The MBTA: How Baker's Plan to Improve the T Ended Up Driving it Off a Bridge

By the time you read this, you'll probably have noticed that two lines of the MBTA, the corroding, crippled, and crumbling public transport system serving primarily Boston and its neighboring cities, are shut down. From August 19 to September 19 (or possibly later), the Orange Line will be completely suspended for "urgently needed rail repairs", or in other words, for around thirty years' worth of delayed maintenance. Around the same time, the Green Line Extension branch (GLX) will also be suspended past Government Center Station until September 19. According to Steve Poftak, this is needed to complete the Green Line Extension up to Medford Station. The extension project, which was first proposed more than three decades ago, had its official hearing eighteen years ago, and its groundbreaking ceremony one decade ago, has a total cost which over the years has skyrocketed out of control. Originally scheduled to open before Memorial Day of this year, it was postponed to early summer, then to midsummer, then to early August, and has now been delayed to the end of November. Economic studies also show that the extension will most likely end up pricing out [A1] many lower income residents, a majority being people of color, due to the gentrification that will follow the line. Even discounting future predictions, the present state of the T is a much larger concern for us all.

Issues With Public Transport

As many of us know, the United States is not exactly known for its public transport. Compared to public transport in places such as Europe or Asia, the U.S. is light years behind in reliability and innovation. If we compare Boston's subway with that of Tokyo's, the timeliness of trains in Tokyo is measured by the second, while in America, 10 minutes is sometimes not even enough to measure delays. Also, it's not just the trains themselves that are flawed in the U.S., it is also the system on which they run. Most subway systems in the U.S. run on something called the "Hub and Spoke" model, which means that all the subway lines meet in the center of the city, the "hub", and from there branch out to individual suburbs, the "spokes". This system would've seemed ideal if we were still living in the 1950s or earlier, when the majority of people did live in suburbs and worked in the city.

However, since the 1970s, more and more companies have built offices away from the cities, and in more rural areas where space is plentiful. With a Hub and Spoke model, in order to travel from suburb to suburb, you would need to take the train into the city center, away from your destination, change trains, and then take that train all the way back to the other suburb where your office is. Compare this system with that in London, Tokyo, or Beijing, which all use "grid" models. In a grid model, trains don't all terminate at one central point, but rather rely on frequent transfer stations evenly situated across the city. This system, although making suburb-to-city transit a bit of a hassle, makes suburb-to-suburb transit much easier, which also better suits the modern work ethic. When the 1970s rolled along, America, which had rapidly expanded its highway systems the decade before, saw a plummet in train ridership and a skyrocketing number of drivers, a trend that is clearly reflected today with the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 45 being car accidents (source: CDC).

Meanwhile, places like Japan, which by then had fully recovered from the devastation World War II brought to it, saw its metro flourish in the 60s and 70s. In addition, Japan's Shinkansen (Bullet train) proved to be an effective, safe, and efficient mode of intercity transport, beating out both cars and jet liners in speed and efficiency. As public transportation continues to expand and improve in Japan and similar places, the trains in the U.S. continue to snowball down a hill of problems.

Albert's Experience

Last summer, working at the Boston City Hall required me to take the Orange Line on a daily basis. This experience was far from ideal. Delay after delay, slow zone after slow zone, and a massive stoppage following a train fire over the Mystic River meant that I was late to work pretty much every other day. The state of the trains wasn't great either. I'm sure most of you have experienced cars with doors that don't open all the way, or lights that flicker more than Disney's Haunted House. These problems only get worse once we move to the infamous Red Line, which runs trains that were designed before the Civil Rights Act and were in service before the Apollo missions-almost sixty years ago. Over just the last two years, the line was plagued with derailments, breakdowns, and a faulty door which took the life of a commuter by dragging them to death. The latter prompted an investigation from the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA), which released a harsh preliminary report in June on the failing transportation system, citing it for a "lack of safety culture throughout the agency", and even pushed for federal intervention (doesn't sound too different from what the state tried to do to BPS, does it?). In response to those findings, specifically a part which said the MBTA was too understaffed to safely operate its trains, the MBTA decided to switch to a weekend train schedule for the remainder of the summer in order to reduce the number of staff needed. This meant that the frequency of trains was cut down by more than 20%. Trains that arrived once every 5-7 minutes would arrive every 10-12 minutes, causing even more inconvenience to the commuters who rely on the system daily.

Charlie Baker

Ever since Charlie Baker took office in 2015, he promised to improve the T, which had already been on a steady decline. Baker promised to fully replace the cars on the Red and Orange lines by 2023. The new cars, which are made by CRRC, a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned company CNR, are assembled in a factory in Springfield, Massachusetts. So far, out of the 152 trains ordered for the Orange Line, and the 252 for the Red Line, only 64 and 10 trains respectively have been delivered. The Chinese company, which won the contract in 2014 by bidding approximately half as much as its Canadian, Korean, and Japanese rivals, has been plagued with sanctions and supply delays, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, a battery failure with the new Orange Line trains in 2021 caused a recall and redesign of the cars. In the end, the cost of this bid basically doubled, with the final bill being a whopping $1.3 billion. The problem, however, doesn't just lie within the trains, but the rails they run on. Because the MBTA has neglected to properly maintain the railways on the Orange and Red line trains, numerous "slow zones" were implemented on the most derelict portions of the tracks. The most infamous one is on the Orange Line between Tufts Medical Center and Back Bay, where a decade-long slow zone forces trains to crawl at five miles per hour to avoid derailment.

The Orange and Red Lines are not the only ones facing problems. Riding the ancient Green Line, which opened in 1897 and holds the title of the oldest subway in America, certainly feels like you are going a century into the past when the trolleys squeak past the sharp and narrow tunnels between Park Street and Boylston. Over the last decade, the Green Line has suffered multiple incidents of derailments and collisions. The NTSB concluded that many of these accidents were due to outdated signaling equipment and operator impairment, either due to the influence of alcohol and drugs, prohibited use of electronic devices, or simply fatigue from overwork, a point reiterated in the FTA's investigation of the MBTA. The FTA also found that as of 2022, 41% of Green Line operators, 50% of Green Line supervisors, and nearly all of the yard masters did not possess valid safety certifications. Since 2009, the NTSB has urged the MBTA to adopt a system called "Positive Train Control" (PTC), which is a GPS-based train tracking system which can automatically alter a train's speed, or even apply brakes to evenly and safely space out trains to prevent overspeed derailments or collisions. In 2008, the federal government required all commuter trains to have PTC, but this requirement did not extend to metro lines. As of 2022, the MBTA has yet to install PTC on any of its subway lines.

Aside from the subways, the Commuter Rail, which contrary to popular belief is not actually operated by the MBTA but by a French company called Keolis, has also had its fair share of problems. Over the last year, multiple people have been severely injured or even killed when either they or their vehicles were struck by the trains while on level crossings. The MBTA states that some of these incidents were the result of crossing gates not activating in time when a train was detected. In August, another incident occurred when a train on the Framingham/Worcester line lost power short of Boston Landing Station, leaving dozens of passengers trapped in a metal box without air conditioning and in blazing heat. The Commuter Rail staff did not update the passengers, which prompted many passengers to exit the train themselves, and climb over the fence separating the rail from the street with the help of local residents' ladders. The terrible handling of the situation prompted harsh backlash at the system. However, the Commuter Rail has been extremely short staffed since 2020 when ridership dropped 97% due to the pandemic. The Needham Line has an average of two conductors per train, and because the Commuter Rail's doors have to be manually opened, this essentially transforms an eight-car train into a two-car train, with the middle six cars being virtually unattended and unused.

With all of these failing systems, what are we seeing? The simplest answer is that more and more commuters are buying their own cars and driving to work, especially when many jobs in the city offer treasured company parking spaces. Over the last five years, the number of cars and trucks on Boston's roads have increased by 300,000. As a result, rush-hour traffic in Boston has gotten exponentially worse. According to the Boston Globe, Boston has the worst rush- hour congestion rate in the entire country, especially due to factors such as narrow colonial-era roads, shared road and track space with the Green Line (Huntington Ave.), and the increase of dedicated bike lanes around the city. The increase in driving also substantially exacerbated the pollution in the city, especially around the Chinatown area which is sandwiched between two interstate highways which are basically filled with idling cars twice a day. More people driving unfortunately also caused an increase in motor vehicle accidents, which further caused delays for people. However, as humans, we enjoy a sense of freedom-a freedom from the delays and failures of the T and the freedom to go wherever we want. Even if that means we spend two hours a day sitting in standstill traffic, the ability to do something as simple as blast music through your switched from train to car acknowledge the carbon footprint of such action, the dreaded standstill of rush-hour traffic, and the inherent risks of driving, but still do it for the sake of their jobs and for the freedom and privacy of it.

And not only commuters do this. It's a well-known fact that Governor Charlie Baker never takes the T. Instead, he gets chauffeured in the back of a comfy SUV every single day, despite living less than a ten-minute walk from a Commuter Rail station. This hypocrisy is a major factor in why Baker seems to turn a blind eye to many of the T's problems, and adamantly refuses to impose a congestion fee for drivers unlike every other major city in the U.S. or Europe, despite multiple studies conducted in places such as London, Stockholm, or New York City, which all show a direct correlation between congestion fees and lighter traffic. With all the new bike lanes in Boston, it only seems reasonable to impose a road tax which would prompt thousands of commuters to consider biking to work (much like London), and which would actually make these bike lanes useful. As of right now, most of these bike lanes remain empty and simply cause a nuisance to the ever- increasing number of drivers on the road. This situation is only going to get abysmally bad once the Orange Line shuts down, since the MBTA agreed to charter approximately 200 Yankee Buses every rush hour to shuttle the Orange Line passengers. Considering that a Yankee Bus is around the length of three midsize sedans, that's equivalent to an increase of 600 vehicles on the road, which theoretically have to stop in the middle of the road at most train stations, blocking thousands of drivers and causing horrid delays to drivers and passengers.

What does this mean to us students? If everything continues to slide down the hill of deterioration and neglect, it will be increasingly harder to commute to school. and we will have to get up even earlier to make it before the tardy bell. Boston Teachers Union head, Jessica Tang, suggested the other day that the MBTA provide free shuttle buses for all BPS students, much like what we have at our school.

Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley proposed making the entire MBTA free during the shutdown. However, as the MBTA still continues to suffer from operator shortages, neither of those proposals seems very viable. This leaves one final option: driving. Last year, we saw an increase in students getting dropped off by their parents due to concerns about getting COVID-19 on the buses and trains. That increase will most likely be seen again with the T's deterioration. Outside of the commute to school and back, many of us, especially the older students (including myself), might turn to driving, not because we necessarily want to, but because we may have to.

Not wanting to end on such a grim note, there is a silver lining to this rather gloomy cloud, and that silver lining exists in the form of the upcoming Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Charlie Baker has decided to step down at the conclusion of this year to make way for someone who hopefully has better insights about the MBTA and won't falter the way Baker unfortunately did.

Sources

Dolven, Taylor. "Rail Experts Say Orange Line Battery 'Failure' Was Likely a Battery Explosion; No Answer from T- The Boston Globe." Boston Globe.com, The Boston Globe, 23 June 2022, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/06/22/metro/rail-experts-say-orange-line-battery-failure-was-likely- battery-explosion-no-answer-t/?pl=Article_Inline_Text_Link.

Dolven, Taylor. "Federal Transit Regulators Order 'Safety Standdown' at MBTA Citing Repeated Runaway Train Incidents - The Boston Globe." BostonGlobe.com, The Boston Globe, 29 July 2022, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/29/metro/federal-transit-regulators-order-safety-standdown- mbta-citing-repeated-runaway-train-incidents/?pl=BGSearch_Overlay_Results. Accessed September 17, 2022.

Dolven, Taylor. "Pressley, Markey Want MBTA to Eliminate Fares on All Subway and Bus Service While Orange Line Is Shut down - The Boston Globe." Boston Globe.com, The Boston Globe, 4 Aug. 2022, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/08/04/metro/pressley-markey-want-mbta-eliminate-fares-all- subway-bus-service-while-orange-line-is-shut-down/?pl=BGSearch_Overlay_Results. Accessed September 17, 2022.

Fatima, Sahar, et al. "A List of Recent Major Safety Incidents Involving the MBTA - The Boston Globe." BostonGlobe.com, The Boston Globe, 3 Aug. 2022, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/21/metro/list- major-safety-incidents-involving-mbta-last-year/?pl=BGSearch_Overlay_Results. Accessed September 17, 2022.

Ryan, Andrew; Vaccaro, Adam; Dungca, Nicole; Datar, Saurabh; Ostriker, Rebecca; Wen, Patricia.. "Seeing Red: A Boston Globe Spotlight Report on Boston's Crippling Traffic."BostonGlobe.com, https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/investigations/spotlight/2019/11/19/seeing-red/. Accessed September 17, 2022.

Vaznis, James. "Boston Students Face New Hurdle Getting to School: Orange Line Shutdown - The Boston Globe." Boston Globe.com, The Boston Globe, 8 Aug. 2022, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/08/08/metro/boston-students-face-new-hurdle-getting-school- orange-line-shutdown/. Accessed September 17, 2022.