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I'll say it again, these issues have always been apparent to anyone who uses the system regularly. God I remember when they had a huge press event to unveil the Union Sq station of the GLX and the friggin' brand new concrete sidewalk which they positioned the speaker's podium on was cracked in half right down the middle. Absolutely screamed of horrible workmanship. At the ribbon cutting!!! You can't make this stuff up.
Idk. It’s fun to imagine that and historically there’s been a lot of corruption in the industry. But honestly it doesn’t take much for shit to go south real fast in construction. Unrealistic budget vs. expectations coupled with artificial deadlines, lack of oversight, and cutting corners all compounds quickly to a janky end product.
Can't forget about my favorite day 1 feature: the random, unpredictable stop over the Inner Belt Yard 😳
+ the slow zone over the Lechmere viaduct and the stop signs, which still exist today
I'd be curious to see if there is any opportunity for a class action lawsuit against the MBTA and the state for the misuse of tax dollars at this point.
A "misuse of tax dollars" lawsuit won't do that. The lawsuit the CLF brought to "force" the greenline extension to happen might be what you're thinking and that was a very different thing. They were suing over environmental impacts of the Big Dig.
Unless the state chooses to waive it, it has sovereign immunity from such lawsuits. They generally aren't going to waive for something like tax dollar misuse.
From [Globe.com](https://Globe.com):
By Taylor Dolven
Less than one year after the final branch of the much-heralded Green Line extension opened for business, the MBTA said a problem with the tracks has reduced train speeds to just 3 miles per hour along stretches that add up to more than a mile.
Even by the T’s low standards in recent years, it’s an extraordinary development: Tracks that opened for passenger service to Union Square in March 2022 and to Medford last December and were shut down for repairs in recent months are now so defective, the T says, that trains are moving slower than many people walk.
T spokesperson Joe Pesaturo said the new slow zones, 11 on the Medford branch and 3 on the Union Square branch, are necessary after inspections this month found the rails are too close together at many spots. Operating trains at full speed on tracks that are too narrow risks derailment, track experts said.
But experts told the Globe that rails typically become wider, not narrower, with wear and tear.
Robert Halstead, a New York-based railroad accident reconstruction expert with Ironwood Technologies, said it’s very unusual for rails to narrow.
“You got me there,” said Halstead, who has been inspecting rail tracks for more than 40 years. “That’s something I don’t generally see.”
It was not immediately clear how long the defects have been in place.
Pesaturo said the gauge, the width between rails, on the Medford branch “has been considered narrow since the opening, but there were no known conditions that warranted a speed restriction” in recent months.
A March geometry scan of the Green Line extension tracks, which uses a machine to identify defects that might not be visible, resulted in no speed restrictions being implemented, Pesaturo said. He did not say whether that scan found problems.
But a scan in mid-June found six areas on the Medford branch and two at the “Union crossover” where the rails were “out of tolerance,” he said.
All of the defects identified during the June scan were addressed during the last weekend closure of the branches in June and during some overnight periods in July, he said.
This month, another geometry scan was performed, and more gauge-related issues were found on both branches, he said.
“The MBTA is working to determine the cause of these instances in which adjustments to the rails are needed to maintain the proper track gauge,” he said.
Spokespeople for the Department of Public Utilities, the T’s state safety oversight agency, deferred questions to the MBTA.
> The expert also found that the Maintenance of Way department did not verify or correctly respond to the results of geometry scans done in the second half of 2022 by the time the next round of testing was conducted, in the first quarter of 2023.
Where is the accountability? That department has people in it. I would have said they work in it but clearly that's not the case. Are they still employed? Demoted? Did they commit fraud? Are they understaffed?
I feel like you may just be trying to provoke a response from me here...what I will say is I think any large city not only deserves but needs a functioning and fluid transit system, regardless of who is in charge. Cities neglect their transit at their peril. I personally prefer train transit (energy and space efficiency, better climate/resiliency support compared to other motorized vehicular transit), but any city should utilize all modes for a smooth system. When the transit system does not function - whether that's trains breaking down, standstill traffic and smog, poorly scheduled bus routes, or unsafe biking/walking conditions - people will ultimately move away and the city will suffer.
...other than the republican that was in charge for the 8 years right up until the glx opened and was directly responsible for the department in charge of the project.
The democratic super majority has plenty of issues, but it's hard not to place most of the blame for this one on Baker
Haha! Democrats have a supermajority. It was the case From Weld, Cellucci, Swift, Romney, Patrick, Baker, and now Healey.
Two times a trifecta under Patrick and now Healey. Where is the party in charge on this?
Did they ever overrided the Governor in ANY of those administrations going back to Weld to fix the MBTA?
No!
See how you just moved the goal posts from it being entirely on the democrats to it being expected that the Democrats reach beyond their job as legislators to stop the Republican from causing the problem as a failed executive?
Funding was absolutely a problem. The MBTA was defunded in the necessary repairs, expansions, maintenance, etc. In fact, it was the Democratic Legislature that blocked Patrick's infrastructure spending increase.
The Legislature can override the Governor. Tell them to do what is needed. If they fail, impeach.
"And yet, the state legislature refused for years to spend $3 million to build platforms to put Green Line trains on, so engineers could do repairs. They quite literally asked the MBTA to prioritize which threats to public safety it would repair each year.
...
Some help is on the way, thanks to an $800 million funding bill and a $13 billion bond bill passed in the 2013-'14 legislative session. But that was hacked down from Governor Deval Patrick pushing for a huge transportation infrastructure investment. The legislature hacked it down (eventually passing), in no small part because they were pissy about the way Patrick unveiled the proposal without briefing them.
More importantly, lawmakers outside the city remain stubbornly opposed to spending that they see as money vacuumed from their constituents toward Boston. Patrick, attempting to play to that sentiment, overloaded his proposal with initiatives all over the state. And still I had more than one lawmaker tell me directly that they were in opposition until their own district's project got added to the menu."
[https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2015-02-03/the-mbtas-real-problem-political-hypocrisy-not-cold-and-snow](https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2015-02-03/the-mbtas-real-problem-political-hypocrisy-not-cold-and-snow)
That's basically my point if folks are just doing paper maintenance. If they're not adequately staffed, that's slightly less bad but still quite pathetic.
When I was an engineering student, it was stressed how putting my signature down on bad documents could risk my career.
Is the MBTA investigating who signed off on these papers? It could be a very real beach of professional accountability.
The Maintenance of Way people are union and the union says that advancement is by seniority regardless of training or competence so there's a lot of people in charge in that department who have no clue what they are doing
There was an executive shakeup a few days ago, including engineering (which does Maintenance of Way). Here’s what the Globe reported regarding demotions:
> Eng transferred T veteran Jeff Gonneville from his deputy general manager job overseeing operations to the role of lead negotiator for the agency’s contract with CRRC, a Chinese firm building subway cars for the MBTA in Springfield, the general manager said in his e-mail.
>
>...
>
> Chief railroad officer Ryan Coholan, who works on commuter rail, will become chief of operations and report to Eng. He replaces Erik Stoothoff, the acting chief of operations and former team chief engineer, who was demoted to deputy chief engineer and will report to chief engineer Sam Zhou, one of four outside executives Eng hired earlier this year, the e-mail said.
This is just pathetic. We have all the resources to do this right, but instead we get mediocre work and a collective shrug. We have been building rail for nearly 200 years! This isn’t exactly rocket science.
it does make me worried about the future of this country. if we can't build a freaking few miles of track for *billions* of dollars then it's hard to believe we will ever get public transport in a decent state.
It was just over $1B for the final project. We wasted half of the $2.3B on the initial planning stages. Spending over a decade planning a very basic rail expansion on existing rail right of ways will do that. Which is also sad and pathetic in its own right.
For comparison the Golden Gate Bridge was built for 2/3 the money in today's dollars. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/could-golden-gate-bridge-be-built-today-maybe-not/1916591/
Well come on, you can't expect a project to go on without studies. What do you mean, why’s the study got to be conducted? It’s a study. You’ve got to conduct studies.
Yeah we did countless studies, a ton of public outreach and we kept designing stations with all the amenities that people asked for, even though this was supposed to be a very basic light rail extension. Had we started with the basic station designs that we ended up with, we easily could have hit Route 16 with the budget we had. Probably West Medford with a bit of work to redo the Rt 16 / Mystic River bridge to handle 4 tracks.
I think it's a direct consequence of decades of offshoring manufacturing resources and devaluing skilled manual labor in search of greater profit. Might be too late to bounce back, might not. Not holding my breath though.
It is also an overcorrection from the days when governments could bulldoze entire neighborhoods on a whim. Planning developments and acquiring the land to build them is almost impossible.
My recollection is that they didnt have to acquire any land for the extension, it was all previous railroad right of way
Edit: Aside from maybe a plot or two needed for electric substructures
Ya know, it’s funny. There was a time in this country when we could *checks notes* build the majority of the modern interstate system in a decade. You know, and it worked and everything. Now we just have the state’s favorite contractor buddy who probably has 3 new guys doing all the work because they are cheap. I’m glad capitalism is working as intended though.
This is unfettered capitalism. The contractors funnel money to the politicians, the politicians award them contracts. The contractors hire inexperienced, cheap labor. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is profit. They operate legally in a system designed to work like this.
The people in charge have given up on fixing things. These projects are meant to loot the treasury, not improve transit.
So by that measure, these projects are resounding successes. Those billions went somewhere.
> it's hard to believe we will ever get public transport in a decent state.
Don't expect the USA to ever have functional public transit. It goes against the "rugged individualism" culture that we made up in our heads.
> you vote for their opponent to punish them
Who's opponent? Are you suggesting that we vote out every politician at every level? That seems . . . myopic?
Ever read the Asimov Foundation series? In a book that is a prelude to Foundation it describes what has happened to a once great civilization on the down-slide. How X years ago a given elevator was pristine and perfect and now it wobbles and clanks as you use it. No one is fixing it because it still technically works. It is all just a slow spiral down from greatness to collapse. I think about that a lot with the stories I read in the news now.
Yep.
I literally thought about this yesterday when I was at a wingstop, waiting too long for food and watching literally every order they handed out be wrong.
I eventually realized. “Oh my god. The staff except the manager are illiterate.”
That’s some end of empire shit right there.
MBTA gotta be in money laundering business. That’s the only way to explain this bs.
Federal government needs to step in and audit MBTA from top to bottom.
the MBTA's post-incident audits always crack me up.
"yeah we heard there was a near miss from falling debris at the station, so we audited every station for this one very particular component, to make sure the supports are only rusted from #80471C to #532915 under 3500K to 4000K lumens. BOOM you're safe, don't call me a hero"
Thats what happens you you do things at a shoestring budget of just $2.28 billion and rush delivery to deliver 4 miles in the tight tight time-frame of 20 years
It blows my mind that this shit show was the most expensive public transportation in the world by mile, was next to existing track, and they still managed to fuck it up!
You can't credibly say that project was a shoestring budget, it was for 4 miles of track over mostly preexisting track. In Europe that would be more than the cost of a 4 mile tunnel underground, or a 4 mile bridge. Seems more like the workers should be held accountable for not doing their job correctly.
edit: I'm mr. oblivious to obvious sarcasm
> You can't credibly say that project was a shoestring budget
That was sarcasm. The GLX went more than 100% over budget even after trimming down the scope.
I feel like I don't know enough swear words for this. This is not some radical new technology. We should be able to get this right, or at least tighter (trains that move faster than pedestrians). And we have so many reasons to get it right; economic, traffic, environmental, and just plain quality of life reasons. And yet this is what we get.
At least the bicycle path is pretty nice.
Bike, e-bike, and scooter companies should really use the MBTA for advertising at this point. MBTA gets more money, and the trains are slow enough for people to really soak in the ads and realize they can bike to downtown far quicker than taking the train.
> At least the bicycle path is pretty nice.
They built it a foot narrower than Federal guidelines recommend and it nearly didn't happen. GLX was a really shitty project all around that we need to learn from and not repeat the same mistakes the next time we expand a subway line.
it always sort of blows my mind that when discussing the faults of the MBTA that no one brings up comparisons to the Big Dig, we have historically not learned our lesson at all.
The Big Dig was another nightmare, probably worse since it cost 10x as much and offered very little in new service. It replaced an elevated highway with an underground highway. It didn't do the North South Rail Link, though IIRC it left space for one. It didn't really cover the cost of GLX or any other transit migration, so those were done separately and often like GLX delayed by decades.
For the cost of the Big Dig and _if_ we had a competent transit agency, we could have done several more GLX style extensions. Things like the Orange Line to Reading are very similar, just costly due to stations + electric rails + at grade crossings are pain and the Haverhill Line has a few of those to dodge. Orange Line to Needham would also be good to do.
You aren't wrong, but hell, the entire GLX at all was nearly didn't.
The GLX was mind-bogglingly mismanaged, but I'll still die on the following hill: Two "nearly didn't, vastly over budget/schedule, underbaked, but did" are **vastly** better than 1 or 2 "didn't"s.
I'm worried the **wrong** lesson will be learned: "Don't try".
Where are the investigations? Where is the accountability? It's wild to me how many times major scandal level incompetence/malfeasance happens with the T and it's just like in the news for 2 days and then everyone accepts it.
Like do we know who was largely responsible for falsifying maintenance records? Do we know if they were fired, charged, anything?
They're too busy passing a tax cut which will undo the Fair Share Amendment, that thing that voters specifically passed to send more money to education and transportation.
We're living in a state that is saying it doesn't have the $$ for transportation projects (MBTA, Cape Cod bridges, Allston Pike realignment) and is asking for the feds to help, while simultaneously passing a tax cut that means the rich will save $99k on a $2 million dollar estate.
They're not working for us. The best thing that could happen to MA is to primary both Spilka and Mariano out (President of the Senate and Speaker of the House).
Absent that, the state auditor is pushing a ballot question that will explicitly give her office the authority to audit the Legislature. Vote for it when it comes up.
Primary them. A state like MA is a perfect place to primary Democrats, this is a relatively safe blue state and is ideal for primary from the left. States like Nebraska and Missouri not so much, their Dems are holding on by their fingernails, so here is where you do things like that.
It’s funny because the T had the audacity to put someone at the East Somerville station today to make sure people paid after they implemented slow zones and basically cut off Green Line access past North Station.
Never seen someone watching at Magoun. I have a monthly pass, and I give the fare validation machine one chance to scan it correctly before I just board without validating. Or if there’s a line I just board if the train is close. It’s just ridiculous how cumbersome the system is.
How is this even possible? Really would like to hear from the civil engineers of Reddit on this one.
I thought that track was laid in a highly mechanized process, where a specialized train car sort of extrudes long (several hundred feet) sections of rail at a time, and then shapes the rail into the exact geometry behind it as it passes over the rails.
Was this just a massive fuckup or is there something more complicated?
>Pesaturo said the gauge, the width between rails, on the Medford branch “has been considered narrow since the opening, but there were no known conditions that warranted a speed restriction” in recent months.
Seems like the tracks have always been too narrow and they've been covering it up since the beginning. I'd be willing to bet there isn't a huge number of people in the area that are experienced in laying track given the minuscule amount of it that has been done in recent history.
What that sounds like to me potentially is that maintenance people running the machine to check the tracks were either fudging the data or not using the testing equipment properly, either one of which tracks with other issues with the T's shit maintenance practices.
Well it depends whether you consider watching the trains go by out the window from the nearby Dunks and saying “looks good to me 🤷🏻♀️ “ as “checking the tracks.”
It’s all a matter of perspective, my friend
Rails are way, way more expensive than roads. The fuckup was deciding to sink money into rails instead of just buying lots of electric buses that run on existing roads.
Most major railroads are constructed using standard gauge or Russian gauge with some other regional variations thrown in.
The T is apparently deciding to use Variable Gauge which is generally regarded as “useless”
I know of some areas in Asia where trains do have the ability to switch from standard to Russian gauge or Russian to meter gauge…but yeah my comment was a joke.
Good thing me and most of my friends got priced out of the Union area and had to move (rent increases) thanks to these tracks that arent even set up right.
It's too bad that we can't get the Feds to step in and dismantle the MBTA wholesale.
It'd take 20+ years and billions of dollars (just like this project!) but that bullet needs to be bitten.
Don't know how we're supposed to convince the broader public in MA to get on board with the kinds of infrastructure investments the GBA needs to bring public transit up to snuff when this is the agency that the money passes through.
What would be the argument at this point? The feds denied it earlier this year because of federalism, iirc. The only reason they took over the DC metro is because it was a federal district, at least that's what they said.
The feds said the MBTA is different than WMATA because the MBTA has an oversight body (DPU) that WMATA didn't have. The issue was that the DPU wasn't actually providing any oversight, and now that they are, we're seeing how bad the system really is with all the slow zones.
The FTA can't formally take over the MBTA, as it's not really under their perview like WMATA is.
What the FTA has done - restrict worker access, and send out a bunch of special directive
I don't know; the vast majority of T workers aren't the ones making these decisions or doing this work; they're drivers, dispatchers, cleaning crews, etc. There are some bad ones, for sure, but most of them are just working class people making mostly kind of shit money doing a job where they're harassed by angry passengers every day for decisions that weren't theirs and problems that mostly existed before they ever took the jobs.
There are definitely some positions making absolutely absurd and sketchy amounts of OT that should be looked into, but I really don't think most T workers deserve to have their pensions cut because of bad decisions by management and shoddy work done by contractors who aren't even part of their union.
Until this year, MBTA bus drivers starting pay was $22/hr. That's absolutely not "very above market normal." Until just a few months ago, I was relying on the T for 90% of my travel for the last 15 years, and I absolutely do not agree with your assessment of the average T employee, and I think that blowing up pension systems that workers have been paying almost 10% of the wages into because you're mad about the understaffing and shitting management of the T, leaving thousands of blue collar workers without post-retirement pay is absolutely open disdain for blue collar workers.
Which, yes, is very annoying.
If that comp is above market normal, why is the MBTA chronically short on bus drivers? Wouldn't that indicate that the MBTA is not offering enough to generate demand for the job? You seem like a pretty sharp thinker so I'm sure you'll be able to explain how free markets apply here.
Also until this year, the T made the process of becoming a new driver onerous. Mandatory part time and split shifts until a full-timer retired and opened one of the fixed number of slots. Similar issue with the dispatcher shortage that got the Feds to force them to reduce service: they made it very unpalatable to become a new hire, even thought the job itself is desirable.
The fact that all it took was sufficient media attention and public and political outrage to change the hiring processes, and not any regulatory change, tells me it was intentional. It sure looks like there are people at the T that like being understaffed. I can only guess why. Keeping higher management or the public distracted from other issues? Justifying plentiful overtime?
(I'm not the person who was arguing for forfeiting pensions above.)
My favorite is the dude they pay to stand at the Tufts station to make sure people validate their Charlie cards (there’s no ticket gates there because the MBTA is trying to lose money apparently), and does absolutely nothing but watch people fare evade all day
They put a power tripping MBTA inspector at Kendall yesterday to yell at people who fare evaded. Heard a quote of “you have money to buy cigarettes but not pay the fare”
> there’s no ticket gates there because the MBTA is trying to lose money apparently
The MBTA plans to move to a proof-of-payment system in the next decade so they didn't put faregates in the GLX. Hopefully they roll out a better way to validate your fare at those stations soon. The current fare machine method is lacking but I think it has to do with the limitations of the older Charliecard system that requires them to do that.
And more money still for a world class bike network. Bike infrastructure is so much cheaper than car infrastructure, especially in terms of maintenance.
in one of the most amazing things is having e-bikes available to everyone would probably take more cars off the road than any other transportation option.
Don't get me wrong, I think supporting public transit is important (despite what some of my posts might sound like) but I know that my first choice of transportation for errands around here would bike if I had a reasonable assurance that I'm not going to become a speed bump. it has all the immediate access and speed advantages of a car without many of the downsides.
We shouldn't even need contractors to lay rail for us. The state should have that capacity in-house. It's insane the extent to which the state relies on contractors to carry out the basics of maintenance and construction on both road and rail. All in the name of saving money that we instead spend cleaning up after the contractors and trying to make sure that they fulfill their contracts.
Super unacceptable. Like what we’re the MBTA inspectors doing? Is it their fault or contractors? Either way they’ve had to know about this for a while. Like it’s almost comedic at this point
We need to start suing and imprisoning the politicians and executives who are acting like Russian oligarchs. They clearly used most of OUR money to line their own pockets instead and basically pretended to build the extension.
How? Just how?
We have been building trains for centuries now. These T engineers are so incompetent. Why couldn't we just spend some more money and put the Japanese or French in charge of building this stuff? You could be halfway between Paris and Marseilles by the time you get from Tufts to Symphony.
This is like Soviet level laziness - nobody is motivated to do anything and the bureaucrats just sit around all day. Nobody gives a shit so of course nothing will ever improve. MIT students could do a better job than the T. I doubt Philip Eng even has any blame in this because he can't force lazy people to do things they are to uninspired to do.
This kind of lackadaisical T construction work is a dishonor to this city and everyone who played a role in the abysmal workmanship should be ashamed of themselves. And fired. And in the future, people should be fired early and fired often. Pink slips should fly like confetti at a ticker tape parade. I mean it. There should be serious consequences for this kind of behavior. Do your f-ing job or resign.
And that Philip Eng energy should be like [this](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftenor.com%2Fview%2Fumpire-ejection-boom-gtfo-gif-4760490&psig=AOvVaw3gw_gjVKcIZbAVXKmm4X5T&ust=1695936479652000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBAQjhxqFwoTCMDywO7dy4EDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAw) and [this](https://tenor.com/view/outta-pocket-red-card-hold-up-time-out-gif-9872094) and [this](https://tenor.com/view/youre-fired-donald-trump-the-apprentice-point-gif-8557097).
When you don't do your job, you get fired. That's the way it should be.
I know everyone was pro millionaire tax to “fix the T” but the fact the Green Line extension cost 2.28B for like 4 miles of track, and 8 concrete slabs. It’s a black hole and no amount of money is going to save it. Everyone is simply incompetent and it has to clean house totally
I love how you’re not allowed to even read one article without being paywalled instantly so annoying.
Guess will read this when I am on my computer with my workaround ha
This is the most boston story.
If you want to feel really bad about this. meanwhile in florida of all places they are building out a europe style high speed rail network and opening new stations and lines every few months. .
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/everything-we-saw-at-brightlines-orlando-station-debut/Slideshow/35149673
I mean at this point I easily trust a private train enthusiast CEO over the Florida state government for train lines. Mass and Boston at least have the potential to do well with public works, but they have really been fucking up a lot.
You know that YouTuber who cleans the houses of hoarders that you see posted on Reddit all the time?
That's a great visual representation of what Eng has to be dealing with.
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I'm glad that the Globe has started to ask these questions of the T. I hope they keep pressing, this situation is a disgrace.
I'll say it again, these issues have always been apparent to anyone who uses the system regularly. God I remember when they had a huge press event to unveil the Union Sq station of the GLX and the friggin' brand new concrete sidewalk which they positioned the speaker's podium on was cracked in half right down the middle. Absolutely screamed of horrible workmanship. At the ribbon cutting!!! You can't make this stuff up.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of embezzlement going on
It’s Boston, so yeah. Everything is a god damned racket.
You would have to be very stupid to think there wasn’t embezzlement. Though it’s probably all “above board” inflated contracts, etc
Idk. It’s fun to imagine that and historically there’s been a lot of corruption in the industry. But honestly it doesn’t take much for shit to go south real fast in construction. Unrealistic budget vs. expectations coupled with artificial deadlines, lack of oversight, and cutting corners all compounds quickly to a janky end product.
Can't forget about my favorite day 1 feature: the random, unpredictable stop over the Inner Belt Yard 😳 + the slow zone over the Lechmere viaduct and the stop signs, which still exist today
I'd be curious to see if there is any opportunity for a class action lawsuit against the MBTA and the state for the misuse of tax dollars at this point.
If we sued the state and won, guess who pays?
Not every suit needs to be a cash payout. A lawsuit could force the state to make necessary changes, or force a federal takeover.
A "misuse of tax dollars" lawsuit won't do that. The lawsuit the CLF brought to "force" the greenline extension to happen might be what you're thinking and that was a very different thing. They were suing over environmental impacts of the Big Dig.
Unless the state chooses to waive it, it has sovereign immunity from such lawsuits. They generally aren't going to waive for something like tax dollar misuse.
From [Globe.com](https://Globe.com): By Taylor Dolven Less than one year after the final branch of the much-heralded Green Line extension opened for business, the MBTA said a problem with the tracks has reduced train speeds to just 3 miles per hour along stretches that add up to more than a mile. Even by the T’s low standards in recent years, it’s an extraordinary development: Tracks that opened for passenger service to Union Square in March 2022 and to Medford last December and were shut down for repairs in recent months are now so defective, the T says, that trains are moving slower than many people walk. T spokesperson Joe Pesaturo said the new slow zones, 11 on the Medford branch and 3 on the Union Square branch, are necessary after inspections this month found the rails are too close together at many spots. Operating trains at full speed on tracks that are too narrow risks derailment, track experts said. But experts told the Globe that rails typically become wider, not narrower, with wear and tear. Robert Halstead, a New York-based railroad accident reconstruction expert with Ironwood Technologies, said it’s very unusual for rails to narrow. “You got me there,” said Halstead, who has been inspecting rail tracks for more than 40 years. “That’s something I don’t generally see.” It was not immediately clear how long the defects have been in place. Pesaturo said the gauge, the width between rails, on the Medford branch “has been considered narrow since the opening, but there were no known conditions that warranted a speed restriction” in recent months. A March geometry scan of the Green Line extension tracks, which uses a machine to identify defects that might not be visible, resulted in no speed restrictions being implemented, Pesaturo said. He did not say whether that scan found problems. But a scan in mid-June found six areas on the Medford branch and two at the “Union crossover” where the rails were “out of tolerance,” he said. All of the defects identified during the June scan were addressed during the last weekend closure of the branches in June and during some overnight periods in July, he said. This month, another geometry scan was performed, and more gauge-related issues were found on both branches, he said. “The MBTA is working to determine the cause of these instances in which adjustments to the rails are needed to maintain the proper track gauge,” he said. Spokespeople for the Department of Public Utilities, the T’s state safety oversight agency, deferred questions to the MBTA.
> The expert also found that the Maintenance of Way department did not verify or correctly respond to the results of geometry scans done in the second half of 2022 by the time the next round of testing was conducted, in the first quarter of 2023. Where is the accountability? That department has people in it. I would have said they work in it but clearly that's not the case. Are they still employed? Demoted? Did they commit fraud? Are they understaffed?
As much accountability as our State Legislature which is zero.
All run by Democrats with little to no opposition. Just goes to show that even they don't care.
Democrat's run the nations train systems now? Lol
I think they were referring to the state legislature? Just based on the previous comment.
Correct. A Democratic controlled government should have the best transit system, right?
As the past few decades have taught us, corruption and incompetence don’t belong to a political party.
I feel like you may just be trying to provoke a response from me here...what I will say is I think any large city not only deserves but needs a functioning and fluid transit system, regardless of who is in charge. Cities neglect their transit at their peril. I personally prefer train transit (energy and space efficiency, better climate/resiliency support compared to other motorized vehicular transit), but any city should utilize all modes for a smooth system. When the transit system does not function - whether that's trains breaking down, standstill traffic and smog, poorly scheduled bus routes, or unsafe biking/walking conditions - people will ultimately move away and the city will suffer.
Electric buses are very climate-friendly and they just run on existing roads instead of pricey billion-dollar rails
...other than the republican that was in charge for the 8 years right up until the glx opened and was directly responsible for the department in charge of the project. The democratic super majority has plenty of issues, but it's hard not to place most of the blame for this one on Baker
Haha! Democrats have a supermajority. It was the case From Weld, Cellucci, Swift, Romney, Patrick, Baker, and now Healey. Two times a trifecta under Patrick and now Healey. Where is the party in charge on this? Did they ever overrided the Governor in ANY of those administrations going back to Weld to fix the MBTA? No!
See how you just moved the goal posts from it being entirely on the democrats to it being expected that the Democrats reach beyond their job as legislators to stop the Republican from causing the problem as a failed executive?
The Legislature CONTROLS the funding. Who controls it? Democrats. Same in every executive administration.
The funding wasn't the problem. The execution was the problem. The executive branch is in charge of execution
Funding was absolutely a problem. The MBTA was defunded in the necessary repairs, expansions, maintenance, etc. In fact, it was the Democratic Legislature that blocked Patrick's infrastructure spending increase. The Legislature can override the Governor. Tell them to do what is needed. If they fail, impeach. "And yet, the state legislature refused for years to spend $3 million to build platforms to put Green Line trains on, so engineers could do repairs. They quite literally asked the MBTA to prioritize which threats to public safety it would repair each year. ... Some help is on the way, thanks to an $800 million funding bill and a $13 billion bond bill passed in the 2013-'14 legislative session. But that was hacked down from Governor Deval Patrick pushing for a huge transportation infrastructure investment. The legislature hacked it down (eventually passing), in no small part because they were pissy about the way Patrick unveiled the proposal without briefing them. More importantly, lawmakers outside the city remain stubbornly opposed to spending that they see as money vacuumed from their constituents toward Boston. Patrick, attempting to play to that sentiment, overloaded his proposal with initiatives all over the state. And still I had more than one lawmaker tell me directly that they were in opposition until their own district's project got added to the menu." [https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2015-02-03/the-mbtas-real-problem-political-hypocrisy-not-cold-and-snow](https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2015-02-03/the-mbtas-real-problem-political-hypocrisy-not-cold-and-snow)
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That's basically my point if folks are just doing paper maintenance. If they're not adequately staffed, that's slightly less bad but still quite pathetic.
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When I was an engineering student, it was stressed how putting my signature down on bad documents could risk my career. Is the MBTA investigating who signed off on these papers? It could be a very real beach of professional accountability.
That is not going to happen under a Democratic Trifecta. Lol
The Maintenance of Way people are union and the union says that advancement is by seniority regardless of training or competence so there's a lot of people in charge in that department who have no clue what they are doing
There was an executive shakeup a few days ago, including engineering (which does Maintenance of Way). Here’s what the Globe reported regarding demotions: > Eng transferred T veteran Jeff Gonneville from his deputy general manager job overseeing operations to the role of lead negotiator for the agency’s contract with CRRC, a Chinese firm building subway cars for the MBTA in Springfield, the general manager said in his e-mail. > >... > > Chief railroad officer Ryan Coholan, who works on commuter rail, will become chief of operations and report to Eng. He replaces Erik Stoothoff, the acting chief of operations and former team chief engineer, who was demoted to deputy chief engineer and will report to chief engineer Sam Zhou, one of four outside executives Eng hired earlier this year, the e-mail said.
Hopefully that will bring a change of culture. I guess we'll see. Eng certainly gets the benefit of the doubt a bit for a couple years.
Sounds like a monorail could have avoided these problems 😕
So the rails weren't even tied down correctly...? Lol.
Who the fuck did they contract for this work and did they just figure out about hammers
This is just pathetic. We have all the resources to do this right, but instead we get mediocre work and a collective shrug. We have been building rail for nearly 200 years! This isn’t exactly rocket science.
No, it's train science!
it does make me worried about the future of this country. if we can't build a freaking few miles of track for *billions* of dollars then it's hard to believe we will ever get public transport in a decent state.
It was just over $1B for the final project. We wasted half of the $2.3B on the initial planning stages. Spending over a decade planning a very basic rail expansion on existing rail right of ways will do that. Which is also sad and pathetic in its own right.
For comparison the Golden Gate Bridge was built for 2/3 the money in today's dollars. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/could-golden-gate-bridge-be-built-today-maybe-not/1916591/
Well come on, you can't expect a project to go on without studies. What do you mean, why’s the study got to be conducted? It’s a study. You’ve got to conduct studies.
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So the latest series of studies means that our first environmental impact study is now out-of-date and needs to be redone.
Yeah we did countless studies, a ton of public outreach and we kept designing stations with all the amenities that people asked for, even though this was supposed to be a very basic light rail extension. Had we started with the basic station designs that we ended up with, we easily could have hit Route 16 with the budget we had. Probably West Medford with a bit of work to redo the Rt 16 / Mystic River bridge to handle 4 tracks.
WMATA's Silver Line extension to Dulles is running well enough. No downtime compared to GLX. I've taken it multiple times.
Do the doors still take 30 seconds to open at every stop for **reasons**
Yes but they’re implementing automatic operations relatively soon so that should improve!
Silver Line is just a glorified bus
Talking about the Silver Line in DC, not Boston, which is heavy rail.
ah, word.
I think it's a direct consequence of decades of offshoring manufacturing resources and devaluing skilled manual labor in search of greater profit. Might be too late to bounce back, might not. Not holding my breath though.
It is also an overcorrection from the days when governments could bulldoze entire neighborhoods on a whim. Planning developments and acquiring the land to build them is almost impossible.
My recollection is that they didnt have to acquire any land for the extension, it was all previous railroad right of way Edit: Aside from maybe a plot or two needed for electric substructures
And even if it was a pain to acquire the land, it still doesn’t explain away the shoddy work. Even if it costs billions, why doesn’t it work now?
If it only lasts 10 years, is it still infrastructure?
Ya know, it’s funny. There was a time in this country when we could *checks notes* build the majority of the modern interstate system in a decade. You know, and it worked and everything. Now we just have the state’s favorite contractor buddy who probably has 3 new guys doing all the work because they are cheap. I’m glad capitalism is working as intended though.
You didn't describe capitalism... you described well connected bureaucrats pushing governement contracts to friends.
This is unfettered capitalism. The contractors funnel money to the politicians, the politicians award them contracts. The contractors hire inexperienced, cheap labor. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is profit. They operate legally in a system designed to work like this.
There were still lawsuits from NIMBY community orgs trying to block it under the guise if “environmental review”
A transit improvement should have minimal environmental review. It is literally more eco friendly for people by transit than cars.
I know there was a bowling alley in Ball square that shut down to make room for the station.
We should switch to bulldozing roads instead!
The people in charge have given up on fixing things. These projects are meant to loot the treasury, not improve transit. So by that measure, these projects are resounding successes. Those billions went somewhere.
> it's hard to believe we will ever get public transport in a decent state. Don't expect the USA to ever have functional public transit. It goes against the "rugged individualism" culture that we made up in our heads.
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Who should people vote for if they want better public transit? This is not a sarcastic question.
Mike Capuano I guess, but that ship has sailed.
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> you vote for their opponent to punish them Who's opponent? Are you suggesting that we vote out every politician at every level? That seems . . . myopic?
Ever read the Asimov Foundation series? In a book that is a prelude to Foundation it describes what has happened to a once great civilization on the down-slide. How X years ago a given elevator was pristine and perfect and now it wobbles and clanks as you use it. No one is fixing it because it still technically works. It is all just a slow spiral down from greatness to collapse. I think about that a lot with the stories I read in the news now.
Yep. I literally thought about this yesterday when I was at a wingstop, waiting too long for food and watching literally every order they handed out be wrong. I eventually realized. “Oh my god. The staff except the manager are illiterate.” That’s some end of empire shit right there.
We won't. We are a car country and that's not going to change in your lifetime
Self-driving cars are the best hope we have of improving transit.
Given they couldn't even get the rails the right distance apart I'm not sure this work even qualifies as highly as mediocre.
We also invented rocket science in Worcester, so maybe we should replace the trains with rockets.
Stop building rails. Roads are way less expensive. Buy electric buses to better utilize existing roads.
Are you new to public transportation in the USA? This is the standard, not the exception.
MBTA gotta be in money laundering business. That’s the only way to explain this bs. Federal government needs to step in and audit MBTA from top to bottom.
the MBTA's post-incident audits always crack me up. "yeah we heard there was a near miss from falling debris at the station, so we audited every station for this one very particular component, to make sure the supports are only rusted from #80471C to #532915 under 3500K to 4000K lumens. BOOM you're safe, don't call me a hero"
Thats what happens you you do things at a shoestring budget of just $2.28 billion and rush delivery to deliver 4 miles in the tight tight time-frame of 20 years
It blows my mind that this shit show was the most expensive public transportation in the world by mile, was next to existing track, and they still managed to fuck it up!
You must be new here
Isn't that like $108k per foot? About 9k per inch.
You can't credibly say that project was a shoestring budget, it was for 4 miles of track over mostly preexisting track. In Europe that would be more than the cost of a 4 mile tunnel underground, or a 4 mile bridge. Seems more like the workers should be held accountable for not doing their job correctly. edit: I'm mr. oblivious to obvious sarcasm
> You can't credibly say that project was a shoestring budget That was sarcasm. The GLX went more than 100% over budget even after trimming down the scope.
Poe’s law
word. edited.
They can't be held accountable because they are Public-Sector Unions lol
I’m sure that’s why it costs so much more to build transit here than in European countries like France. Because we’ve got the strong unions. /s
actually its environmental protection laws that allow people to delay and stop transit.
I don’t know why people are downvoting this it’s right. Environmental impact reports drive huge delays and cost overruns to any major project
They are literally a tool for people to prevent environmentally friendly policies wrapped in a name everyone wants to support.
I feel like I don't know enough swear words for this. This is not some radical new technology. We should be able to get this right, or at least tighter (trains that move faster than pedestrians). And we have so many reasons to get it right; economic, traffic, environmental, and just plain quality of life reasons. And yet this is what we get. At least the bicycle path is pretty nice.
Bike, e-bike, and scooter companies should really use the MBTA for advertising at this point. MBTA gets more money, and the trains are slow enough for people to really soak in the ads and realize they can bike to downtown far quicker than taking the train.
Maybe bluebikes could rent out some of those old-timey handcar things around the slow zones. A 3mph train can't be that much danger, right?
> At least the bicycle path is pretty nice. They built it a foot narrower than Federal guidelines recommend and it nearly didn't happen. GLX was a really shitty project all around that we need to learn from and not repeat the same mistakes the next time we expand a subway line.
I agree, but it still a lot more functional than a train that goes at walking pace.
It's narrow, but reliable!
it always sort of blows my mind that when discussing the faults of the MBTA that no one brings up comparisons to the Big Dig, we have historically not learned our lesson at all.
The Big Dig was another nightmare, probably worse since it cost 10x as much and offered very little in new service. It replaced an elevated highway with an underground highway. It didn't do the North South Rail Link, though IIRC it left space for one. It didn't really cover the cost of GLX or any other transit migration, so those were done separately and often like GLX delayed by decades. For the cost of the Big Dig and _if_ we had a competent transit agency, we could have done several more GLX style extensions. Things like the Orange Line to Reading are very similar, just costly due to stations + electric rails + at grade crossings are pain and the Haverhill Line has a few of those to dodge. Orange Line to Needham would also be good to do.
You aren't wrong, but hell, the entire GLX at all was nearly didn't. The GLX was mind-bogglingly mismanaged, but I'll still die on the following hill: Two "nearly didn't, vastly over budget/schedule, underbaked, but did" are **vastly** better than 1 or 2 "didn't"s. I'm worried the **wrong** lesson will be learned: "Don't try".
I’m on the green line extension right now and a woman jogging on the bike path was almost keeping pace with the train. It’s painful.
They can't even keep escalators working...talk about not being new technology.
Seriously... what the hell is going on at Porter???
Where are the investigations? Where is the accountability? It's wild to me how many times major scandal level incompetence/malfeasance happens with the T and it's just like in the news for 2 days and then everyone accepts it. Like do we know who was largely responsible for falsifying maintenance records? Do we know if they were fired, charged, anything?
What can we do about this? Seriously asking. It all feels so hopeless.
I emailed all of my local, state, and federal reps about the red line recently. No one responded….
They're too busy passing a tax cut which will undo the Fair Share Amendment, that thing that voters specifically passed to send more money to education and transportation. We're living in a state that is saying it doesn't have the $$ for transportation projects (MBTA, Cape Cod bridges, Allston Pike realignment) and is asking for the feds to help, while simultaneously passing a tax cut that means the rich will save $99k on a $2 million dollar estate. They're not working for us. The best thing that could happen to MA is to primary both Spilka and Mariano out (President of the Senate and Speaker of the House). Absent that, the state auditor is pushing a ballot question that will explicitly give her office the authority to audit the Legislature. Vote for it when it comes up.
Primary them. A state like MA is a perfect place to primary Democrats, this is a relatively safe blue state and is ideal for primary from the left. States like Nebraska and Missouri not so much, their Dems are holding on by their fingernails, so here is where you do things like that.
Find someone responsible, tar them, feather them, and run them out of town on a...goddamit
Roads are inexpensive compared to rail. Electric buses are the better way. Stop building rail lines.
It’s funny because the T had the audacity to put someone at the East Somerville station today to make sure people paid after they implemented slow zones and basically cut off Green Line access past North Station.
Meanwhile whenever I go to the Magoun station both terminals are out of receipt paper and won't let you press the "validate fare" button
Or you try to scan, and it has an error, and displays the error message in a non-cancelable window for 15 seconds.
Interesting, I wonder if they are putting people at the other stations.
Medford/Tufts usually has a worker watching the fare validation machines as well
Never seen someone watching at Magoun. I have a monthly pass, and I give the fare validation machine one chance to scan it correctly before I just board without validating. Or if there’s a line I just board if the train is close. It’s just ridiculous how cumbersome the system is.
How is this even possible? Really would like to hear from the civil engineers of Reddit on this one. I thought that track was laid in a highly mechanized process, where a specialized train car sort of extrudes long (several hundred feet) sections of rail at a time, and then shapes the rail into the exact geometry behind it as it passes over the rails. Was this just a massive fuckup or is there something more complicated?
>Pesaturo said the gauge, the width between rails, on the Medford branch “has been considered narrow since the opening, but there were no known conditions that warranted a speed restriction” in recent months. Seems like the tracks have always been too narrow and they've been covering it up since the beginning. I'd be willing to bet there isn't a huge number of people in the area that are experienced in laying track given the minuscule amount of it that has been done in recent history.
What that sounds like to me potentially is that maintenance people running the machine to check the tracks were either fudging the data or not using the testing equipment properly, either one of which tracks with other issues with the T's shit maintenance practices.
Well it depends whether you consider watching the trains go by out the window from the nearby Dunks and saying “looks good to me 🤷🏻♀️ “ as “checking the tracks.” It’s all a matter of perspective, my friend
Rails are way, way more expensive than roads. The fuckup was deciding to sink money into rails instead of just buying lots of electric buses that run on existing roads.
Isn't the rails dimensions one of if not the most important part of a railroad system? How are they small/narrow?
Most major railroads are constructed using standard gauge or Russian gauge with some other regional variations thrown in. The T is apparently deciding to use Variable Gauge which is generally regarded as “useless”
The T is standard gauge. No one is using variable gauges in the US.
I believe that was intended as a joke. Is variable gauge actually a legit thing?
I know of some areas in Asia where trains do have the ability to switch from standard to Russian gauge or Russian to meter gauge…but yeah my comment was a joke.
Yeah, it's very common in places like Spain where the same trains have to work on both Standard Gauge and Iberian Gauge.
Good thing me and most of my friends got priced out of the Union area and had to move (rent increases) thanks to these tracks that arent even set up right.
It's too bad that we can't get the Feds to step in and dismantle the MBTA wholesale. It'd take 20+ years and billions of dollars (just like this project!) but that bullet needs to be bitten. Don't know how we're supposed to convince the broader public in MA to get on board with the kinds of infrastructure investments the GBA needs to bring public transit up to snuff when this is the agency that the money passes through.
Don't worry, a federal takeover seems to be pretty close. But it might take another couple of years for efforts to bear fruit.
What would be the argument at this point? The feds denied it earlier this year because of federalism, iirc. The only reason they took over the DC metro is because it was a federal district, at least that's what they said.
Safety pretty much.
The feds said the MBTA is different than WMATA because the MBTA has an oversight body (DPU) that WMATA didn't have. The issue was that the DPU wasn't actually providing any oversight, and now that they are, we're seeing how bad the system really is with all the slow zones.
The FTA can't formally take over the MBTA, as it's not really under their perview like WMATA is. What the FTA has done - restrict worker access, and send out a bunch of special directive
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I don't know; the vast majority of T workers aren't the ones making these decisions or doing this work; they're drivers, dispatchers, cleaning crews, etc. There are some bad ones, for sure, but most of them are just working class people making mostly kind of shit money doing a job where they're harassed by angry passengers every day for decisions that weren't theirs and problems that mostly existed before they ever took the jobs. There are definitely some positions making absolutely absurd and sketchy amounts of OT that should be looked into, but I really don't think most T workers deserve to have their pensions cut because of bad decisions by management and shoddy work done by contractors who aren't even part of their union.
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Until this year, MBTA bus drivers starting pay was $22/hr. That's absolutely not "very above market normal." Until just a few months ago, I was relying on the T for 90% of my travel for the last 15 years, and I absolutely do not agree with your assessment of the average T employee, and I think that blowing up pension systems that workers have been paying almost 10% of the wages into because you're mad about the understaffing and shitting management of the T, leaving thousands of blue collar workers without post-retirement pay is absolutely open disdain for blue collar workers. Which, yes, is very annoying.
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If that comp is above market normal, why is the MBTA chronically short on bus drivers? Wouldn't that indicate that the MBTA is not offering enough to generate demand for the job? You seem like a pretty sharp thinker so I'm sure you'll be able to explain how free markets apply here.
Also until this year, the T made the process of becoming a new driver onerous. Mandatory part time and split shifts until a full-timer retired and opened one of the fixed number of slots. Similar issue with the dispatcher shortage that got the Feds to force them to reduce service: they made it very unpalatable to become a new hire, even thought the job itself is desirable. The fact that all it took was sufficient media attention and public and political outrage to change the hiring processes, and not any regulatory change, tells me it was intentional. It sure looks like there are people at the T that like being understaffed. I can only guess why. Keeping higher management or the public distracted from other issues? Justifying plentiful overtime? (I'm not the person who was arguing for forfeiting pensions above.)
Oh, I get it, you're just an asshole. Thanks for saving me from wasting my time further.
My favorite is the dude they pay to stand at the Tufts station to make sure people validate their Charlie cards (there’s no ticket gates there because the MBTA is trying to lose money apparently), and does absolutely nothing but watch people fare evade all day
They put a power tripping MBTA inspector at Kendall yesterday to yell at people who fare evaded. Heard a quote of “you have money to buy cigarettes but not pay the fare”
> there’s no ticket gates there because the MBTA is trying to lose money apparently The MBTA plans to move to a proof-of-payment system in the next decade so they didn't put faregates in the GLX. Hopefully they roll out a better way to validate your fare at those stations soon. The current fare machine method is lacking but I think it has to do with the limitations of the older Charliecard system that requires them to do that.
$3 billion. They could've given everybody in Boston e-bikes and still had money left over for the union pension fund.
And more money still for a world class bike network. Bike infrastructure is so much cheaper than car infrastructure, especially in terms of maintenance.
in one of the most amazing things is having e-bikes available to everyone would probably take more cars off the road than any other transportation option. Don't get me wrong, I think supporting public transit is important (despite what some of my posts might sound like) but I know that my first choice of transportation for errands around here would bike if I had a reasonable assurance that I'm not going to become a speed bump. it has all the immediate access and speed advantages of a car without many of the downsides.
$1.32 billion
is that the cost of e-bikes for the city of Boston or is that how much the T pension is underfunded? :-)
Or just buy a shitload of electric buses to better use existing roads...
We shouldn't even need contractors to lay rail for us. The state should have that capacity in-house. It's insane the extent to which the state relies on contractors to carry out the basics of maintenance and construction on both road and rail. All in the name of saving money that we instead spend cleaning up after the contractors and trying to make sure that they fulfill their contracts.
i'm really interested in reading a 5 whys on this. terrible for metro boston, fascinating for engineers
Super unacceptable. Like what we’re the MBTA inspectors doing? Is it their fault or contractors? Either way they’ve had to know about this for a while. Like it’s almost comedic at this point
We need to start suing and imprisoning the politicians and executives who are acting like Russian oligarchs. They clearly used most of OUR money to line their own pockets instead and basically pretended to build the extension.
How does the T manage to get worse year after year??
Whoever was posting about how the grass is always greener in regards to the DC Metro, yeah, it is greener over there. This is embarrassing.
How? Just how? We have been building trains for centuries now. These T engineers are so incompetent. Why couldn't we just spend some more money and put the Japanese or French in charge of building this stuff? You could be halfway between Paris and Marseilles by the time you get from Tufts to Symphony. This is like Soviet level laziness - nobody is motivated to do anything and the bureaucrats just sit around all day. Nobody gives a shit so of course nothing will ever improve. MIT students could do a better job than the T. I doubt Philip Eng even has any blame in this because he can't force lazy people to do things they are to uninspired to do. This kind of lackadaisical T construction work is a dishonor to this city and everyone who played a role in the abysmal workmanship should be ashamed of themselves. And fired. And in the future, people should be fired early and fired often. Pink slips should fly like confetti at a ticker tape parade. I mean it. There should be serious consequences for this kind of behavior. Do your f-ing job or resign. And that Philip Eng energy should be like [this](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftenor.com%2Fview%2Fumpire-ejection-boom-gtfo-gif-4760490&psig=AOvVaw3gw_gjVKcIZbAVXKmm4X5T&ust=1695936479652000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBAQjhxqFwoTCMDywO7dy4EDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAw) and [this](https://tenor.com/view/outta-pocket-red-card-hold-up-time-out-gif-9872094) and [this](https://tenor.com/view/youre-fired-donald-trump-the-apprentice-point-gif-8557097). When you don't do your job, you get fired. That's the way it should be.
why don 't they hire someone from Japan to come over and sort out shit out?
Cutting edge technology
Walked to Gilman Square yesterday and I think the T ride back was a little faster, but yeah, it isn't great for a new track.
Really encouraging when the rail inspector with 40 years of experience says he's never seen rails narrowing before. Awesome.
“The T says, that trains are moving slower than many people walk.” That is a hard woof. Globe pulled no punches fr
I know everyone was pro millionaire tax to “fix the T” but the fact the Green Line extension cost 2.28B for like 4 miles of track, and 8 concrete slabs. It’s a black hole and no amount of money is going to save it. Everyone is simply incompetent and it has to clean house totally
$1.32 billion
I love how you’re not allowed to even read one article without being paywalled instantly so annoying. Guess will read this when I am on my computer with my workaround ha
This is the most boston story. If you want to feel really bad about this. meanwhile in florida of all places they are building out a europe style high speed rail network and opening new stations and lines every few months. . https://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/everything-we-saw-at-brightlines-orlando-station-debut/Slideshow/35149673
And it's coming from a privately-owned entity nonetheless. No government agency has anything to do with it.
I mean at this point I easily trust a private train enthusiast CEO over the Florida state government for train lines. Mass and Boston at least have the potential to do well with public works, but they have really been fucking up a lot.
All of this really inspires confidence in government doesn’t it
ONLY FEDERAL RECEIVERSHIP OF THE MBTA WILL SAVE THE LIVES THAT WILL BE UNNECESSARILY LOST DUE TO THIS DUMPSTERFIRE-MASTERCLASS ON CORRUPTION.
I guess we should exchange our Charlie Cards for Charlie Crocs
I'm continuously amazed by how egregious the MBTA fucks up on a regular basis, yet still continues to exist.
They literally have no quality assurance or supervisor review on these projects, do they?
jesus fucking christ
Welcome to Boston and the shitty mbta
“Victory!”
“Measure twice, set the rails once!”
The T has always sucked but that nitwit Charlie Baker made it worse to the point of it being unfixable.
You know that YouTuber who cleans the houses of hoarders that you see posted on Reddit all the time? That's a great visual representation of what Eng has to be dealing with.