#5 - Dyre Ave wrote:True, maybe rebuilding the Boeings, yet again, is not worth the cost. But the line should be brought up to modern standards, because the PCC's will eventually wear out and will have to be replaced. Articulated LRV-style cars with pantographs and catenary are what most of the railcar companies are making now. If the T wants a small non-articulated car that runs off of trolley wires and uses a trolley pole, like the PCC, it may have to get custom-made cars, which will be a lot more expensive.
They wouldn't necessarily have to rebuild to run them on the M if they're just augmenting the PCC fleet. They've only got 9 cars to work with (10 when the last one returns from the rebuild), and in non-rush hour probably half of them are in-service. Don't have enough to do 2-car trains during peak hours. Don't have enough to run the line in really bad weather. There's two grade crossings, meaning it's not out of the possibility that one of these cars is going to get wrecked in an auto collision someday. And they're 60 years old. Things break, things rust, and there's few replacement parts. Odds are that fleet is going to be a whole lot smaller than 10 cars before the end of their service lives. It's simply too small a margin to ensure adequate service on the line for the next 20 years.
Frankly, when the PCC's get retired for good...they should be replaced by--at minimum--refurbished Type 7's. But that's 10 years or more from now. Unmodified Boeings can start servicing the line much sooner than that, and simply augment the existing fleet so its numbers are a little healthier. The Ashmont ramp is getting reconstructed, presumably to modern standards of LRV weight loads. That's the biggest infrastructure improvement needed. The other bridges are small...we wouldn't be talking big bucks to reinforce them. And then all you need is a small substation to give the line its own power source instead of siphoning off the Red Line like an overloaded wall outlet (probably not a good idea anyway when the 01500/01600's get replaced by more power-hungry new equipment servicing Ashmont). That'll be expensive, but not killer expensive...nothing compared to the Green Line power upgrades required to get all those lines into the post-PCC era. And they may have to widen the tiny loop next to the Mattapan platforms or just not use it anymore.
But that's it. Boeings can run on poles out of the box, meaning they don't have to upgrade the overhead yet. The only thing they'd have to do is hook up a pole to the cars like the first two units had. I'm sure Riverside carhouse has extra poles on-hand. They don't even have to take off pantographs off. Just leave 'em there, in case you need to truck them back to the Green Line for service. Do a fleet of half-PCC's and half-Boeings...with mostly-Boeings and 2-car trains all around at rush hour, and mostly-Boeings when it's hot out. Run PCC's all the time but especially in off-peak hours and on weekends, and limit the unrebuilt Boeings' service hours to weekdays/daylight to limit the wear and tear. If a car fails...oh well, slap a pole on another Boeing sitting in Riverside yard and truck it down to Mattapan.
Trolley car shortages are going to be a way of life on the Green Line for awhile longer, so I doubt those Boeings are going to completely go away for another 5 years or more even if they stay largely idle during off-peak hours. The Bredas are too unreliable and there just aren't enough Type 7's...they HAVE to be there for backup until a new order of RELIABLE cars gets delivered. That'll surely eat up the last of the PCC's lifespan given Mattapan's place on the priority list, so the T either has a choice to cheat disaster with an inadequate-sized fleet until then...or do some small-scale infrastructure upgrades and spread out some extra rolling stock they already have in-hand to improve service in the mean time. Boeings are a medium-term solution to a potentially big problem of car shortages on that line. Long-term will have to require a newer ADA-accessible fleet and pantographs...but that's a decade-plus away at minimum and they've got to do something to make do until then. Squeezing more life out of the LRV's is a better solution than watching the PCC fleet slowly dwindle to the point where they can't cover enough service or--gasp!--the line has to be bustituted if enough are out-of-service at once.
