Mac Daniel wrote in his blog today that riders of the Rockport and Worcester lines will face delays in the coming days through March 28th.
The Massachusetts Highway Department is removing a bridge abutment and retaining wall between Beverly and Salem, causing 12 to 15 minute delays between the 2 stations.
The Worcester line will be delayed 30 minutes between the hours of 9 am-4 pm for CSX trackwork (CSX owns the trackage on the Worcester line).
Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, those of us who have not personally seen the wreckage from an accident between a Green Line Train and a car can now see for ourselves.
Click here for a link to a video showing the wreckage of a shiny Lexus RX 300 that attempted to cut off the B-line on Comm Ave near the Harvard Ave T stop. Ironically, there is a Herb Chambers Lexus dealership virtually across the street from the scene.
The MBTA announced they will add extra Red Line service on Sunday to accomodate the expected surge in ridership for the St. Patricks Day parade in South Boston. The MBTA will also add extra MBTA police officers to help with crowd control and safety.
Because of the parade route, service on several bus lines will be affected during the parade.
Route #9 (City Point – Copley), and the Route #11 (City Point – Downtown) will CEASEservice until the parade is finished at approximately 4:30 p.m.
The rest of the service changes can be found here
The Gloucester Times reports that a maintenance program on the Gloucester line of the MBTA commuter rail has been waking some Beverly residents up at night.
A rail grinding machine is running along the line in the early morning hours, designed to scrape the rails to help keep them in good condition. The project is outsourced to a contractor, and that contractor apparently is unaware that Beverly has been designated a “quiet zone,” meaning trains can only blow their horns during an emergency.
The MBTA has a representative on board with the contractor, and the contractor reports not being made aware of the local rule. The MBTA did not return the Times’ calls for comment.
The Boston Globe is reporting that despite the fare hike that took effect in January, the MBTA will need to tap into it’s emergency funds in order to balance the budget for the next fiscal year, the third year in a row it has done so.
Further complicating matters, the MBTA needs to negotiate new contracts with its unions, something that hasn’t even been taken into account yet.
On the positive side, operating revenue has increased to $35 million thanks to the January fare hike.
The MBTA’s debt service is expected to balloon to $436 million for fiscal year 2009.
Several years ago, the MBTA was switched to a funding formula that provides it with a portion of the state sales tax, but tax revenue declined, which caused the MBTA to lose substantial funding.
GCN.com (Government Computer news) is reporting that the MBTA will have received their 2.4 millionth CharlieCard by March 31st.
An additional 1.1 million cards are expected to be shipped.
According to Manny Menard, business development manager at Gemalto, the company that supplies the cards to the MBTA, Gemalto pre-encodes the chips so that MBTA officials can distribute them to customers immediately.
CharlieCards arrive at the transportation authority already encoded so they can be immediately distributed. Menard said having Gemalto handle the encoding saves money for transit agencies that would otherwise have to do the encoding themselves. He said the practice of vendors encoding transit smart cards is not yet typical in the industry. “The project is groundbreaking in that sense,” Menard said.
It’s good that the MBTA can be groundbreaking with AFC, but it’s time to make up ground in the service reliability department.
The Boston Globe reports that MBTA Police caught a former MBTA electrical worker who stole $40,000 in MBTA tokens and quarters.
MBTA Police suspect that Robert Gibson, who worked for the MBTA for 20 years before retiring on October 1, had been stealing for much of his career. They suspect he siphoned off just enough money that no one would notice.
But with the introduction of the CharlieCard, that became impossible. MBTA surveillance cameras recorded Gibson putting $3,500 in tokens onto 45 different CharlieCards at Wellington Station on the Orange Line.
After observing Gibson, MBTA Police went to his house, where he confessed and led investigators to $40,000 in tokens and quarters stashed in his basement.
It’s good that the MBTA has better control over their finances with Automated Fare collection, they just need to get the equipment working more reliably.
The Boston Globe reports that monthly pass users at the Charles/MGH station on the Red Line had problems using their monthly passes over the past few days. The problem involved people who had their monthly passes on CharieCards waving their card at the fare gate, only to have a “Not Enough Value” message appear on the screen. The MBTA claims they have fixed the problem.
But that’s not the only place the problem occurred. I was at Boylston Outbound on Tuesday night when the same thing happened to me. Luckily a Customer Service Agent was able to verify my pass and allow me through. And I wasn’t the only one having problems.
On the railroad.net forum thread devoted to AFC discussion, several other users reported the same problem, except some of them had both a pass and stored value on their card, so instead of simply receiving the “Not Enough Value” message, they simply had the pay per ride fare deducted from their card instead of the gate recognizing their pass.
This problem is more widespread than the MBTA is acknowledging. Things need to improve, and fast.
Nayna Sasidharan, a graduate student at Emerson College, and Red Line commuter living in Somerville, gives her take on the Red Line.
Since moving to Boston, I have always been thankful of the fact that I live on the red line.
But that opinion changed for the past week.
I do not mind the usual delay or stop but it has happened at least once everyday since last week’s storm. And I ride the T everyday. The Red line had shut down service two days in a row, mid-way because of “medical emergencies.” Hundreds of people will the be crowding at either Central or Kendall to catch the next line.
I’m presuming things were to good to be true for me and the red line. The last week of incidents have completely erased my months of peace on the train.
Many commuters can probably sympathize with Nayna. As a daily B-line rider living near Packard’s Corner, I experience substantial delays on a daily basis, and that’s assuming service is running normally.
I had hoped that the fare increase that took effect in January would lead to better reliability all around. In some cases, like the recent initiative to improve certain bus lines, it has. But the subway and Green Line trolleys don’t seem to be getting much better. Let’s hope things change for the better soon.
Mac Daniel writes in this week’s Starts and Stops column that a Green Line operator closed the doors too early at the Government Center T stop, causing a mother to be separated from her 7-year old daughter, and nearly crushing her 8-month-old daughter.
“My 7-year-old boarded, and I was immediately behind her bending down to lift my 8-month-old [who was in a stroller] onto the trolley. To my horror, the driver closed the door on me and my 8-month-old. [My 5-year-old daughter and my mother were immediately behind me].
A T inspector who was nearby ordered the train to wait at Haymarket so the mother and daughter could be reunited. The operator could face disciplinary action if it is found that he violated T policy.
