ll show if the rail gauge matters for speed, which it does. doesn’t matter how old the carriages are. https://www.universalhub.com/2023/out-mouths-babes-green-line-extension-edition https://www.universalhub.com/2023/out-mouths-babes-green-lin...
      - gottorf 3y ago
        I'm not sure I follow. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Green Line (all of it, old and the Extension) use standard gauge tracks. The current problem with the Extension is that the brand new tracks are unstable and the parallel rails are collapsing into each other ("narrowing"). So it has nothing to do with the age of the rest of the system or the carriages, and everything to do with shoddy construction.
        pivo 3y ago
        Yes, that’s my understanding, and my experience. The green line on the older tracks seems to be normal.
        hprotagonist 3y ago
        fair enough. what i was getting at was that even well made new construction inherits many constraints from the rest of the line, though it does ease others.
  - martinald 3y ago
    ...but the actual oldest subway line in the world (between Paddington and Farringdon in London) works great. Recently got CBTC enabled so can handle 32tph (though doesn't actually run at that, though the not much newer southern half of the circle line does).
    - cpursley 3y ago
      Yep, and the old ones in Hungary work well as well!
    - hprotagonist 3y ago
      i bet you’ve upgraded your rail gauge geometry since original construction. i’m much less confident that we have. or redone the tunnel layouts, hence all the squealing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

runeofdoom 3y ago

https://archive.ph/cBV45 https://archive.ph/cBV45

gottorf 3y ago

Really makes you wonder if they have a point about elite overproduction. Greater Boston has 70+ colleges and a very highly educated population, arguably the most well-educated among all large metros in the country[0]; yet with a budget of half a billion dollars per mile, they ended up with something broken, with something as fundamental as the track gauge! [0]: https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-public-affairs-and-community-service/governing/stories/educational-attainment-data-for-metro-areas.php https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-public-affairs-and-commun...

paleotrope 3y ago
It's about regulatory capture. The chief thing to understand about the MBTA (and many other things about metro Boston), is it's a patronage system at heart. Jobs to friends, and jobs to allies. That's it. Stripping the system and the public in order to pay for nice homes on the Cape, and to pay for nice retirements in NH and Maine.
- grotted 3y ago
  MBTA administration is day camp for the adult children of Boston Brahmins. The operations department, OTOH, is full of the hardest working and most passionate people you’ll ever meet. Naturally, those operations jobs tend to attract more transit riders and lovers, who are disproportionately POCs, low income, or disabled. But the working conditions are abusive and exploitative - especially for anyone who cares enough to speak up about the dysfunction. Check out the FTC’s report on dispatcher shift lengths, for example. Or TransitCenter’s report on obstacles to operations hiring. The T can’t hire bus drivers, even with a $7k signing bonus, a massive ad campaign, and a recession. It’s worth asking why. If the T ever improves, it will be because the people who rely on it are in charge. But your assessment is bang on. Given how much power those in charge have amassed, I don’t see it happening.

AndrewStephens 3y ago

Boston public transport is a mess due to long years of underfunding and neglect. The pandemic and the general crappiness of service has hit rider numbers hard and I fear that the Boston subway system is in a death spiral. The new line extension was a rare bit of good news and a welcome addition but having badly laid track is all to common here. I actually rode the tracks in question last month and remarked how smooth they seemed compared to the rest of the green line. I guess that was too good to last.

gottorf 3y ago
> due to long years of underfunding and neglect I'm not sure how much more funding it could possibly get? Even before the pandemic, the T was only pulling in roughly a third of its operating expenses in revenue[0], meaning the other two thirds was paid for by other sources. Notably, operating income wasn't even enough to pay wages and benefits for MBTA employees. The majority of those "other sources" was transfers from the state sales tax[1], meaning people living in Worcester, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Chatham were contributing to a system they don't use. Since the pandemic, public transit systems all across the country took a huge hit in ridership, and received federal funding as well, so now you have people living in California, Kansas, and Mississippi all chipping in, too. Now I understand that taxation provides for the common welfare, and everyone subsidizes everybody else at some point, but with Greater Boston having the fifth-highest per capita income of all metros[2], I find it a little strange that the T requires such a great subsidy. [0]: https://www.mbta.com/financials/audited-financials https://www.mbta.com/financials/audited-financials [1]: https://www.mbta.com/financials/mbta-budget https://www.mbta.com/financials/mbta-budget [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/610026/us-metropolitan-areas-with-the-highest-per-capita-income/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/610026/us-metropolitan-a...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nobodywasishere 3y ago
  The funding for the T has to come from the state due to how it's structured, meaning the only possible way for funding to increase is for it to come out of the state budget. I agree that it should be handled at a city/local level.

cpursley 3y ago

Meanwhile: "Operated as Line 11 of the Moscow Metro, the BCL has a total length of 70km and is 13km longer than Line 10 in Beijing. Line 11 now serves a total of 31 stations" - https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/metros/big-circle-line-completed-in-moscow https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/metros/big-circle-line... - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spotlight/moscow-metro-launches-the-worlds-longest-circle-line-the-big-circle-line/articleshow/99788050.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spotlight/moscow-metro-l... - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCRvODzM5Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCRvODzM5Ck And even Africa is laying track and opening more metro stations than the US: - https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/start-lagos-metro-offers-dramatically-reduced-journey-times-2023-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/start-lagos-metro-offer... - https://www.africanews.com/2023/09/05/nigeria-lagos-blue-rail-line-project-begins-operations/ https://www.africanews.com/2023/09/05/nigeria-lagos-blue-rai... - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I43y3BwmIFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I43y3BwmIFk

huytersd 3y ago
Don’t forget India. It’s putting massive metros in all its major cities and connecting them with semi-high speed medium and long distance trains as well at a crazy pace. All indigenously built. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_India?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_India?wprov... https://themetrorailguy.com/metro-rail-projects-in-india/ https://themetrorailguy.com/metro-rail-projects-in-india/
cpursley 3y ago
Why can’t we also have nice things like this: https://youtu.be/HACaRm2KP6Q?si=jVU5MuflfJsPKWN6 https://youtu.be/HACaRm2KP6Q?si=jVU5MuflfJsPKWN6
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Often overlooked is the number of Latin American cities with large metro systems. It was a pleasant surprise when traveling there.
sofixa 3y ago
Similarly, Paris is building 200km+ of new fully automated, fully grade separated, mostly underground metro covering the Paris metro area, and using the opportunity for urban redevelopment as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express

light_hue_1 3y ago

The MBTA is a disgrace and shows the incredible level of corruption in Massachusetts. Half of all rail accidents are due to the MBTA and over 90% of all injuries. Workers routinely fake results. Corporations fake work. The MBTA and more broadly MA infrastructure is falling apart. I've never lived in a state with such disastrously bad drivers and roads. Oh and the police refuse to enforce traffic laws here (the state tried to literally pay our city to ask the police to enforce traffic laws and they refused so we had to return the money; sitting around construction sites doing nothing is easier). Our city tried to sue one of the DoT contractors that damaged city infrastructure and caused many safety violations. DoT stepped in behind our back at a closed meeting the city wasn't allowed to attend and gave the contractor a special exemption that cleared their record and made them immune. Even though the law says they shouldn't be allowed to get new contracts for several years after such shoddy work.

xnx 3y ago

One of a hundred ways buses tend to be the better choice for public transit. No specialized tracks, flexible routes, flexible capacity, etc.

unethical_ban 3y ago
Flexible routes = unpredictable. Flexible capacity = attempts at over optimization = not trusting that capacity will be there = unpredictable. Shared infrastructure with roads and following road laws = all the inconvenience of traffic jams. Flexible routes may be nice on a multi-year timetable but still runs into the jam issues above. So if we are going to build dedicated lanes with special signal crossings and high capacity to encourage a large population to use it, let's make it as efficient as possible - a rail track is much more efficient than tires, and electricity is better than directly burning fuel, and delivering electricity through rail is better than battery.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  Bus rapid transit exists, is much cheaper than rail, solves nearly all these problems while making the infrastructure far cheaper (due to ability to climb grade, etc). They’re often lighter than trains, they can be much more granular (so you don’t need an entire train at low rider volumes), so the efficiency can be closer to a wash than people would like. Especially with trolley buses or battery electric buses (or BEST, the combination ones).
  - dwallin 3y ago
    It’s not an either/or situation. You have a bunch of tools with pros and cons and you have to use the proper tool where each one is most appropriate. The best transportation systems are a blend of transportation types. Use rail where the benefits are worth the cost and buses where they are not. There also many incremental options in between.
Robotbeat 3y ago
Narrow buses (or long transit vans) in sewer tunnels. Get ‘er done.

MrFoof 3y ago

This is just the new green line extension, which for a brand new multi-billion dollar line extension, is bad enough. Take the Red Line? You might be seeing 56-88 minutes of delays (compared to years ago) compared to years prior, per data published by Transit Matters (https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/red/ https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/red/). Long distance trips (as in, much of the entire line) that took 40 minutes taking more than twice as long now. In 2019 a train derailed taking out a signal house (https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2019/09/16/red-line-derailment-report/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2019/09/16/red-line-dera...). Per the TransitMatters chart, immediately after the derailment the average delays were about a half hour, but it’s since grown to twice to triple that! The result is Red Line service is now under 60% of pre-pandemic service levels, with only about 45-50% of its previous ridership. (https://recovery.transitmatters.org/ https://recovery.transitmatters.org/)

nerdjon 3y ago

The MBTA is a joke at this point and it is going to hurt the city. Parts of the red line run horribly slow due to signaling issues (no idea when that is being fixed). Those same parts are shut down on weekends and after 9pm (something like that, I don't know the exact time) and replaced with shuttles. The green line extension has been great when it worked but its been a mess. Taking the green line and being stranded in a tunnel with no updates. Eventually multiple if us just got off and took Lyfts to where we were going. The new trains had multiple issues. The Fires and I am sure plenty of other things I am forgetting about. I made a conscious choice to not own a car but I am finding myself spending more and more on taking Lyfts because it just isn't reliable. Then traffic gets worse and it is just a really bad situation.

selectionbias 3y ago
I used to live in Boston and visited recently for the first time in a while. The red line was so slow between Central Square and Harvard that I thought there must have been some kind of mechanical failure, but when I mentioned it to friends afterwards they said that it had been like that for months.