20th Anniversary of the Arborway shutdown

A couple of points worth mentioning:

1. The Arborway line was shutdown during the transit-friendly Dukakis administration - in fact, the Duke was in office for another five years after that.

2. Re: the LRV battery box electrification issue - San Francisco MUNI used their Boeing LRV's extensively in street-running service and I never heard of this type of problem occurring. It sure sounds like a freak occurrence that the MBTA seized upon to allow them not to run the Boeing cars in the street.

Jim

RailBus63 wrote:A couple of points worth mentioning:

1. The Arborway line was shutdown during the transit-friendly Dukakis administration - in fact, the Duke was in office for another five years after that.

2. Re: the LRV battery box electrification issue - San Francisco MUNI used their Boeing LRV's extensively in street-running service and I never heard of this type of problem occurring. It sure sounds like a freak occurrence that the MBTA seized upon to allow them not to run the Boeing cars in the street.

Jim

When did that accident happen with the LRV battery box electrifying?

I'm not to familiar with the history of the Boston transit system or trolleys so I am wondering, why does the T hate street running so much while other transit agencies (SEPTA) have almost all of their trackage street running?

trust me.. philly hates street. That is why they were anyi route 15 and the 56 and 23 will never come back.

Philly Route 15 is back. Route 23 was paved over in parts, and Route 56 was slowly dismantled last summer.

-otto-

Otto Vondrak wrote:Philly Route 15 is back. Route 23 was paved over in parts, and Route 56 was slowly dismantled last summer.

-otto-

Only with the fiscal arm twisting of the City under Ed Rendell. SEPTA bustitutes just as quickly and eagerly as the MBTA...just on the 15 the City was in favor of the trolleys. In Boston, the City is helping lead the opposition to the Arborway...

It's because street running plays havoc with schedules. The Green Line in general is difficult to keep on schedule, period. You have one rapid transit line (Highland Branch), two relatively short and straight reservation lines (Beacon St. and Huntington Ave. to Brigham Circle) and one long and winding reservation line (Commonwealth Ave.). Naturally, the long and winding route is also one of the busiest. The key to keeping the Central Subway fluid is to have cars arrive at Kenmore and Copley more or less on schedule. Passengers expect rapid transit service between Kenmore and Lechmere, but transit times out on the branches vary widely even on the best of days (especially Commonwealth Ave.). That variability is made far worse when a significant portion of a route runs in the street. The stretch from Brigham Circle to Heath Street isn't too bad, but Centre and South Sts. in JP were a total pain for the MBTA to operate due to general congestion and problems with double-parked cars and trucks.

I rode the Arborway line many times between the early 1970’s and 1985, and there were always delays on Centre St. Always. I've been stuck on cars waiting for double-parked vehicles to be moved (usually delivery trucks and vans) and I was on a PCC once that was involved in a fender-bender with a car. The city of Boston has never done much to help the MBTA by enforcing the traffic and parking rules either, which is probably a significant part of the T’s reluctance to reopen this line.

Also, while I haven't seen any statistics, I'm told there also were a far greater number of accidents between the trolleys and motor vehicles than on the other Green Line branches. Again, it's not too difficult to see why this bothers the operating folks at the MBTA - they've suffered through an ongoing shortage of cars more or less since the 1960's, and don't need Type 7's and 8's being put out of service by errant automobiles.

I'm not defending the MBTA or its decisions here - just trying to explain the situation from their point of view.

Jim

Why is it that the San Francisco MUNI and Philadelphia's SEPTA still have the trolleys run in street running traffic but they don't have the # of problems that the T has.

Also, the MUNI used the old Boeing trains in street running traffic and they didn't have the amount of problems the T had with running Boeings in street running traffic. Why was that?

The MBTA put the most crapy PCC cars on the E Arborway on purpose so they would break down and cause headaches for autos and business people, the T wanted to make the people hate streetcars so they could get rid of that line.

You mean the crappy rebuilt Wartime cars? Or the crappy refurbished Picture Window cars?

The Beacon Street line had some of the crappiest PCC cars imaginable in the late 1970's and early 1980's, and ridership did just fine.

JD

The crappy cars did not affect the ridership, it put a picture in the non transit riders to go against them when it was time to bring them back. Just ask the crazy bike shop owner, he cries all the time that his cutomers get their tires stuck in the rails, well your cutomers are pretty stupid I always told him at the meetings.

Well, if anything the MBTA put a pretty good-looking fleet of PCC's out there in 1984 and 1985. The junky old non-rebuild Wartime cars were retired, and a couple of the best tangerine PCC's were repainted to match the rebuilds . Many of the older rebuilds were spiffed up. The Picture Window cars were likewise fully repainted. This contrasted greatly with the patchwork and battered look of the PCC fleet during the 1970's, and should have given the community a very positive portrait of light rail service.

JD

RailBus63 wrote:Well, if anything the MBTA put a pretty good-looking fleet of PCC's out there in 1984 and 1985. The junky old non-rebuild Wartime cars were retired, and a couple of the best tangerine PCC's were repainted to match the rebuilds . Many of the older rebuilds were spiffed up. The Picture Window cars were likewise fully repainted. This contrasted greatly with the patchwork and battered look of the PCC fleet during the 1970's, and should have given the community a very positive portrait of light rail service.

JD

So why didn't the green line keep them?

aline1969 wrote:The MBTA put the most crapy PCC cars on the E Arborway on purpose so they would break down and cause headaches for autos and business people, the T wanted to make the people hate streetcars so they could get rid of that line.

Oh, come on, enough conspiracy theories...

The T doesn't like street-running light rail for the same reasons most people don't like it - it's slow, dangerous, inflexible, expensive, and it combines the worst characteristics of heavy rail and buses. Like heavy rail, it's expensive to build, maintain, and run, and can only run where there is rail. And like buses, it has to compete with regular traffic, ensuring an unusual level of terrible service that can only be found in street running rail.

Oh, come on, enough conspiracy theories...

The T doesn't like street-running light rail for the same reasons most people don't like it - it's slow, dangerous, inflexible, expensive, and it combines the worst characteristics of heavy rail and buses. Like heavy rail, it's expensive to build, maintain, and run, and can only run where there is rail. And like buses, it has to compete with regular traffic, ensuring an unusual level of terrible service that can only be found in street running rail.

So why does light rail work in San Fransico, which is roughly the same size as Boston or Philadelphia or even in Europe where there is street running rail lines?