Difficulty with putting in refined know-how into an outdated Green Line fleet has delayed the anticipated completion date for much-needed train-collision prevention gear by 18 months.
MBTA Chief of Capital Transformation Angel Peña mentioned producer Stadler Rail opted to delay the top date for closing set up of the Green Line Train Protection System from December 2023 to June 2025, following a venture evaluate it performed after buying the T’s venture provider, BBR.
The determination got here on the finish of 2022, weeks earlier than a National Transportation Safety Board deemed in its closing report {that a} July 30, 2021 collision between two Green Line trains might have been prevented had a train-collision prevention system been in place. The crash injured 27 folks and triggered each trains to derail.
“Aside from (Green Line Train Protection System) being a complex system on its own, incorporating this technology into our legacy fleet adds another layer of complexity for the integration,” Peña mentioned at a Thursday Board of Directors assembly.
“Just think for a moment of like trying to incorporate the self-driving feature of newer electrical cars with a Volvo built in the late-1980s. That’s what we’re facing right now.”
The majority of the MBTA’s Green Line fleet consists of 103 Type 7 and 87 Type 8 automobiles, which went into service between 1986 and 2007.
The Green Line Train Protection System will already be put in within the 102 new Type 10 “supercars,” which can substitute these older trains after they begin to arrive within the spring of 2027, at a required fee of two automobiles per thirty days, Peña mentioned.
All automobiles from the $811 million funding are scheduled to reach by the spring of 2031, and can function alongside the 24 Type 9 automobiles, Peña mentioned.
GLTPS is just like optimistic practice management on the Commuter Rail, in response to Peña. It combines car and wayside gear, he mentioned, to include velocity enforcement, add red-light sign safety, and can set off computerized brakes if the operator fails to react to potential hazards, stopping train-on-train collisions.
This gear was beneficial by the NTSB in 2009 following one other Green Line collision that it mentioned might have been prevented a yr earlier, had a optimistic practice management system been in place. In that occasion, 68 folks had been injured.
But GLTPS has solely been within the works on the MBTA since 2020, when a contract was awarded for the $212 million venture.
To mitigate the potential dangers of an 18-month delay, Peña mentioned the MBTA labored with the “systems integrator” to establish artistic choices to soundly implement sure options of GLTPS, together with collision avoidance and velocity enforcement, by January 2024, as a part of a branch-by-branch method.
“This rollout strategy will address the largest safety concerns of train-to-train collision and speeding in the near term,” Peña mentioned. “We believe that addressing these two items will add a safety value across the entire Green Line.”
The full safety of the brand new system will happen in June 2025, when all options of GLTPS are anticipated to be carried out throughout the sunshine rail line, Peña mentioned.
The older Green Line trains are additionally making it tougher for the MBTA to offer velocity enforcement on the Green Line, in response to Interim General Manager Jeffrey Gonneville.
Overspeeding on the Green Line was recognized as a significant challenge within the Department of Public Utilities’ annual oversight report of the MBTA, and was discovered to be a contributing issue to the July 30, 2021 collision.
Nine stationary velocity indicators situated all through the Green Line; GPS knowledge, which sends computerized alerts to the road’s supervisors; and every day in-person audits flag when velocity violations happen, however this must be confirmed by means of knowledge downloaded from the trains, mentioned Patrick Richmond, appearing assistant normal supervisor of rail operations.
When dashing is detected, trains are taken out of service and delivered to the Riverside upkeep facility for the information obtain verification, Richmond mentioned.
The drawback, Gonneville mentioned, is that Type 7 automobiles would not have knowledge recorders. The newer Type 8 automobiles have this method, however he mentioned the know-how is from the Nineties, and never as “sophisticated” as right now’s automobiles, such because the CRRC-manufactured Orange and Red Line automobiles.
“And with that our engineers have to go back and essentially piece together where and when these incidents happened,” Gonneville mentioned. “It is a very timely process to do that.”
There had been three confirmed situations of dashing on the Green Line in December. Two occurred on the brand new Medford department, and a 3rd was on Beacon Street at Coolidge Corner in Brookline. Two workers had been suspended and obtained reinstruction, Richmond mentioned.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”