This incident is outrageous. The attitudes it betrays are outrageous: “He faces the potential for criminal charges and probably will be fired”.
Potential? Probably? He should have been perp-walked away from the scene in handcuffs.
Why was the driver “unidentified”? Does nobody know his name? This unidentified driver couldn’t rent a car at the airport for crying out loud (because he’s under 25), and he’s driving a Green line train?
How many other unidentified 24 year old Green line operators are out there?
From the article:
The MBTA’s Green Line is a 19th-century antique and the oldest line in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which is the country’s oldest subway system. It has been under scrutiny for years because of numerous crashes and derailments. Green Line trains are operated manually, and travel closer together and with less input from dispatchers than the Blue, Red, and Orange lines.
A “19th-century antique” — “operated manually” — “travel closer together and with less input from dispatchers” — and driven by a 24 year old with less than two years experience.
We are operating a TRANSIT SYSTEM like some frigging merry-go-round in an amusement park, for crying out loud. If this were a private amusement park, with this history, how long would we allow them to stay open?
SHUT THIS OPERATION DOWN. NOW. TODAY.
Dissolve the MBTA, file bankruptcy or whatever, dissolve the contracts, fire every last employee. EVERY ONE. Fire Mr. Grabauskas, immediately, and fire EVERY LAST EMPLOYEE, all the way to bottom. Terminate every contract. Now. Stop every train, every subway, every bus, every boat. NOW.
Stop it now, because continued operation is a threat to public safety.
Then — AND ONLY THEN — start over. I don’t care whether an operator is contracted from the outside (but please not Bechtel or Halliburton) or a new agency is built from the inside. Fund it, do it right, and manage it right.
I guess I was able to find a few words after all.
demredsox says
Kill all public transportation. Right now. Really?
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p>Screw all those people who don’t have cars. Screw all those people in cars who will faced increased traffic. Because these people were injured, the entire system should be destroyed.
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p>
somervilletom says
I understand that my reaction isn’t rational or objective.
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p>At the same time, the aspect that I think needs to be more clearly articulated is that the entire system already has been destroyed.
<
p>My kids already are screwed. The people who don’t have cars already are screwed. The people in cars who will face increased traffic already are screwed. The 49 people hospitalized in yesterday’s crash demonstrate, to me, that the system has already been broken — especially when examined in the light of the rest of the “accidents” of the past year or two. I, and my 15 year old, have already been victimized.
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p>I don’t know if you have children or not, so I don’t have a way to assess your ability to empathize or not. If my children wanted to spend a day at an amusement park or carnival with the recent history of the MBTA, I would have a very difficult time saying “yes”. For the time being, until something is changed, I am leaning strongly towards encouraging my children to walk to the places they want to go to while in the city. Biking is out of the question, driving is certainly more dangerous, and the MBTA has until now been their (and my) best option. This episode creates serious doubt in me that this is still true. I’m not sure I feel safe riding the MBTA, never mind my 15 year old.
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p>The definition of a “sacrament” is “an outright and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace”. In plain English, the rite or ceremony acknowledges something that has already happened.
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p>In this case, the destruction of the MBTA has already happened. We are seeing the symptoms of its destruction.
<
p>I think we need to end our denial of this abysmal reality and face the herculean task of rebuilding Boston’s broken public transportation system.
liveandletlive says
you would be less “freaked out” if it didn’t affect your children.
<
p>I wonder what kind of safety training these employees receive. Since texting is fairly new technology it may not even be included in safety training. Also, the best way to train someone in safety is to show a video or pictures of the results of the behavior that the company wants stopped. So showing a short dramatization of an accident caused by texting just might do the trick to stop the behavior. I never wore a seatbelt until I saw a picture of a skull wrapped around a steering wheel. It works.
huh says
…operating a cellphone while driving a train was already cause for termination. They’ve now tightened it down to even possessing one, but come on. There are signs EVERYWHERE (including the bathrooms) saying leave your cellphone in your locker. The driver deliberately ignored that.
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p>Why do you think shutting the T down and restarting would prevent that kind of stupidity?
david says
There’s no systemic remedy for people behaving stupidly. Perhaps there are reasons why the T should be put into bankruptcy, but a single driver’s misconduct is not one of them.
somervilletom says
Signs about cellphone use have about as much efficacy as the multi-million no-smoking signs proudly on display at Park Street.
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p>The Green line is “a 19th century antique”. Operating it safely requires a commitment to discipline, safety, and careful operation — a commitment whose absence is flagrantly obvious to anyone who regularly uses the system. It requires an organizational culture that values moving passengers safely and efficiently from one place to another — as opposed to providing jobs.
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p>Automobile insurance rates for 24 year old males are astronomical for very good reason. Putting them behind the controls of an antique machine with no effective signal systems, obsolete brakes, short separations, sharp curves, and antiquated communication systems is begging for a disaster. Do you ever listen to Green line drivers talking to dispatchers during a run? Answering, over a voice channel, “Where are you”? Give me a break. How much money has been “invested” in communication systems, GPS locators, and signaling systems for the MBTA in the last decade? Where are the results?
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p>If the Green line were an amusement park, it would have been shut down by now. The incident record of the past 2-3 years is horrendous, and I’m willing to wager that we don’t ever hear about most of the problems because they are hidden behind a PR firewall designed to be opaque instead of transparent. Have any of you ever attempted to discern an actual schedule of operations on any Green line branch?
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p>This “single driver’s misconduct” is the latest glaring symptom of a system in its death throes. Just what would it take to convince you, David? Do passengers or bystanders have to die?
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p>If this incident isn’t enough, can you offer a criteria by which you would agree that the system should be dissolved and rebuilt?
huh says
You’ve passed from hysterical into idiotic. For starters are you seriously claiming that 24 year olds shouldn’t be allowed to work in transportation? Really?
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p>Second, you can repeat the asinine “antique” sound bite as many times as you like. It still doesn’t make it anything but a sound bite. The brand spanking new Los Angeles subway has more accidents that the Green line…
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p>I’m not sure why this accident upset you so much, but you’re really not making much of a case. You’re the one arguing the system should be rebuilt from scratch. It’s up to you to provide some backing besides anger.
somervilletom says
Having taken several quieting breaths….
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p>Surely we share a “core value” that, above all else, the MBTA should be a safe system.
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p>Is there a measurable criteria by which we could agree that the MBTA was unsafe to operate, and should be shut down until corrected?
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p>If so, then what is that measurable criteria, for you?
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p>If not, then isn’t that a legitimate discussion we should be having? In my view, defining and implementing such a criteria is a core part of regulating any public or private transportation system. You say “it’s safe”. I say “it’s unsafe”. How shall we discern the difference?
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p>You wrote:
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p>I fear you’ve misquoted me. I did not write that “24 year olds should’t be allowed to work in transporation”.
<
p>I said “Putting [24 year olds] behind the controls of an antique machine with no effective signal systems, obsolete brakes, short separations, sharp curves, and antiquated communication systems is begging for a disaster.”
<
p>There are a multitude of ways that 24 year olds can work in transportation, and perhaps even on the MBTA. As a comparison point, check out Becoming an engineer, posted by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. In the rest of the world, a 21 year old is expected to spend several years working as a conductor, driving engines in yards, and similar support work, before driving a passenger train.
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p>You offer:
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p>What is it about that line that makes it “asinine”? You are inviting us to be calm, a desire that I share. Here is the original paragraph, from the Globe:
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p>This paragraph strikes me as an accurate description of the Green line. What is it about the paragraph that strikes you as “utterly stupid” or “Of, relating to, or resembling an ass”?
<
p>
Can you please offer a cite to support that claim? In particular, please remember that there are generally (in any transportation system) a great many “incidents” for every “accident”. What I think we should be interested in is incident reports.
huh says
You’re making a radical and absurd claim: the T must be torn down (as if it were the Berlin Wall). It’s up to you to provide backing.
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p>I should have stopped when you used “empathy” as a criteria for evaluating people’s response. You’re clearly freaked out and flailing.
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p>Discussing T improvements may be be productive. This discussion is not.
somervilletom says
You wrote:
<
p>
<
p>I’m glad we’re still discussing, let’s please continue. I accept your feedback about this discussion. I’d like to suggest that, in response, I start a new thread, and continue our discussion there.
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p>The topic of the thread I envision is along the lines of the questions I just asked:
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p>1) Do we agree that passenger safety should be an absolute minimum requirement of the MBTA (or its replacement)? What should be the core values of our public transportation culture (whatever institutional shape it takes)?
<
p>2) Should there be quantitative and measurable criteria by which the safety of the MBTA (or its replacement) can and should be measured, and if so, what are they?
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p>3) Should the agency that operates our public transportation be obligated to demonstrate that it is safe? How shall we suggest it do so?
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p>It seems to me that we can lay some foundations like these, and then build on those foundations to address questions such as driver qualifications, transparency of operational reporting (especially regarding matters of public safety), agency funding, capital investment choices, and so on.
mr-lynne says
… pretty obvious to me (unless I’m missing something). There should be a measure of injuries per person-mile and fatalities per person-mile (injuries and fatalities related to operations – not, for example, random heart attacks). These would be compared to the equivalent measurements to other forms of transportation. The particular minimums would be a different qualitative debate, but at least you could run the comparison to existing transportation and asnwer the question ‘Do their seem to be any safety ‘gains’ in the use of the MBTA vs. current alternatives?’
somervilletom says
The FAA and NTSB also collect “incident reports” — near misses and such — in hopes of identifying and solving safety issues before, rather than after, somebody is hurt or killed.
mr-lynne says
… I don’t know what kind of ‘incident monitoring’ processes are in place already. Maybe these statistics need to be publicly released (if they are not already), such as the FAA does with near misses.
huh says
The FRA safety analysis site doesn’t have the greatest user interface and the data is only through February, but you can slice and dice to your hearts content.
huh says
Seriously?
somervilletom says
I hope these goals are non-controversial. I even hope that the MBTA at least does lip-service to them.
<
p>If you’ll allow me to assume them as goal, then are you seriously objecting to my asking that:
<
p>a) Progress towards these goals be measured
b) We discuss the specifics of the measurement process
c) The MBTA share (ideally, by publishing them online) the results of such measurements.
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p>I’m attempting to find common ground with you, huh. Are you doing the same with me?
huh says
There’s no basis for discussion here, just hyperbole. Again, does the T do any of that now? Have you even checked?
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p>BTW, I ride the T almost everyday. So do most T employees.
somervilletom says
You wrote:
<
p>I’ve offered possible goals to discuss here and here. “Mr. Lynne” offered one here. You seem to dismiss all these as “hyperbole”.
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p>I don’t know if the T does any of that now. Yes, I’ve checked. No, I haven’t been able to find any information online. If you can suggest any sources, I certainly welcome them.
<
p>Are you really saying that you can find nothing to discuss in any of these? Only “hyperbole”?
<
p>
<
p>Are you a T employee? If so, I wonder if perhaps that colors your own ability to discuss this with any sort of objectivity. You suggested that I “take a Valium”, and opined that “[I have] passed from hysterical into idiotic.”
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p>At this point, I’m not sure I’m the one being “hysterical” or “idiotic” — I’m attempting to engage you in a conversation that you seem strikingly resistant to having.
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p>Is there a reason why you don’t want to talk about applying the same techniques for assuring passenger safety that other transportation industries have been developing and using for generations?
huh says
This has become inane. This isn’t a staff meeting and I really have no desire to engage in a goal setting exercise for the T.
dcsurfer says
1) Do we agree that passenger safety should be an absolute minimum requirement of the MBTA (or its replacement)? What should be the core values of our public transportation culture (whatever institutional shape it takes)?
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p>Nothing can be made perfectly safe, so making safety a requirement of anything (sex, abortion, driving, walking, biking, riding the T) is not only futile but disrespectful to God. We aren’t in Eden anymore, death, dispair and misery are all around. Learn to embrace and accept danger and chance and helplessness, you’ll live longer.
<
p>2) Should there be quantitative and measurable criteria by which the safety of the MBTA (or its replacement) can and should be measured, and if so, what are they?
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p>No, that’s anal.
<
p>3) Should the agency that operates our public transportation be obligated to demonstrate that it is safe? How shall we suggest it do so?
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p>If one person ever arrived at their destination without dying, then they have demonstrated that it is safe.
huh says
From Wikipedia, but there are dozes of hits and the other lines have had their share of deaths resulting from collisions.
<
p>
somervilletom says
The article you cite describes injuries and fatalities resulting from trains hitting cars and pedestrians along the track. I hope you agree that this is different from risks to riders.
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p>Regarding injuries and fatalities to cars and pedestrians, I invite you to compare the LA system to the recent history of the MBTA:
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p>7 deaths in 2008
5 deaths in 2007
6 deaths in 2006
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p>That’s an average 6 deaths per year, for the last three years. Meanwhile, the reference you cited describes 87 deaths in 18 years — an average of 4.58 deaths per year.
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p>We don’t have access to the specific numbers, so we can’t calculate the statistical significance of the difference. On the face of it, the MA numbers are more than 30% higher — nearly a third.
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p>I’m not sure how this comparison bolsters your apparent argument that the LA system is more dangerous than the MBTA.
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p>We can look a little deeper. Here are the contributors cited in your article:
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p>- Very high ridership rates (emphasis mine):
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p>- “high population density area that leads to more pedestrian and vehicular traffic around the tracks”
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p>- “diverse varied socio-economic community around the line that create literacy and language challenges to public education campaigns”
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p>- “driver frustration due to the slow traffic speeds around the line that leads to more risk taking behavior”
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p>- “shared right-of-way with freight track in the fastest running section from Washington station to Willow station, where trains operate at a maximum of 55 mph (90 km/h) between stations.”
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p>We’ve already got 30% more fatalities (of bystanders!) per year in MA, and that’s with (a) lower ridership, (b) lower population density in the surrounding areas, (c) higher traffic speeds, (d) fewer literacy and language challenges. The MBTA commuter rail does share right-of-way with freight.
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p>All in all, the piece you’ve offered seems more germane to commuter rail operations than subway, it seems to apply to motorist and pedestrian fatalities and casualties rather than riders, and seems to suggest that the recent MBTA performance is sub par.
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p>Am I missing something here?
huh says
Those figures have nothing to do with the arguments at hand, not even your own.
<
p>You claimed the T’s problems were due to having an antiquated system. I brought up the LA Blue Line (there are several others) as an example of a new modern system with collision issues similar to our own. As wikipedia says, it’s considered the worst in the country.
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p>That you attempt to answer that with a list of suicides across all T lines is just looney tunes.
somervilletom says
You cited the link, not me.
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p>I don’t know what has set you off, but your comments on this thread are personally rude and insulting. I don’t speak to you that way, and I don’t appreciate your tone with me.
huh says
Here’s your cite, from your response
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p>
<
p>If you follow YOUR link, it’s to a long article on the effects of “suicide by train” on T workers. In fact, you edited the quoted numbers to remove that context and removed the 2004 and 2005 figures, apparently since they didn’t support your fabrication.
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p>Here’s the source material:
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p>
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p>There is no point in continuing this discussion.
somervilletom says
I thought your “suicide” comments were in reference to my analysis of the LA numbers. I apologize for misreading your last post. You introduced the bystander and pedestrian red-herring in your cite of the LA numbers, not me. ANY such statistics necessarily include suicides, both for Boston and for LA. Anybody who knows engineers knows that suicides are an occupational hazard.
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p>I cited the last three years of the MBTA history because I’ve said from the beginning that the MBTA’s safety record for the past 2-3 years has been horrendous. The statistics you of offer for the LA system fatalities also include suicides — any discussion of pedestrian and motorist fatalities does so by necessity. We were talking about passenger risks, not risks to bystanders or pedestrians. The MBTA average, if you include all five years is 4.4/yeay — about the same as the numbers you offered for “deadliest” system in the country. You offer this, and then characterize my comments as “hysterical”?
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p>Your comments on this thread epitomize why the rightwing opposition to continued MBTA funding gets such traction with the voters of Massachusetts.
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p>I find it particularly emblematic that while you claim that “Discussing T improvements may be be productive”, you dismiss, attack, and reject any effort to actually measure anything.
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p>I agree with you that further discussion with you on this topic is impossible and a complete waste of my time and yours.
huh says
You can sling insults all you want, but it doesn’t change what you did. Nor does giving me a “0” for calling you on it.
somervilletom says
You toss out words like “hysterical”, “idiotic”, and “looney tunes” and then accuse me of slinging insults?
<
p>We were arguing about MBTA collisions (two in the current year) and passenger safety.
<
p>You claimed that the “The LA Blue Line is the deadliest in the country” and cited a link that references accidents with motorists and pedestrians — totally irrelevant to trolleys running into each other underground.
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p>I suppose you prefer to just slide on past two collisions, one fatal, on the Green Line within the last year? Just your run-of-the-mill occasional driver error, I guess.
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p>In my first answer to you, I wrote “especially when examined in the light of the rest of the “accidents” of the past year or two” — and I excerpted the statistics for the MBTA of the last year or two.
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p>You characterized that as a “flat out lie” and followed up with “altered data”. At worst, I can be accused of cherry-picking. Even with the full data set from my link, your own cite doesn’t come close to supporting your claim about the LA Blue Line.
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p>You’ve demonstrated, at best, that an irrelevant statistic — fatalities from collisions with bystanders and motorists — shows that the Boston system is comparable to the LA Blue Line. I guess that makes Boston and LA tied for the honor of being “the deadliest in the country” for bystanders, motorists, and pedestrians. Good job.
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p>Meanwhile, in today’s Globe, we learn that:
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p>- The current MBTA standards put drivers as young as EIGHTEEN at the controls of a trolley — three of them under 21, to be precise.
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p>- “the MBTA has not seen a pattern of problems among younger drivers, but would try to learn from Friday’s crash and evaluate the age requirement”
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p>Do you suppose that perhaps the MBTA hasn’t seen a pattern because they have NO processes in place to look for one? While I appreciate that you have “no desire to engage in a goal setting exercise for the T”, I certainly hope that someone does.
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p>I uprated my evaluation of your comment to a “4” — “needs work”. I think your comments towards me have been intemperate, insulting, and rude.
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p>
huh says
Furthermore you scrubbed the portion of the data which didn’t agree with your conclusion and removed the context of the data since it also didn’t match your point. That’s intellectual fraud, by any standard I know of.
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p>Even your justification repeats the lie:
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p>
<
p>To go back to my original point: you’re arguing that the T needs to be shut down. To date, you’ve provided very weak arguments and a few mom and apple goals like “safety.” That you feel you have to resort to this sort of data manipulation to make your case just shows my original comment was correct.
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p>BTW, my point about T employees riding the T is that for them, unlike you, safety is far from a theoretical problem.
joe-beckmann says
It’s an odd and provocative coincidence that the inexperienced Green Line motorman should get caught at the same time as the over-experienced, former actor, Trellis Streptor, Chair of the Cambridge Democratic Committee, he of the staff of both Byron Rushing and Alice Wolf, working as PR hack at the MBTA without a legal drivers license driving a state car. One wonders how long Alice and Byron ignored Trellis’ remarkable skills of mendacity, and how far out on a limb they may have gone to get him is former $90K job at the MBTA – “Special Projects” my ass! – while the state budget was on the line in exactly that same bureaucracy.
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p>It’s not only a matter of a remarkably stupid driver, but also an even more stupid professional politician, who has routinely performed for – and now embarrasses – some of the key progressives in the Commonwealth. Surely Howie Carr and his cronies will crow, but there is a more difficult question than good guy-bad guy. What does the ineptitude of creeps like the kid driver and the absurdly corrupt spin manager say about such august and respectable progressives as Alice and Byron, let alone Deval and Grabauskas? If we accept that “an unexamined life is not worth living,” who in the world examines the lives of these leaders? Surely not themselves.
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p>And, finally, how does such a debacle reflect on the failure of newspapers? Even the Herald, who somewhat miraculously covered the story – and even Stepter’s early transfer from DOT to the MBTA under a far less lurid cloud – missed the point of how in hell he ever got either job! It is one thing to complain of cronies of Bush and Cheney, but quite another to point to Alice and Byron – and Deval – as corrupt, incompetent, and self-serving. Well, the shoe fits remarkably well!
liveandletlive says
It is even more frightening to put your kids in a car. My daughter has had 3 accidents since she started driving, she could have been killed in two of them, in one, it’s a miracle she walked away.
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p>The Seinfeld “Subway” episode happens to be “On Demand”
right now. Talk about “freaking out”. Although I might react the same way, maybe a little less intense.
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p>
somervilletom says
Please see my exchange with huh upthread.
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p>I agree that my children and I are safer on the T than they are riding bicycles downtown (sadly). I agree that driving is far more dangerous. Even walking has risks, and we all accept them.
<
p>I want the MBTA to be genuinely safe. I understand that there is danger everywhere. I also feel that I should have more information than I do now about what the risks of the MBTA currently are. At the moment, I do not trust the current agency to tell the truth about any of this. I want to be convinced.
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p>If there are objective records about incident reports, driver training and experience, mechanical failure history and maintenance logs, and so on, are they available somewhere?
liveandletlive says
I would like to see the specifics of safety training and how it is provided. I also believe experience should be important in hiring drivers. Unfortunately, stupidity can’t be controlled, although video cameras documenting a person’s activities on the job can often stop unwanted behaviors. I haven’t read this whole thread, so video cameras may have already been brought up. It think they should do it.
somervilletom says
All MBTA buses are now equipped with GPS devices. That data could be used to monitor on-time performance, for each bus. The same could be done for rail and subway vehicles.
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p>Is it? Does anybody know why or why not?
midge says
Haven’t heard those announcements underground?
demredsox says
Yes. Yes, it is. There’s a nifty little command center down on High St that looks at does that. It’s actually been successful at reducing bunching on some routes.
kirth says
I am pretty sure GPS won’t work in a subway. You need line-of-sight with the satellites.
somervilletom says
Yeah, true enough.
<
p>Let’s find out what the systems in NYC, Chicago, and Washington DC do. The Metro, in DC, is completely automated. It’s therefore possible to figure out where the darned train is — and more reliably than having a dispatcher ask an operator “where are you”.
demredsox says
The DC system was mostly built in the seventies. Ours is quite often more than a century old.
somervilletom says
somervilletom says
somervilletom says
kirth says
that the driver has to pay attention to the signal lights. There are a number of ways that could be solved.
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p>If each train had a unique RFID transponder, and readers were placed throughout the subway, then a central computer could know where every train was at all times. If one of them was approaching another, stopped train, the computer could sound a warning in the moving train’s cab. If the warning had no effect, the computer could unpower the car’s motors or even apply the brakes.
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p>Trains could be equipped with proximity sensors that used sonar or laser-reflection to measure the distance to another train. An onboard computer would monitor the train’s speed, and if it calculated that a collision was likely, sound an alarm or engage the brakes.
demredsox says
On the Red Line and, I believe, the Orange and Blue Lines, the power automatically cuts if two trains are within 100 yards. That’s a lot harder and more expensive to do with the Green Line.
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p>I advise everyone to check out this excerpt, from the 2003 PMT, page 5B-20, for a look at the financial realities:
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p>http://www.bostonmpo.org/bosto…
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p>
kirth says
This is what it says about upgrading the Green Line to the same automatic controls as the rest of the system:
So, because it would not generate new revenue, this signaling and control upgrade has been given a low priority. After Even before the texting-caused accident, that priority is wrong. Safety should always be the highest priority.
demredsox says
I’m not defending it as it is.
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p>What I am saying is that the problem is not that nobody is aware that upgrades are necessary. They are.
<
p>But it is not a zero-cost thing. More significantly, the MBTA has no cash to pay for this, and the state is simply not going to fund this. You get a whole lot more public support from building a rail extension to New Bedford and Fall River than you do refurbishing an older lines that are unnoticeable to riders and general.
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p>This is because no one notices when the Green Line doesn’t crash.
huh says
It’s been six years and I imagine (hope) that last year’s crash and the crash in LA around the same time would have increased the priority of safety systems. Unfortunately, the recent crash has added so much info that google isn’t helping.
<
p>It strikes me that the most relevant comparison would to the London Metropolitan Line and the Budapest Line 1. Those subway systems predate the Green Line and the Budapest line 1 (est. 1896) is very similar to the Green Line.
christopher says
I’ve read the many comments on this thread about what new policies need to be instituted, but why does a fundamental principle even need to be stated? DRIVERS SHOULD PAY ATTENTION! Isn’t it just that simple? Of course the idiot who was texting while driving should be fired. I’d advocate that step even if prohibiting it were not an explicitly stated policy of the MBTA. He was an idiot; that’s all there is to it.
huh says
In fact, that was my first comment. Using a cellphone while driving has been a fireable offense for years. It’s not like the T folks are stupid. Underfunded, yes, but claiming that safety is not a primary concern borders on slander.