20th Anniversary of the Arborway shutdown

Did you know today, Dec 28, is the 20th Anniversary of the Arborway "E" line shutdown. It was on today that the Arborway train ran for the last time, when the service got "temporarily" discontinued.

http://members.aol.com/netransit2/arbor ... orway.html

Maybe I should add Aborway branch stickers to the RAILROAD.NET store so that we can modify all the existing transit maps!

Maybe Watertown branch stickers, too.

-otto-

I miss taking the trolleys into the city from Forest Hills.

Didn't the entire "E" line shutdown for a while right after the last train ran to Arborway?

I thought it was still run to Brigham Circle for a while after the termination of service to Jamaica Plain?

The E was shut down past Symphony to rebuild the portal incline (tear down the old wood incline and fill it in) to support the weight of the upcoming Type 7 order. Service was restored to Brigham Circle after a few months, but the entire street-running portion was shelved under the "temporary suspension" designation until 1989 when the T was finally cajoled into reopening Heath Street loop. All of the street-running track from Brigham to Arborway Yard was replaced in 1986-87 in a package deal with the new Forest Hills station construction, but the T was intent on making sure no trains ever ran on those tracks until public pressure belatedly got them to do a partial restoration to Heath. They simply delayed the rest of restoration into oblivion.

Sort of a similar situation as to how the A-line went. They actually did some track replacement and relocation work in the 1980's in the Oak Square area while the T was sparring with local officials about maybe restoring the line to the Oak Square loop and then taking care of the Oak-to-Watertown segment whenever they were finished fighting with Newton. That one obviously never happened even a little bit, but it was similar to the kind of politics and dirty tricks that were played on the E...with Heath restoration being half-heartedly offered to take the pressure of full restoration off, and track work being done to dupe the public while the intent was complete abandonment. Certainly the short street-running distance from Brigham to Heath had a lot to do with why that one came back but Packard's Corner-to-Oak Square did not. It was the minimum possible concession that could be made to restoration advocates while still effectively killing off the last of the street-running routes.

Why is the MBTA allowed so much autonomy to do things like the A&E line shutdowns? It seems that Massachusetts is filled with so many enviro-loving left-leaners, that they would operate an extensive transit system--if anything as a social program, not to mention the utility that it could provide.

Is there maybe something else to this? Boston and the Massachusetts state government have gone through many changes since 1985, so what keeps a group like the Romney administration from making it happen through fiat?

CR4014 (which supposedly ran commuter service for Conrail out of Boston for some time during CR's early years)

I didn't start paying attention until about six years ago, myself, but this is what I can tell you -- yes, quite a lot can be accomplished by fiat, including that mainstay of bureaucratic cowardice, "action by inaction."

CR4014, you're absolutely right about the culture of the Boston area being conducive to mass transit investment. If you go back to the 1970s, it was people here like Salvucci and Dukakis who accomplished the then-revolutionary feat of getting Interstate highway appropriations redirected into mass transit, resulting in the rebuilt/extended Orange and Red lines we have now. It was this same corps that a decade and a half later, with people like Doug Foy of the CLF (ironically), that got commitments for mass transit improvements to complement the highway expenditures of the Central Artery.

Many people, including David Luberoff of the Kennedy School, have argued that Masachusetts has spent far beyond what is economically reasonable on mass transit in that time. However, when the relative improvement in service is compared to the likes of the Central Artery, mass transit is a piddling expense, and one that could be argued to have more of a long-term contribution to the unique factors that make Boston an attractive place to live, study, and do business.

But before this essay drags on forever, getting back to the original point -- you have a city administration that has come out and said clearly that it places very high the right of people to expect something I would call unreasonable -- smooth, clear driving through dense neighbrohoods. My opinion is that people in cars make more money, and people with more money vote and donate politically more on average (and come from outlying, car-intensive places like Menino's Hyde Park), and hence are too valuable to alienate. Never mind that the adminstration can't deliver this, because it's essentially impossible. All that matters is that the fantasy exists as long as Menino's political ambitions.

The state administration is harder to figure, but it is certainly acting by fiat, as the current process to write out any further transit mandates from state regulations proves. What forces could motivate Doug Foy, central to passage of these commitments, to lead his family of agencies to abandon them is debatable. There is certainly a good deal of political machination at work. Notice, if you will, that the current process was begun after the exorbitant Greenbush Line was approved by executive fiat. There are issues of funding and political balancing going on -- perhaps it's pressure from the city, which may be playing give-and-take with the state -- but it's fully within reason and its authority for the state to deal with these issues and see the job through. Instead, it keeps parroting the same sham arguments and coming up with inaccurate data to back them up. Falsehoods repeated don't automatically become truths, even twenty years later.

In any case, this is a good time to complain, for whatever it's worth. A public comment period on the status of these projects is open until January 17. Send your please, arguments, demands, etc., to:

• Christine Kirby
  Department of Environmental Protection
  Bureau of Waste Prevention
  One Winter Street, 10th Floor
  Boston, MA 02108
  [email protected]

Plenty of solid background info from which to draw is available at http://www.arborway.net/lrv

Why were the type 7s permanently assigned to the "E" line after the Arborway shutdown?

The Type 7's are the only ones on the E Line because the Type 8's don't have clearence and the Boeings are a hazard for the street running section due to thin covers over the battery.

That's about all I know if anyone else has info please add it.

rhodiecub2 wrote:Why were the type 7s permanently assigned to the "E" line after the Arborway shutdown?

Before the entire E was shutdown for incline reconstruction in 1985 Boeings used to service the short-turns at Heath while the PCC's did all the straight-to-Arborway runs. At some point one of the LRV's got involved in a side-impact collision on the street-running portion of the line and one of its side battery compartments shorted out and electrified the entire exterior of the car...extremely hazardous for both evacuating passengers inside and motorists outside. Because of the placement of those battery compartments at a location where they were vulnerable to auto impacts (bad design) it was deemed unsafe to run them in mixed traffic, so when the street-running trackage from Brigham Circle to Heath reopened in 1989 it was Type 7's only. Type 7's, not being so proprietary in design, have better-placed batteries to avoid such an acute side-impact danger. The only Boeings to go to Heath loop since 1985 have been fantrips and non-revenue movements.

At various times when the line has been shut down past Brigham for track work or bad weather Boeings have been used on the E (regularly about 5 years ago when Brigham-to-Heath was shut down for the better part of a year) for reservation runs. Even as late as last winter during a couple snowstorms.

I think the type 7s solely on the "E" line even when it only ran to Brigham Circle from 86'-89' as well though.

the Type 8's don't have clearence

Actually Type 8s DID ran on the E for a while however that ceased to exist citing a derailment at Northeastern 18 or so months ago.

So basically the only trains the could've done the whole stretch of the Arborway are the PCC trains if the Arborway branch reopened years ago. Seems like it anyway.

rhodiecub2 wrote:So basically the only trains the could've done the whole stretch of the Arborway are the PCC trains if the Arborway branch reopened years ago. Seems like it anyway.

Only because the T didn't upgrade the overhead. When the LRV's entered service in '76 the T gradually started changing the overhead to allow pantograph use (dual pole and panto use, actually). Since it was a gradual phase-in they had to do it by trackage leading from the yards where the LRV's were stored. Therefore Riverside, the D line, and the subway got it first...then the Reservoir-fed B and C lines, which of course were linked directly to Riverside. Arborway and Watertown, being the two carhouses without direct non-revenue or protected ROW links to Riverside...were last up, and as the LRV's were mixed in PCC maintenance operations were shifted over to those two yards. Since their only fleets were PCC-based, there was less urgency to upgrade the overhead because it would've been rare to get an LRV out there anyway. Eventually the E got it up to Heath loop so LRV's could layover more permanently at Lechmere. Allegedly the A was next, with that line getting reactivated once the full car order was in and the PCC's being relegated exclusively to Arborway. Never happened of course because the LRV order got partially truncated. Arborway was then scheduled to wait until after the incline got rebuilt to support the weight of Type 7's and the trackage got reconfigured for new Forest Hills station.

Of course the T intended to kill off Arborway all along, and never bring the A back. But these convenient delays in upgrading the overhead bought them some time to continue delaying while still projecting a hopeful face to the public. The Arborway link was never restored...the track connection to Forest Hills was rebuilt but they never put up trolley poles and wires to link it to the old trackage. And the A stayed electrified right until 1994 with panto-incompatible overhead. When the sorry-looking PCC fleet in Watertown finally decayed to dust there simply weren't enough operational vehicles to support anything other than the barest-minimal slow push-pull night moves. By that point LRV's were already being scrapped and the T had yet to purchase the 3700's to replace them, so there was no point in even trying to upgrade the overhead....there weren't enough vehicles anyway. The actual process of upgrading the overhead was simple enough...just change the hangers and string new wire. Arborway would've needed a substation to handle the power increase just like the other lines got...although that was potentially already there at new Forest Hills (and the rest of the E already had more juice to run LRV's to Heath). Watertown probably could've gotten by with just new panto wire hangers because there was rarely more than one non-revenue car on the line at any given time. Upgrades to that line's juice could've waited until reactivation of revenue service was imminent. But because the T wanted to make that as difficult as possible, it wouldn't do anything to the overhead.