Massachusetts: Public Transportation - New Red Line pilot cars arrive in Boston - bu Joe DiFazio (Quincy Patriot Ledger) 9 Oct 2019

From Shanghai to South Boston, the future of the Red Line arrives in Massachusetts

 

BOSTON — The first Red Line pilot cars have made the more than 7,000-mile trek from Shanghai in China to South Boston, arriving at the MBTA’s Cabot Yard on Tuesday.

The arrival of the six pilot cars is the next step in the MBTA’s $1 billion overhaul of Red and Orange Line fleets. The T plans to replace all Red Line trains with more than 250 new cars and all Orange Line trains with more than 150 cars by 2023. The Red Line pilot cars will undergo static testing at Cabot Yard in Boston before being tried out on a test track that is being built there.

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If all goes according to plan, riders can expect to see the new Red Line cars in use next spring. The MBTA said the new cars will increase capacity on the line by 50 percent.“We are investing across the system. We are accelerating our level of capital investment. I do think, when we have more reliable service in place, that we will get riders back. But I understand, from the riders’ perspective, that the burden is on us to prove that we can provide the level of reliability that they want,” said general manager Steve Poftak in an interview with Patriot Ledger media partner WCVB. “We are working as fast as we can.”

The Red Line was plagued by delays for months following a June 11 derailment at the JFK/UMass stop that destroyed signaling equipment there, throwing the entire line into chaos. The Red Line derailment, coupled with a Green Line derailment days before, prompted the T to hire a company to review all derailments, and the MBTA’s oversight board commissioned a safety review of the whole system.

Full service on the Red Line resumed last month after $5.4 million in repairs. The T had planned to replace the signaling and switch equipment before the derailment as part of a separate, nearly $1 billion infrastructure and modernization project across the Red and Orange lines.

This fall, Red Line stations will be closed on weekends, and trains will be replaced by bus service to speed up improvements on the line and replace more than 900 feet of track, some of which is three decades old. Red Line stations from Broadway to Kendall, including South Station, are set to be closed on four weekends from Nov. 16 through Dec. 15, excluding the weekend after Thanksgiving.
On Tuesday, Gov. Charlie Baker was on Beacon Hill advocating for an $18 billion transportation bond bill, with about $5.7 billion earmarked for the T. Several already-under-construction projects such as the Green Line Extension and South Coast Rail are included.

Baker vowed in June to speed up infrastructure improvements on the T as his administration faced criticism over the public transit system’s operations.

He outlined a plan that includes a look at possible cuts to service on nights and weekends that could free up more time to work on infrastructure improvements, and a one-time $50 million investment in a new team of T employees and outside experts to help with the capital plan and regular operations.

https://www.patriotledger.com/news/20191009/new-red-line-pilot-cars-arrive-in-boston

 

http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/228371/index.php