BOSTON — The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority instituted an immediate 25-mph speed restriction across its rapid-transit Red, Orange, Blue, and Green lines as of Thursday night following findings by the state’s Department of Public Utilities.
The MBTA announced the restrictions about 10 p.m., the Boston Globe reports, after a visit to the Red Line between the Ashmont and Savin Hill stations.
The MBTA’s Chief Safety Officer, Ronald Ester Jr., told board members earlier in the day that a March 6 visit found problems including “priority one track conditions, third rail insulators, electrical access boxes on the right-of-way, headlight operations with the subway or within the tunnel, [personal protective equipment] compliance, and safety briefings.”
The MBTA said on Twitter that the new systemwide speed restriction is “out of an abundance of caution,” advised riders to allow more travel time, and said it would provide more information as it becomes available.
The problem-plagued agency began posting data on speed restrictions last month along with other information on its efforts to meet a series of directives issued last year by the Federal Transit Adminstration to address safety concerns [see “MBTA launches ‘safety dashboard’ …,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 27, 2023]. At that time, 8.7 miles, or 6.5%, of the system was under some form of restriction.
The agency plans a press conference today to provide more information.
It’s Massachusetts folks. And that means politics graft and corruption. The T should start a house cleaning and that means stop letting the union run the system. Take the power out of the hands of the government and turn the operations over to a proven company or agency that has some experience in running a transit system effectively. Probably not hard to find one that is better than the MBTA.
How we ever get Charlie off the M(B)TA?
Will he ever return/ Will he ever return/ He may ride forever ‘neath the spalling concrete of the Quincy Adams station/ And his fate is still unlearned.
Let’s see, it’s close to 20 miles from Alewife to Braintree on the Subway Named Moebius, with about 13 intermediate station stops. If the train maxxes out at 25 mph, will Charlie ever get there? He might travel faster if he hitched a ride from Paul Revere.
I rode just yesterday (Thurs 3/9) on the Orange Line Sullivan-State and back, when they made this new announcement about things like doing switches or crawling into stations at 10mph and a general 25mph speed restriction. But what’s this about “headlights” to Ashmont; third-rail chairs, and such like? The subway operated for years without headlights and even bells on rapid transit–just like Britain. Something’s behind this–desire to spend more $$$$; watch closely what happens with the new extension to Tufts (GLX they call it now). Concrete subway stations near salt water (think Quincy and Revere extensions) don’t last long. Now that the supposed “Infrastructure Law” is to give us a host of new projects–could TRAINS give us a complete list?–huge new opportunities to spend money! Might have saved a billion or more on the Portal Bridge by buying out that one marine shipper upriver and building a lower-level crossing. Did they even consider trying to run tunnels to Grand Central so that the Acelas and successors could come in from the south and go up to Boston through 125th St. and Woodlawn to shave time off the schedules? The Boston version of that game was trying to connect the Red and Blue lines.
Hmmm. In 1954 (before NH was bankrupt) train 188 was schedulled 1 hour, 43 min Penn Station to New Haven; train 14, an hour later, was schedulled 1 hour 25 minutes GCT to New Haven, but did not stop at Stamford or Bridgeport.
How many $ billion would that be tunnelling under midtown Manhattan to save 18 minutes? That’s not counting that the NY Penn trains made 2 more stops.
And that marine shipper upstream of PORTAL declined a buyout.
And Boston’s Red and Blue lines are different widths. Red Line cars are too wide for the Blue Line and Blue Line cars can’t safely platform on the Red Line.
Seems that many/ most of the safety problems won’t be helped by speed restriction.
The $$$$ MBTA has spent on rebuilding stations and parking garages (some of them not all that old, like Braintree and Quincy Adams) would have gone a long way toward abating safety deficiencies. Meanwhile, ridership is way down and this won’t help.
Yes, but you can’t photograph 136 politicians cutting a ribbon at a track maintenance job.