This video was shot by a Red Line passenger yesterday (April 2). It shows a Red Line train traveling at full speed with an open door.
That’s right, an open door.
Spokesperson Joe Pesaturo said: “…the (MBTA)…has developed a new inspection procedure for the older Red Line cars that have this type of mechanism in the door. All of the older Red Line cars are being checked.”
Sorry, Joe, but this is too little too late. Do passengers have to die to cause something to be done? While we have all this dishonest happy-talk from hacks who care more about putting a casino at Suffolk Downs than about funding desperately-needed government services (like transportation), the MBTA spirals towards catastrophe.
Shut down the MBTA. Now. The entire region will be paralyzed. Perhaps THAT will be enough to goad these hacks into doing the right thing.
April 4 11:30a update
This just gets better and better. I called the NTSB “Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations” (202 314-6000) to find out how to report this serious incident. I was rather curtly informed that any investigation would be done by … wait for it … the MBTA.
Let me see, did we ask Fung Wah to “investigate” their safety issues?
This is truly appalling.
April 4 6:45a update
The same incident was reported in today’s Globe. Sadly, I only find it in the “ePaper” version — it is apparently not (at 6:45a) available from the linkable “today’s paper” site. I’ve emailed the Globe reporter (Matt Rocheleau) with a request for follow up on three questions I have:
1. Why didn’t the operator of these cars know that door was open, and why didn’t that operator stop the train? The doors have lights on the outside designed to illuminate when the door is open. Were they functioning? Was the operator looking? Are those lights repeated on the operator’s panel?
Mr. Rocheleau’s story says that the video was taped at Andrew Station, an astounding four stops inbound from Quincy. Ms. Myllmaki reports that she noticed the problem at Quincy Center. How did a train with an open door make at least four stops and starts?
2. What follow up will be pursued by external agencies like the NTSB? Surely this incident reveals safety issues as threatening to public safety as any that caused the recent shut-down of the Fung Wah bus company. Do passengers have to die in order for the current MBTA to be declared an “imminent hazard to public safety”?
3. What safety systems and/or interlocks do the “older Red Line cars” share with other cars on other lines? The failures here extend well past the door closing mechanism — the fact that a train with an open door could travel so far so fast without the apparent knowledge or intervention of operators is a FAR larger problem than failing door hardware of any specific equipment.
That’s old school air conditioning.
I guess you don’t about passenger comfort tom
I still would have hit the emergency shut down switch as soon as we had moved more than a few feet with an open door.
I am astounded that the MBTA spokesperson (Joe Pesatauro) admitted, on the record to a newspaper reporter, that “a rider alerted T staff about it”.
How could “T staff” (such as an operator for every two cars) not already know about it? Surely the subway system of a major US city should not rely on riders to inform operators of imminent safety hazards.
Had I been on the train, I think I would have done the same as you.
of his plan to underfund the T in the future.
Yesterday, traffic was backed up for several miles at rush hour on Route 91 because a chunk of concrete had fallen out of the highway. Coincidentally, the state had just mentioned that the legislature’s plan does not provide enough money for the replacement of the 40-year old viaduct, and it is being called into question as to whether it can hold additional traffic brought into the area by a casino.
It is time for us to stop fiddling around and dickering over pennies. Enough is enough.
Why three cents on the gas tax? Gas is around $4.00 a gallon. If the gas tax increased a dime tomorrow and the legislature didn’t tell anyone, not a soul would even notice.
Go more than three cents, and apply those extra pennies to “state of good repair” maintenance, for roadways, railways, waterways, and sidewalks. I’m not referring to widening roadways or expanding mass transit. I’m referring to the accelerated bridge program, to doing significant track work on the MBTA, to improving Springfield’s rolling transit stock, to fixing the viaduct [see nopolitican], and to removing overbuilt 1950s Robert Moses era overpasses, bridges, etc when they are falling apart, removal is cheaper, and they’re no longer considered appropriate.
And, of course, if we can improve our state of repair in ways which *reduce* operating costs, that’s even better. Let’s prioritize those projects.
If our elected officials open up the MA coastline to oil and gas exploration. Would not this be a nice “compromise” and show the struggling motorists that politicians will do what they can to keep energy prices down? Oh, think about the jobs too.
I expect some will say it would impact our fishing industry, but the best shrimp comes from the Gulf of Mexico, where oil exploration is allowed.
MA only controls beachfront to 3 miles out. The rest is Federal. The Federales don’t allow offshore drilling anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, much of the land immediately off the coast of MA is a National Marine Sanctuary.
So are you suggesting that even though (a) state legislators are proposing a state tax to benefit the state, and (b) the authority to allow drilling off the coast of MA is federal, that (c) we shouldn’t increase the gas tax within our state until the federales allow drilling?
All this despite the reality that there’s nowhere near enough oil there to have even a negligible impact on the price of oil. tUSA’s oil production is way up under the Obama administration, and yet the price hasn’t moved favorably for that very reason.
P.S. You may not have heard, but shrimping in the Gulf took a “minor” hit when BP leaked incredible amounts of oil. Did wonders on tourism dollars, too.
Would it be possible that our Dems in the MA House and Senate persuade Obama to open up oil and gas exploration off the east coast? Did not Pres. W. do this a few years ago, resulting in gas prices dropping and VA requesting permission from the Feds to ok drilling? Why did Obama rescind the order?
Let’s make it part of the grand compromise, no? With a spike in first time unemployment claims just coming out today, we really could use the jobs, the revenue, and offset the gas tax increases, index to inflation. So the gas tax will keep going up and up.
It would not be possible that our Dems in the MA House and Senate could persuade Obama.
It would not be possible that our Dems in the MA House and Senate could persuade the Democratic Senate.
Pres W. did *not* do this a few years ago.
As offshore drilling takes many years to flow, if gas prices did drop it had *nothing* to do with the idea to drill off of Virginia.
So, no, let’s not make this part of a grand compromise. It’s not politically possible, it will have no impact on the price of gasoline, it has substantial and extremely costly risks, both ecological and environmental, and would result in remarkably few jobs relative to the risk.
to drilling in Waltham.
This is what happened.
July 15, 2008: President Bush rescinds Executive Order banning offshore drilling.
Price of oil at close on July 14 — $145.18.
Price of oil at close on July 16 — $134.60.
“Crude-oil futures tumbled $4.14 to $134.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, bringing the contract’s loss to $10.58 over the past two sessions – the biggest two-day drop in crude prices since January 1991. Crude has lost $10.58 over the last two sessions, the biggest two-day price drop since January, 1991. It’s now 8.6% lower than the $147.27 record high hit last Thursday. Earlier in the session, futures slumped $6.74 to an intraday low of $132, the lowest for a front-month contract since June 12.”
See the drop in prices, stomv? Now, couplethis with what is going on in North Dakota, where fast food service jobs start out at $20 and oil field workers make what a MD earns at a hospital in Boston, i figure why not allow MA workers to have a piece of the action? Especially if we are going to raise the gas tax, which is a regressive tax aimed at the lower incomes folks. Show some mercy, please.
Of course, put safety measures on the riggs, double secure the wells. But just b/c BP had an accident, doesn’t mean we give up. How many times did our rockets blow up before we landed on the moon? Should we have quit then?
cause the doors to fly open on T trains?
I whistle every time I walk through the Public Garden. I’ve never been attacked by a hippopotamus in the Public Garden. Therefore, whistling prevents hippo attacks — at least in the Public Garden.
I don’t deny that the price dropped. What I deny is that actually drilling off the coast of MA would have a substantial impact on the price of a barrel of oil. Do you agree or disagree? The facts are really simple. 1. There is very little oil there. 2. It would take years (a decade?!) to flow. 3. As a share of America’s production, it’s tiny. 4. As a share of worldwide production, it’s not even noticeable.
Comparing wildcatting in the North Dakota Bakken Shale with offshore rigs off the Cape is apples and pineapples. Furthermore, since it would be in federal waters, MA has limited or no jurisdiction on the safety. You can “of course safety” all you want, but the only thing “of course” is of course there will be a spill, the only question is how soon and how much.
That those who wish to increase my gas price are also doing everything they can, to keep prices low. Also, it will be up to private companies to decide if it’s worth the effort to drill of the MA coastline, not Deval or Obama. Canada is getting gas off their coastline, just up the road from us. It’s could even be our gas, but they are accessing it by drilling sideways and sucking it all out.
The 10 year argument I heard 12 years ago about ANWR. We could have a million barrels coming out of there today, but your argument was used, alng with “it won’t impact gas prices…….”much”…. It it’s just a tiny amount compared to the world demand. If we used that same standard for wind power, there would be no turbines built.
Hey, I wrote a post about how burning fossil fuels is greening the planet. I was hoping you would weigh in on that subject, my suspect you knew I was was right, but didn’t want to say it. My hunch correct?
You stating it doesn’t make it true.
Drilling off the coast of MA won’t reduce prices. Ergo, allowing drilling off the cost of MA has *nothing* to do with “doing everything they can, to keep rices low”.
Obama has opened up substantial areas to drilling, and tUSA is extracting more oil than in a long time. See chart above. Your sideswipe at Obama once again demonstrates that you’re not interested in learning about energy; rather, you are simply interested in scoring points for your team.
The gas Canada “is getting” is, in fact, running out. Their extractions are way down. We used to import from Canada, particularly in VT and northern New England. Not so much anymore.
Electricity isn’t a global market. It’s a regional market. Furthermore, it uses hourly locational marginal prices (LMP). Your comparison with electricity is nonsensical. Wind electricity bids $0 (or even negative) into the bid stack, which serves to reduce *local* price of electricity immediately. A wind turbine in Idaho has no impact on electricity prices in South Carolina. Never will.
P.S. It’s stomv
P.P.S. It’s not my job to whack every asinine mole you pop up, and when I don’t do it (see: fossil fuels greening the planet), it doesn’t mean I agree. Don’t you dare “suspect” what I think regarding energy, because every single thing you seem to think about it is dead wrong. More importantly, you’ve demonstrated no interest in learning about the field — just in pushing your simplistic view, facts be damned.
I’ll try to remember that you’re a troll and withhold food, but I don’t always remember who’s a troll and who wants to learn and revise his thinking.
I thought Mike Cote took wrote the last few lines of your comment.
I only was interested in your thought about my prior post on fossil fuels greening the planet, b/c I respect your opinion on the matter, you seem to be fact driven and honest. I wanted to know if the BU professors were accurate, that wasn’t a post I pulled out of thin air, multiple sources.
If that is how you feel about me, I will never ask you again for your opinion. Also, sometimes I misspell your handle b/c my iPad or iPhone changes your name to fit its auto spellcheck.
That is where you are very wrong. I watch gas price fluctuations at stations near me like a hawk. The closest one to me is always a good deal – currently at $3.579. If tomorrow it is $3.589 I WILL notice that it is moving the wrong way once again for someone who has to pinch pennies.
We are talking about a subway system with doors flying open during a run, and an operator who doesn’t notice and walks away from a passenger trying to tell him or her. I remind you of the passengers comment on the video linked above (emphasis mine):
When this sorry excuse for a public transportation system is shut down, you (along with many others) will end up stuck in colossal traffic jams. I suggest that you will waste far more gas sitting in interminable traffic after this system is shut down than the gas tax increase we are discussing.
Your resistance to increasing the gas tax is, literally, penny wise and pound foolish. We have already reached the point where the public transportation system should be shut down, rather than kill innocent passengers. Can you imagine what might have happened if a toddler had been on that Red Line car Monday?
Enough is enough.
You basically just said that because I oppose a gas tax hike I must be OK with the sorry state of the T – seriously?!
As I said to Ryan on a recent MCAS thread I refer my honourable friend to replies I have previously made on this matter. In this case those about raising revenue from other resources are most relevant.
You seem far more concerned about the price of your gas going up a penny or two than about subway cars traveling at fifty miles per hour with open doors.
I’m saying that this thread is about the horrendous state of the T, and you are whining about paying an extra dime for a gallon of gas.
And, by the way, the biggest problem that this episode reveals is NOT the sorry mechanical condition of the cars, it is instead that the operator not only did not notice, but then ignored the passenger who tried to inform her.
This is not a mechanical problem affecting a few old cars, this is a systemic HUMAN problem affecting at least one operator. My question is “How many?”
if it moved a dime, you’d know it moved a dime, but you’d shrug your shoulders. You certainly wouldn’t think “hey — that’s really strange. I better check the newspaper or a blog to see what happened.”
Gas prices move often enough and swing by ten times that much in the span of six months. If it moved a dime, you’d just shrug.
If the gas prices changed 30 cents overnight, you’d check the news to see what the heck happened. A dime? Nah. That’s what I mean by not noticing — it would be in the noise of regular movements.
And really, if you’re watching that penny, you’re wasting your brain cycles. There are so many more changes which have a bigger impact on your budget and your wealth than that one on a daily basis, and if you watched them all, you’d never do anything else.
…that most things I purchase day to day fluctuate the way gas does.
…most things I purchase day to day DON’T fluctuate the way gas does
because the fluctuations are small, but rather that there are much more effective ways to save money day to day regardless of the fluctuations. If you were to ‘save’ 10 cents a gallon on gas, that would have far less impact on your ability to save money than even being able to prevent a single car trip likely would.
That’s actually one thing we’ve learned from gas going up over the past few years… it has less of an impact than people may think, because we humans are pretty good at figuring out ways to drive less when we can’t afford to drive more. Combining trips, carpooling, walking to somewhere nearby instead of driving, etc. etc. etc.
There are ways we humans can use to deal with rising gas prices that may be somewhat inconvenient, but not impossible to deal with, and those things save way more money than 10 or 15 cents a gallon.
They really can’t and I already make as efficient use of driving as possible. Ten years ago when I first had a car of my own I could fill a tank, pay with a $20 bill and get change. This week prices are about triple what they were then, but I’m very certain the rate of inflation over those ten years has not been 200%. It sometimes means the difference between filling all the way or not before waiting for another paycheck. It’s not so much that 10 cents is the end of the world as it is the principle of making a necessary good deliberately cost more because someone decides its wrong to use it (without FIRST making alternatives available and cost effective on a short term basis). I favor the sin tax mentality on tobacco because nobody has to smoke, but I am adamantly opposed to using the same logic on gasoline.
they’re different, and aren’t all attractive to everybody. The fact is, christopher, you just don’t like the alternatives.
There are loads of ways to consume less gas. Some are short term, medium term, long term. Some require a little effort, some require a lot of effort. Some you could implement today with little effort, some today with a lot of effort; some would take a few years to implement but have little effort, some would take a few years and require lots of effort.
The proof: there are people in Massachusetts who personally buy zero gallons of gasoline a year. Lots of ’em. There are bunches more who buy maybe 10 gallons every 2 months. Loads of those folks too. There are plenty of folks buying 10 gallons every 2 weeks, 10 gallons a week, even 20 gallons a week. It’s all over the map. My claim is that proves, in fact, that there are plenty of alternatives available and “cost effective”. Just not for you, due to your preferences.
A consequence of living in lower density is higher transportation prices and fewer transportation options. Low density has its benefits too.
And frankly, christopher, it *is* wrong to use gasoline. Not black-or-white right-or-wrong, but you can’t ignore the negative impacts from gasoline consumption, ranging from wars to oil spills to air pollution to climate change to the danger that autos impose on pedestrians and cyclists, to the enormous space they require, to the water quality problems that their paved surfaces create, to the number of animals squished on the side of the road, and on and on and on. I’m not arguing that we should never drive, but we do need to drive less as a society, and that requires both carrots [mass transit, telecommuting, sidewalks, etc] and sticks [gas tax].
…we can’t all live on no gas. This holier than thou attitude some people have on this matter is very unattractive. I can’t just up and move to downtown Boston on a whim and frankly I don’t want the whole state to become one big city.
my point is that gas prices move all the time, for reasons you don’t worry about nor understand — nor do the rest of us. Just like when you drive somewhere that takes 14 minutes, if it takes 12 or 16 you don’t sweat it. If you got there in 2 minutes or 40, you’d look for an explanation. Small changes are, as we say, “in the noise”. How much noise depends on the product — gas prices have a lot of noise because the prices move all the time, at least by a few percent, whereas the price of postage stamps doesn’t. If gas prices moved up a dime tomorrow, you wouldn’t stop to wonder what the heck is going on. If the price of a stamp went up a penny, you might well notice — because stamp prices don’t change very often. If the value of your 401k portfolio moved 0.25% today, you wouldn’t notice — even though that could well represent more money than you spend on gas in a year.
It’s pro-public transit, pro-infrastructure. Even our highways are aging and decrepit and drivers should be upset about them. Our bridges are aging and decrepit. Holmes said taxes are the price you pay for civilization, if cars are what you need for civilization than you have to pay taxes for it. I know lots of people live in areas where the MBTA isn’t available, I understand rents and housing costs are way too high in the city (believe me I’ve looked at places too when I ache to move back). But we all need to use roads and our gas taxes are way lower in MA than in IL (believe me I know) and moving from 28th to 18th is not the sky falling. We are a great state with great assets, let’s take the opportunity to make smart long term investments. Investing in public transit AND better roads are pro-growth policies. They are not anti-car or randomly pro-environment, they are smart long term pro growth investments.
I’ve heard over and over again from friends and classmates who turned down jobs in Boston that the #1 reason was because our public transit sucked. Period. Time to fix it, we are losing far more money than we are saving.
You have a lot of ammo from this post and its comments. Call your rep and senator (find the numbers here and here) and demand that they get behind the Governor’s revenue plan.
My Senator, Patricia Jehlen, is already leading the charge. I’ve already called Denise Provost, my representative — I’m confident that she’s also on-board.
We must adopt the Governor’s plan.
We’ve got to do what we can to stop this revenue farce.