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The incompetence of the State Legislature still continues under Baker and now Healey.

You mean the MBTA weren't honest with us? How will we ever recover from the surprise?

Along with these OL slow zones, they also haven't fixed the slow zone along the Lechmere Viaduct which was supposed to be part of the shutdown work /:

Orange has been extra fun lately.

Was anyone at Wellington this morning? Aside from the 30+ minute wait between trains, I thought I heard them say someone had gotten an electrical shock on the platform and that they were going to use shuttles to oak grove. Did anyone else hear that?

I have some hope with Healey prioritizing the T, but not a ton.

She does seem to have directed the transit police to start enforcing bus lanes.

>incompetence of the State Legislature still c

Imagine thinking they have control over the state legislature. The only way this is resolved is by voting in new reps that give a shiat.

https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/slowzones?chartView=line&selectedLines=Orange&direction=northbound

According to Transit Matters, they did fix it, but it was then later reinstated, so this title is a little misleading.

The governor absolutely has political influence over the legislature.

Boston residents' relationship with the T is increasingly feeling like a hostage situation.

I think I saw on Twitter recently that the T has said they're waiting on some kind of track part and will fix it in February. Take that with a grain of salt.

It's nice to see slow zones being fixed, but if they have to pick a line, shouldn't they focus on the Red? It is absolutely riddled with slow zones now, especially in the south.

For those behind the paywall:

> In a tweet Tuesday, the MBTA said it will shut down the Orange Line in both directions between Ruggles Station and North Station and the Green Line between Government Center Station and North Station “for work on the Government Center Garage” on Jan. 28 and 29. In response to questions from the Globe about why the Orange Line will be shutdown outside of the immediate area where the garage is located, T spokesperson Joe Pesaturo said crews will perform “additional track work, including the replacement of rail fasteners, between Back Bay and Ruggles Stations” unrelated to the private garage.

Here is the image attached to the tweet.

So they just flat out lied.

Forget the orange line:

why does it take fucking 45minutes to get from Braintree to JFK? Its 6 stops, its not that fucking hard.

I could get a fucking cab in to Umass and it would take like HALF that time.

Fix the damn T. I don't know what engineers the T hires, but let's look for ones with GPAs higher than 2 in the future. We've had trains since the 1800s in this city, so maybe the engineers should study how the engineering was originally done. Now they have fancy software and tons of tech to help and they still can't get it done.

I'm not an engineer, but I don't think third rails and wheels on tracks are particularly confusing things. Electricity and mechanics, that's what engineers take in their first year. The T always finds PR chumps to explain away slow zones, but if someone can run faster than the train, there is clearly a major issue.

What am I missing? Are the T engineers still using slide rules?

It's been three weeks lmao, what exactly did you want her to do, travel back in time to make sure they did what they were supposed to in the fall? Force them back into session earlier than this week, in an overreach of power?

Meanwhile the Red Line is literally disintegrating.

Yeah i like how this person calls it "under" Healey as though it isn't two separate branches of government. Literally civics 101

If you repair something and it breaks again a few months later I wouldn't call it a "fix".

I was at malden around the same time it sounds like. Took forever to get the train. Then they were going super slow because of “track work”. Then they stopped right before Wellington because someone “fell in the pit”. But we were only held up for a couple of minutes because of that.

I mean thats what it is at this point

Transit matters was tweeting that the red line slow zones are actually worse than 2019 after a train derailment took out a signals box

The MBTA sucks. I've got no patience for the way it sucks away people's lives, leaving us to find meaning in standing on cold, ugly train platforms, standing forlornly on a street corner waiting for a bus, taking shallow breaths because I am jammed into some jerk's backpack on an overfull subway. The T makes me late to pick up my kids, makes me anxious about being late to work (never really know when that bus is going to arrive, do ya?), and costs far more than it is worth.

I'm just confused at this point

I moved here due to the highly rated mass transit services based on the research I did. Had I known it was all a lie, I'd have kept my bike to get around the city.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined

We really need to ban boston globe posts now that they have a hard pay wall.

I doubt anybody is surprised at this though. You can't overhaul everything in a month. Whatever they say it will take you have to at least double it at a minimum and quintuple the budget.

What is your expectation of warranty?

6 months? 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? 100 years? 1000 years?

For fuuuuuuuuuucks sake

Taylor Dolven at the Globe posted part of the T's internal slow zone log: https://twitter.com/taydolven/status/1618374834723098631

Note how the OL slow zones are pretty much all in the areas the T "fixed" last year, and also the sheer size of them: a half mile north of Assembly, a quarter mile south of Tufts and south of North Station.

And, of course, note the start of the huge cropped-out list of slow zones on the Red.

I dunno what this is going to take to fix. I have to imagine the T needs a huge expansion of its maintenance-of-way staff paired with months-to-years of shutdowns and surges.

17+ minute wait at North Station for an OL train at 8:45 am today.

Transit hub. Rush hour. 17+ minutes. Inexcusable.

Yes, force them back into session.

And remember it’s really all the management and governors fault! None of it has anything to do with our fine union mbta workers!

also, I may be mistaken, but aren't the worst slow zones north of where the closure is? I guess it's more trafficked through downtown but fixing the slow zones on the north end of the line would do a lot more to reduce headways

They were slowed by the new mandate to install life preservers in each car.

slow zones are the worst near jfk rn.

I meant for orange line, but yes the red line slow zones are worse south of JFK

It sucks that they have to do more work even after the month-long shutdown, but it does make sense to do that while they already need to run shuttles for the garage work.

I believe it. I’m wasting money on Uber to get to work on time because no matter how early I leave the Red Line screws me. And now they’ve been doing two Braintree and then two Ashmont, doubling the already shitty time.

Was just saying this. I’m blowing so much money on Uber.

So what you are saying is…4 years later, the signal box is still destroyed.

Can they not do repairs during the night? Noise at night is less important than the ramifications from this.

I came here to say this. It took 35 minutes to get from North Quincy to Broadway yesterday. I commute from Quincy Center to Downtown but that small stretch is ridiculous right now.

When the Orange Line shutdown was proposed, I argued on here that it was a horrible idea. Washington DC WMATA started using the approach after 2009 and instead of quickly fixing things, it mean riders had to face closures while maintenance still dragged on for a decade. They also recently announced that in the summer they are closing a subway section that was just closed 2 years ago.

I also argued that in reality, its a labor cost saving. While they present it as 30 days of 24/7 work, it basically ends up being that they shift construction to between 8am and 4pm, instead of paying inflated evening or overnight labor rates. They also dont hire more people. Contrast that to Japan where a closure means 1,000 staff go HAM on the line 24/7 so its open for Monday morning.

I hate that I was right.

It was good 15 years ago.

Infrastructure is typically 30 years

Not every twelve hour job can be done in two six hour stints.

Flip side of this: as an Ashmont rider there was nothing more frustrating that hitting back to back Braintree trains and then the next Ashmont train is full. Which (pre-Covid) happened all the time at peak hours.

Even if you managed to get on it was miserable, packed until the end of the line.

But why run both back to back? I always assumed there was some ridership data to back up running 2 Braintree 1 Ashmont - but if they have they same number of trains in service why wouldn’t you just alternate?

Exactly!! I can’t think of any reason running them back to back makes sense. Especially given how slow they go.

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Ah yes, the union train drivers who sneak on to the rails each night to dig them up just to slow your commute down. Get a grip

Maybe it has something to do with switching at JFK?

(I may just be outing myself as knowing nothing about how the trains work, IDK)

Why am I surprised

oh my bad

Paid for parking at the Braintree garage via the forced bullshit app. Two weeks later get a non-payment violation in the mail and then had my appeal denied. Straight up robbery. The MBTA can get fucked and I will be recouping my $10 and quite frankly, I might just say fuck it from here on out. I'm almost 30 now, I could use the early morning climb to get the blood pumping.

I spent 2018-2020 working on Albany and Mass Ave. Used to get to Kendall at 5:40-45 AM. Then SHTF and that slowly kept creeping up. Thankfully, I haven't had to work in Cambridge since 2020 but unfortunately now I am once again working in the PRC. Routinely show up at Kendall at or minutes past 6 AM. It depends on how long the doors stay open at each stop to let the freezing cold air in and then those nice mid-tunnel dead stops so the train can remember where it's supposed to go.

Just recently moved here: how are the fares handled if you take the suggested detour of free shuttle, hop on the green line and then shuttle over to get back on the orange line after closure? Do you have to pay a fare each of the times you get on the train?

Where in the hell did you read that Boston public transit was highly rated?

Not to mention if you use the PayByPhone app as a guest, you can still get ticketed and the app as well as the MBTA apparently don't have or keep records/receipts of guest pass purchases and PayByPhone doesn't text or e-mail you a receipt. Ask me how I know!

Same, it seems even worse going south. I’ve missed my bus so many times because the train is so fucking slow.

that's factually untrue they had teams working around the clock next to Wellington

If memory serves me right, and somebody can chime in. Apparently between moving all the equipment into place and such, they only had a couple hours max to work on things. Least that was the excuse they kept using for completely closing the OL. Dunno how much was true at this point.

NY is the only one for true car free life

Gaslighting us

OL is really slow between Assembly and Sullivan but that's not even mentioned!

It sure sounds like the tufts-back bay stretch could be addressed by this shutdown. I wonder if the cologne egg replacement project led to a discovery that they hadn’t been placed according to some standard, and that resulted in the slow zone being retained?

I actually move from Boston to Tokyo this January and seeing high speed subway trains arrive every 3-5min makes me so much happier

It’s a union thug protecting the lazy mbta workers! Unite!

Can you link to the tweet? I couldn't find it

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What the heck does "bad frog" "frog defect" mean? I assume it's a train term or an acronym for something but that's pretty funny out of context lol

We can only assume that due to its staffing shortage, the T has turned to amphibian labor to fill the gaps.

I'm not sure if that's true, I remember seeing pictures that look like they were definitely taken overnight.

Sorry wasnt transit matters but someone who showed up on my Twitter that follows transit matters.

https://twitter.com/friendchristoph/status/1617865519243329542?t=OD_dsn0et8jmW3RBPAk16Q&s=19

"It's not a lie if you believe it – George Costanza" – The MBTA

The orange line has been back to walking speed around Sullivan for the last week or so.

I took the Red Line to work every day from about 2012 to 2015. Then when I changed jobs and moved, I took the Orange Line for a year. Back then, as we all know, delays were awful, and the MBTA dangled new cars “coming soon in 2019!” that would miraculously fix everything.

In 2017, I bought a car and moved to Quincy. Driving was immediately 100x faster even with the shitshow that always is 93 South.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I hadn’t taken the T in years, but I was going to an event at Fenway and figured I would give it a shot. Drove to Braintree and hopped on the good old Red Line.

A northbound train didn’t come for 30 minutes. Then, shuttle buses from North Quincy to Broadway. Then, the train held at the station for about 20 minutes until it was packed. The Green Line from Park Street was fine. But my total time to get from Braintree to Fenway was over 2 hours. Ridiculous. This was at midday on a Saturday. I decided to Uber home rather than deal with the same shitshow on the way home.

The MBTA has been pure dogshit since my college days in the city. In the almost 20 years I’ve been in Boston, nothing has changed at all. Same service delays, same issues with stations and trains in a perpetual state of disrepair, same tone-deaf attitude from MBTA leadership, same massive debt and budget problems. The whole system is rotten to the core - nothing short of a complete, multi-tens-of-billions-of-dollars overhaul will fix things.

You say 30 years, the MBTA says 3 months. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

>You can't overhaul everything in a month.

I mean it can be done and it's possible to do. Just not possible for the MBTA to do on hindsight.

The MBTA does fall under the executive/governor as it is under the MassDOT umbrella, and the governor selects the MBTA's manager, and, at least under Baker directly appoints the members of the board of directors who have direct oversight. The legislature controls funding/purse. It very much is on both parties. That said, Healey has been governor for like 2 weeks and immediately launched a search for a new GM. Nothing she can really do at this point and trying to put the current MBTA's problems on her is laughably stupid.

Cabs aside, to get almost anywhere within the city it's typically faster to bike and sometimes only marginally slower to walk

Ideally, I think all major US cities should limit motor vehicles down to emergency and service (distribution, business, cabs,...) only. Open it up to pedestrian walkways and improved, expansive modes of mass transport. Watching Star Trek in the 60's had an impact on my visions.

so fuck the red like i guess

A "frog" is part of a track switch. There are a lot of them around Assembly to Wellington.

Not until we get nyc service levels with asian city cleanliness

This was my philosophy when I lived in Boston. Anything 75 minutes or less is walking distance, and I’m guaranteed to make it to my destination exactly when I want to. A related rule of thumb: I get off at the earliest possible stop, even if it means an extra 15-20 minutes walking. Have lost count of the number of times when waiting in a stuck train between govt center and haymarket fucked me and I should’ve just walked

Boston public transit is consistently ranked as one of the best in the US. Granted, a big part of that has to do with the fact that most public transit in the US blows chunks, but it’s pretty common knowledge

Generally speaking anytime you enter / leave free shuttle bus there is no fare; the subway gates will be left open at those stops. No promises that that will happen in your situation though.

Influence, not authority

Absolutely. check out r/notjustbikes

How do you know?

Never thought I'd see /r/boston upvote anti-car agenda

Last I remember being on here, people were downvoting someone suggesting more people take bikes to work because "we're not all 20 year olds" and "some of us can't show up to work sweaty"

http://www.rail-fastener.com/railway-frog.html

It's been over 5 months. Still think it's insane that we need big closures at this point.

No, that’s actually very likely. The less often they have to throw a bunch of switches (and make sure the associated signals change properly) the better.

Should have gone to Chicago. Pretty much a bigger and better version of Boston and definitely better public transit in 2023. The only thing that makes public transit bearable in Boston is the fact that Boston is a tiny city. It should have a big old asterisk on any top 10 lists it graces.

He wrote the app. 💁‍♂️

Innsmouth finally pulling its weight in the state! 🐟

I have an idea to fix it. Let's build another Green Line branch somewhere!

Or maybe this, instead of building new lines, we should maintain the ones we have.

Tallest of the seven dwarves.

Edit: one of the tallest of the seven dwarves.

Definitely, we’ll have a crisis in America soon. Single occupancy vehicles isn’t a sustainable transportation model.

There's a dead zone heading inbound between Assembly and Sullivan Sq

There was a kind of resignation with the month-long OL shutdown, "Well I guess if it gets things working again, do what you have to do." The big closures are frustrating, but it's even worse when the issues either don't get fixed or don't stay fixed after the closure.

We should really be able to easily do both.

It's a train term that comes from an earlier horse term, so it's really old slang. It's the V shaped part of a track switch.

It was so much better 15-20 years ago it's crazy. I wish you could have all experienced it right at the end of the token era before charlie cards. Shit just worked.

I'm honestly not sure it's better than DC anymore.

They worked 24hrs around Sullivan too but... like two nights a week. Most of the time it was a 9-5 (more like 7-3 because God forbid construction workers ever keep normal hours).

Yes, hence my comment that it’s mostly tied to the fact that the US has shitty public transit

Ah, so maybe it makes a certain amount of sense then, given the state of things.

It's been a few decades since I was in my 20's, and I never want to arrive anywhere sweaty, but I've always lived my life -to the best of my ability - thinking 7 generations in advance. I'm not anti-car so much as I am wanting cities to be more forward-thinking and find alternate methods of travel within their borders. Unlike rural areas dependent on individual modes of transportation, cities, by their very compact nature, can make major adjustments in their methods.

Oh, you're asking for the impossible. But wouldn't that be something?

Hey, thanks!

Towns where I am rely on taxing personal vehicles yearly to fund the town government and services. Newer cars cost $500-$1k per year. Forcing people to pay for public transportation passes, while significantly raising other taxes to make up for the lost vehicle tax revenue and pay for the public transportation is going to hurt a lot of people who can't afford it.

Gasoline and diesel road taxes also make up a huge part of government budgets. Between public transport and electric vehicles, it would cripple governments if that tax revenue dried up.

Citizens still will have to pay the government that money, it will just have to come from higher taxes on other items people buy over and over every single day.

Not even "soon," it's already here!

This is me. I used to connect from the RL to the OL as part of my commute, but after getting fucked over by both lines repeatedly, and often on the same day, now I just walk from Broadway to Back Bay when the weather permits.

I believe that. JFK used to be my stop, and as frustrating as that summer was, it was only for a few months and I don't remember it being as bad as it is now.

This. What the hell is even going on and why aren't they addressing the issues with the red line. At this point they seem way more severe than the orange line.

I'm considering parking at Wollaston now because I keep missing my bus by 2-3 minutes that comes once an hour! It's either spend money on that or Uber.

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DC