Boston: MBTA infrastructure and working conditions worsen
By
John Marion
24 February 2018
Public transportation in the Boston area is increasingly unsafe for both its workers and riders. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) operates under an unelected Fiscal and Management Control Board (FMCB) whose highest priority is privatization and a funding structure that sucks more than $400 million of debt service per year out of its operating budget.
The record snowfall of February 2015 shut down the entire MBTA multiple times. Three years later the system is still in crisis, not because of weather—which in fact has been relatively dry and unseasonably warm—but because of inadequate infrastructure funding in a state that has 34 billionaires.
On Wednesday morning the last car of a six-car Red Line subway train derailed underground when its motor failed. Andrew Station filled with smoke, and a rider on the train described the experience to the Boston Globe: “[T]he train hit what felt like a bump, then it kept bucking off the tracks, like flying up then slamming back down. Sparks were flying outside the window. Then the window started imploding. It happened in pulses, shooting shards of glass into the train right where I was sitting.”
While no injuries were reported, service between the Broadway and JFK/UMass stations was not restored for eight hours, and commutes were delayed by as much as 90 minutes as hundreds of riders had to wait outside in the streets for shuttle buses.
The subway cars were at least 30 years old. Fifty-eight of the UTDC 1700 series cars on the Red Line were built in the late 1980s. Seventy Pullman-Standard 1500 and 1600 cars, built in the late 1960s, are still in use on the line. New Red Line cars are currently on order, but will…