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‘They Don’t Make These Anymore’: Maintaining the MBTA’s 100-Year-Old Signals

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Re: ‘They Don’t Make These Anymore’: Maintaining the MBTA’s 100-Year-Old Signals

#31

Post by radd9er »

roymurdock wrote: post #16
acomjean wrote: post #6

live in MA and take the T (what we call the subway/bus service here). Public transit is a major problem in this city and surrounding areas. It what make this city OK and expensive vs being great and affordable. While the transit system here needs upgrading badly, this piece is very political. The quoting of Charles Chieppo is a give away. "For many systems, Chieppo said, the focus is on improving stations or opening…

Green line expansion (two stops) initially budgeted at $954M in June 2010. 5 years later, costs estimated at $3.09B and project is terminated. A Reliable Project Budget is Defined as being within +10% and -5% of what it would Cost to Design and Construct the Project Costs went up over 300%. The level of incompetence on display here is borderline criminal. Have a friend who works at one of the big 4 who is being calle…

I believe that the housing market in Medford and union Sq for years has been inflated on the speculation of the green line exrension. For years it was taken as a given. Has the Market declined since it came to light that the estimates were off, and the project cancelled ? I imagine a lot of people will lose money over this.

Re: ‘They Don’t Make These Anymore’: Maintaining the MBTA’s 100-Year-Old Signals

#32

Post by yummyfajitas »

roymurdock wrote: post #16
acomjean wrote: post #6

live in MA and take the T (what we call the subway/bus service here). Public transit is a major problem in this city and surrounding areas. It what make this city OK and expensive vs being great and affordable. While the transit system here needs upgrading badly, this piece is very political. The quoting of Charles Chieppo is a give away. "For many systems, Chieppo said, the focus is on improving stations or opening…

Green line expansion (two stops) initially budgeted at $954M in June 2010. 5 years later, costs estimated at $3.09B and project is terminated. A Reliable Project Budget is Defined as being within +10% and -5% of what it would Cost to Design and Construct the Project Costs went up over 300%. The level of incompetence on display here is borderline criminal. Have a friend who works at one of the big 4 who is being calle…

Wow, $3.09B for 4.3 miles of track and 4 stations? In possibly 7 years, if everything goes according to plan?

Elsewhere in the world, the Delhi Metro Phase 2 cost $2.9B and took 3 years. 77 miles of track, 85 stations, and countdown clocks. The Bangalore Metro (phase 1) is expected to be $2.5B (including a 25% cost overrun) for 26 miles and 40 stations. It also includes countdown clocks. Barcelona spent $200M for a 5.8km rail tunnel.

Where's your money going?

Re: ‘They Don’t Make These Anymore’: Maintaining the MBTA’s 100-Year-Old Signals

#33

Post by frandroid »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #32
roymurdock wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Green line expansion (two stops) initially budgeted at $954M in June 2010. 5 years later, costs estimated at $3.09B and project is terminated. A Reliable Project Budget is Defined as being within +10% and -5% of what it would Cost to Design and Construct the Project Costs went up over 300%. The level of incompetence on display here is borderline criminal. Have a friend who works at one of the big 4 who is being calle…

Wow, $3.09B for 4.3 miles of track and 4 stations? In possibly 7 years, if everything goes according to plan? Elsewhere in the world, the Delhi Metro Phase 2 cost $2.9B and took 3 years. 77 miles of track, 85 stations, and countdown clocks. The Bangalore Metro (phase 1) is expected to be $2.5B (including a 25% cost overrun) for 26 miles and 40 stations. It also includes countdown clocks. Barcelona spent $200M for a 5…

Have you looked at the wages of Indian labourers versus American construction workers lately?

Re: ‘They Don’t Make These Anymore’: Maintaining the MBTA’s 100-Year-Old Signals

#34

Post by mike_hearn »

Symbiote wrote: post #17
codys wrote: post #2

> It’s not as simple as just changing the signal. In order to change it out and modernize, you need to update the entire system. Does anyone have any idea why this is? What prevents new signals from being backwards compatible with the old system? And if this were true, wouldn't all of the signals need to be the same hundred year old type? How would line extensions ever be able to be done in that case? Is the system s…

Further segmenting the existing system probably means a huge amount of changes to the existing system — more expensive than replacing the whole lot. The old system will be based on detecting trains in "blocks", sections of track insulated from each other where the train's wheels make the circuit. I was about to say this would use relays, but Wikipedia says the first all-relay system was installed in 1929. So it's at…

Actually the old mechanical systems can stop a train automatically too. They have levers that move out onto the tracks and hit brake activator panels on the trains themselves, which force the air brakes on if the train tries to go through the red signal.

The old mechanical systems aren't really unsafe. They're just inefficient, full of moving parts so they break all the time, and require the transit agencies to run their own workshops to maintain them because they're so obsolete.

The newer computerised systems tend to have no moving parts and can pack more trains onto the tracks.

Re: ‘They Don’t Make These Anymore’: Maintaining the MBTA’s 100-Year-Old Signals

#35

Post by GFischer »

frandroid wrote: post #33
yummyfajitas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, $3.09B for 4.3 miles of track and 4 stations? In possibly 7 years, if everything goes according to plan? Elsewhere in the world, the Delhi Metro Phase 2 cost $2.9B and took 3 years. 77 miles of track, 85 stations, and countdown clocks. The Bangalore Metro (phase 1) is expected to be $2.5B (including a 25% cost overrun) for 26 miles and 40 stations. It also includes countdown clocks. Barcelona spent $200M for a 5…

Have you looked at the wages of Indian labourers versus American construction workers lately?

To be fair, he mentioned Barcelona, which is not too different from America hopefully.

I'm going to see if I can google what a Swiss equivalent costs (pretty certain the Swiss should be more expensive than American workers).

Edit: the only metro in Switzerland is in Lausanne, and it cost SFr590 million ($472 million) for about 6 km (3.7 miles) and 14 stations.

Construction is probably much easier, but the American one still has some pretty brutal cost overruns.

Re: ‘They Don’t Make These Anymore’: Maintaining the MBTA’s 100-Year-Old Signals

#36

Post by yummyfajitas »

frandroid wrote: post #33
yummyfajitas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, $3.09B for 4.3 miles of track and 4 stations? In possibly 7 years, if everything goes according to plan? Elsewhere in the world, the Delhi Metro Phase 2 cost $2.9B and took 3 years. 77 miles of track, 85 stations, and countdown clocks. The Bangalore Metro (phase 1) is expected to be $2.5B (including a 25% cost overrun) for 26 miles and 40 stations. It also includes countdown clocks. Barcelona spent $200M for a 5…

Have you looked at the wages of Indian labourers versus American construction workers lately?

In fact, most of the cost of train construction is not labor (except in the US). That's why the Egypt, China and India (low labor costs) aren't significantly cheaper than Spain or Korea (high labor costs).

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...

If only I thought of this - then I might have cited a Spanish construction project in the very comment you replied to, so that no one could cluelessly bring up labor costs.

In any case, even if your claim were true, there is an easy solution. Import Indians to get the job done. The goal is fixing our crumbling infrastructure rather than union featherbedding, right?

Re: ‘They Don’t Make These Anymore’: Maintaining the MBTA’s 100-Year-Old Signals

#37

Post by acomjean »

radd9er wrote: post #31
roymurdock wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Green line expansion (two stops) initially budgeted at $954M in June 2010. 5 years later, costs estimated at $3.09B and project is terminated. A Reliable Project Budget is Defined as being within +10% and -5% of what it would Cost to Design and Construct the Project Costs went up over 300%. The level of incompetence on display here is borderline criminal. Have a friend who works at one of the big 4 who is being calle…

I believe that the housing market in Medford and union Sq for years has been inflated on the speculation of the green line exrension. For years it was taken as a given. Has the Market declined since it came to light that the estimates were off, and the project cancelled ? I imagine a lot of people will lose money over this.

Its not canceled yet..Just scaled back. Though I think the City of Somerville took some property in union square to make it work.
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