MBTA to run less frequent service during winter storms

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/11/04/mbta_redraws_winter_storm_schedule_vows_for_better_year/

and http://mbta.com/winter/

Also, did anyone go to the meeting Wednesday evening regarding the weekend north redline shutdowns?

Whee

Comments

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Well, that certainly makes sense.

Councilor Kelley's notes on the subject of bustitution

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

I'm on City Councilor Craig Kelley's mailing list, and he went. I've pasted his notes on the subject here. They're quite extensive so I'm going to have to post them as several comments.

CRAIG KELLEY’S NOTES ON THE MBTA 2 November meeting about the Red Line project from Harvard to Alewife- weekend closures starting this Saturday and lasting through 4 March, with the stations being open on Christmas and New Year’s weekend. Shuttlebus service will be run between stations.

Read the MBTA’s blurb at: http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/t_projects/default.asp?id=22956

ARRA Project MA-66-X015

MBTA Capital Improvement Project FY2012-2016



I think I got most of it right- please forgive any mistakes.



This is a 4.3 Million Dollar ARRA funded project to do very specific track and 3rd rail replacement, mitigate leaks and run the busses:

Initial ARRA work will address only critical areas

Rehabilitation of floating slab track structures

Water mitigation for tunnel structures from Harvard to Alewife

Rail replacement in selective areas

Third rail replacement as needed

Pay for bussing support



The Harvard-Alewife Tunnel opened in March of 1985. It uses a “Floating Slab” track to reduce vibration impacts to abutters from train operations. It is the “gold standard” for vibration mitigation and since much of this route is cut and cover under Mass Ave, it’s particularly relevant for the buildings along Mass Ave.

It’s been tough to maintain this stretch, with nearest point of access of 2.2 miles from Harvard Station near the Longfellow Bridge. Because all material must be brought in by rail, that’s a serious logistical challenge.

This project will have 17 weekends of consecutive shutdowns, just from Harvard to Alewife, ending around 4 March 2012. They will have replacement service by shuttlebuses, with no shutdown over Xmas or New Year’s weekends. They are pretty confident of this end date, but can’t promise anything.



FLOATING SLAB CONCRETE & TRACK WORK

The track’s concrete work will require 24 hours curing time to be strong enough for safe service (5000 PSI). So it the track will be safe, they hope for service by Monday AM following each weekend’s work. The MBTA labs will pull samples and break them during the cure time to ensure they’re properly cured, plus they’ll pull samples to curate in case of later problems.. Welding new rail and installing it requires large blocks of time and some of the rail laid will be in continuous welds of hundreds or even thousands feet long. That can be very challenging.

The T will achieve some labor cost reduction through “Bus Picks.” That means these weekend routes are not an overtime shift for bus drivers, and since Blue line work is requiring less bus replacement, they’ll pay straight wages. But future work requiring buses to cover other T closures will stretch this replacement ability.

The floating concrete slab rails are 9’x5’ floating cement blocks on rubber discs on the tunnel floor. These rubber discs are like oversized hockey pucks/shock absorbers and are about 13 inches thick. To create the rail line, big chunks of concrete were precast and then were put on the shock absorbers. Then the T put in the rail and did a “secondary pour” to raise the precast slabs up to the right level to support the rail. Looking at these blocks, you can see a joint but basically it’s one big block on the shock absorber and rail on top of that.

The track concrete work involves removing and replacing secondary pour failures and replacement of failed primary precast float slabs. This ARRA project addresses 83 areas which are critical. 13 areas involve primary precast slab and secondary pour replacement.

Some work is also in secondary areas that are not critical and the project will result, overall, in bringing the Alewife to Harvard stretch of the tunnel in good repair. The T thinks they won’t need major work done in this section for an estimated 10-15 years after this project.

Continued Notes

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Water mitigation

Water leaks will be addressed during 2 of 17 shut down weekends, but the T may need more time depending on how much they have to chase leaks. There will still be water outside the tunnel, the T can’t do anything about that, but they’ll keep it from coming into the tunnels. A good portion of the leaks are between Harvard and Porter and are generally associated with joints, which are the weaker points of construction. They’ll drill through the tunnel wall and shoot an expanding grout to the other side of the wall (to include the floor and ceiling) to fix it. Leaks can be seasonal, though, as some parts of this track are like being in a bathtub, with water issues depending on how much water is in the ground around that section.

About 6000 feet of rail will be replaced, welded and installed. 2300 feet of third rail, which is aimed at places suffering negative impact from poor third rails. Water leaks can mess up the rail by deteriorating the rail.



Alternative Service Plan

Shuttle bus service between Harvard and Aleiwfe, making sops at Porter and Davis. With staff helping to transit from train to bus, plus at stations themselves. These buses will average about every two minutes, but if they can have buses standing by they’ll try to “platoon” them out as they have done with previous bridge work that required train stoppage.

Shuttle bus stops will be manned with Bus Operations personnel for any customer assistance needed. They’ll run through Harvard bus way, where they can’t que so there will be more bus service than typical rail service.

These busses will be clearly marked “Shuttle Bus” and will only stop at the relevant stations/busways. The stations will be open whenever the buses are running, to include support for fare collection and so forth so folks won’t be by the curb. They’ll do station improvements done during these shutdowns that they can’t do during typical 3 hour shut down. Things like paint, electrical, carpentry and masonry. Plus, system security work for station door security, cameras and so forth. They’ll be adding security cameras at various stations and replacing all existing cameras. They’re talking LOTS of cameras. During the project for Park Street, they’re putting in over 300 cameras. In Davis Square, the inbound bus will stop in front of the Somerville Theatre, the outbound bus will stop in existing busway. They figure about 10 minutes between stations, with about 60 minutes for complete round trip but they not 100% certain about that. They have 35 busses scheduled for Saturday, 25 for Sunday but they could put people on overtime.

They will think about running some busses express if they think that’ll work better. They do have some flexibility for stuff like this.

Re: Continued Notes

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

ODDS & ENDS

Porter Square’s redundant Elevator project will be able to go faster over the weekends. Plus extra track improvements not affiliated with the floating slab work.

From a project standpoint, it’s been in the works for the past year for things like design, hiring people, buying material, etc. It’s not clear why they’re just now letting people about this project. Overall, their outreach does not seem to have reached a lot of people with much detail.

21000 folks on Saturday & 14000 folks on Sunday enter Porter, Davis and Alewife. And about that many get off. Davis, at about 9,000 is the busiest of the three.

Concern raised that they’ll contribute to air pollution exceedances, as happened during Kendall Diversion. T promises to not break 5 minute idling rules, but they are not sure what sort of pollutant load they’ll be adding as relevant staff is not at the meeting to address air pollution issues.

The T wants to do this starting now largely because the Lechmere station is opening on Saturday and the drivers supporting that project are now open for regular shifts per “Bus Picks.” Also, if they don’t use the ARRA money by June, it’s gone. Hiring the right amount of people and getting the right concrete mix to get to 5000 PSI took a bunch of planning to make sure it was all going to work properly. All these things put together had the MBTA choosing this time frame.

Much of the project is being done in-house, but the rail welding and the leak mitigation, for example, will be put out to bid. They’re being opened on 3 November.

You’ll only pay for the subway at the Harvard Square station. The busses themselves will be free.


CONTACT INFO
No detailed information currently up on the T’s website.
Concerns should be directed to the T’s Customer Support line – 617-222-3200.

Re: Continued Notes

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

thank you!

I really wish they could have done this work in the summer when a walk from davis to harvard wouldn't suck so much. Also, the communication was very poor and last-minutey. Will they have other meetings to get feedback on how the bustitution is working. I have little faith in the usual complaint channels. But I wish them luck in getting everything done on time. It needs to be done!

Maybe they can use this time to fix whatever is causing that horrible smell on the south side of the inbound platform.

Re: Continued Notes

[tim-sackton.livejournal.com]

I was also at the meeting, and the MBTA gave three reasons for the timing of the work:
1) The concrete needs to set consistently to 5,000 psi strength in a short period of time (24 hours) and it has taken a long time and significant testing to find a supplier who could provide this.
2) The MBTA does not have enough buses to run bus replacement on the North Station - Lechmere section of the green line and on the Harvard - Alewife section of the red line, so the red line project could not easily start before the West End/Science Park station renovation was complete.
3) A lot of the funding comes from the ARRA, and must be spent by June 30th, 2012.

The timing is obviously not ideal, but it is hard to argue with their reasons. The lack of communication, on the other hand, there is no excuse for. FWIW, the deputy direction of bus operations said that they do log all calls to the customer service number (617-222-3200), and that riders with problems should definitely call as they will be assessing the effectiveness of the bus operations constantly.

Re: Continued Notes

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

thanks, that's useful!

Re: Continued Notes

[ron_newman]

Did anyone ask why they couldn't just shut down the whole line for two weeks and do all the work at once? Maybe over the Christmas-New Year's break?

Re: Continued Notes

[tim-sackton.livejournal.com]

This question was only tangentially addressed, but my impression was that the MBTA does not have enough buses to provide an adequate level of replacement service for weekday shutdowns on high-ridership segments of the subway.

Re: Continued Notes

[gingicat]

Thank you for writing all of this up!

Re: Continued Notes

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't do anything! I just pasted the email from the Craig Kelley, who's a Cambridge City Councilor. I don't agree with him on all the issues but he shows up for community meetings and is generally involved in just about everything, which is important and useful.

Re: Continued Notes

[ron_newman]

Thanks for posting that! I had thought of doing the same thing but instead just forwarded it to the S_T_E_P mailing list.

[ron_newman]

From looking at http://mbta.com/winter , the only effect on Somerville buses is that Route #85 takes Highland Ave. instead of Avon Street at the Spring Hill end. They've published this snow route in past years, too.

No Cambridge buses have snow routes.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

all subways may operate on reduced schedules, too:

The Red, Blue, Orange and Green Lines may operate at reduced levels, resulting in less frequent service

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

They were a little sloppy when making that web page. For example, the 68 bus is listed, but only because it's printed on the same schedule as the 64, which has a snow diversion in Brighton.

letting my train geek flag fly...

[ceo]

The tunnel is actually bored between Harvard and Davis, and cut-and-cover (under the bike path) from there to Alewife. Pulling the replacement rail all the way in from the Longfellow Bridge is going to be amusing; they'll have weld up much shorter sections than is usually done on surface railroads.

Re: letting my train geek flag fly...

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Anyone know why they didn't include a construction portal when they built Alewife? There's an underground yard that stores 6 trains past the end of the platform, so they could have built a truck ramp down to it.

Re: letting my train geek flag fly...

[tober.livejournal.com]

There is literally no place between Kendall and Alewife where there are tracks at ground level and really no way that an above-ground yard (this is really what you're asking about - just a hole in the ground by which the tunnel can be accessed, of which there are a considerable number for emergency egress, is really not useful for bringing in supplies and equipment) could have been readily constructed. If the original planners of the Northwest Extension had had their way and the red line terminated at route 128 (this would probably have been in Lexington or Bedford) then most of the Alewife to 128 segment would have been above-ground and there would have been a number of places where materials could be brought in by truck and placed onto work cars and carried into the subway. As things stand, though, the underground yard beyond Alewife is a dead-end.

Historical note: Before the Northwest Extension, there was a yard near Harvard known as Eliot Yard. Nothing remains of it today, the place where it was is part of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government now.

Re: letting my train geek flag fly...

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

I was suggesting a construction access truck ramp down to the underground yard at Alewife.

They certainly built a lot of ramps and did a lot of digging when they built Alewife, including those two huge double helix ramps which hardly ever get used. So one more ramp wouldn't have been a big deal.

I believe by the time Alewife was designed, the plans to extend the Red Line further were dead.

[nathanjw]

I think the general idea is that it's better to stay on a (reduced) schedule than to just let everything go haywire - if the trains (and buses, etc) are moving more slowly due to weather, that can add in accumulating delays that make it impossible to make the next trip on time.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

as someone said on universal hub, it's making explicit something they have clearly already been doing. I hope that's what it comes to, not a license not to bother (e.g., the missing bus issue from last weekend described in a recent post).