20th
Introductions are over folks! It’s time to shift things into a higher gear.
Hello,
As my title states, I shall deliver on my promise of telling stories about incidents I have witnessed while riding the MTA.
To me, one thing that can really prove how well or how poorly a large organization, particularly a corruptly rub beauracracy runs is when something happens out of the blue and critical thinking skills are needed to restore operations back to what is considered to be normal. For the MTA, these events are usually as stated below:
- When a train breaks down: Like any machine, problems may occur and a train breaks down, causing a track to be closed, and as you know, this can cause delays. However, I’m sure a lot of you out there keep hearing how the MTA says that their older rolling stock is breaking down left and right. But what gets me is that everytime the MTA desires to get a new fleet of rolling stock, the mean milage that the older cars get before a failure magically drops a lot, and once the TA gets their new cars, then their older rolling stock magically is able to cover more miles of service before a mean failure.
- Signal problems: The subway system cannot run when signals are malfunctioning. Signals are needed to keep trains apart at a safe distance, to maintain certain speeds at a certain part of the line and also help workers at the tower posts to know where the trains are in their given jurisdiction.
- Broken switches or as I call them, Interlocks: Interlocks are needed at almost every terminal for a line and for trains to switch from local to express tracks and vice versa, and they also serve for other purposes. When switches jam, that can cause major disruptions on a line.
- Emergency track work: In some cases, something happens on the structure of the line, and work needs to be done immediately to make repairs.
- Broken rails: Sice track rails are heavily used and take a lot of stress, sometimes they snap, and this stops service along that trackway until repairs can be made.
- Other problems: These include police investigations, debris falling on tracks, power failures to the third rail, trains with brake or propulsion problems, sick passengers or passengers falling down to the trackway and train derailments or even accidents.
As mentioned before, when incidents such as these occur, its good to think things out well and to use good strategies and other measures to restore things back to normal as soon as possible. But, with the manner in which the MTA runs things, for them to do a good job with dealing with an incident occurs as much as a solar and lunar eclipse happening in the same day. So, please read these about these incidents which I have seen take place and noted how the MTA deals with them. From now on, my blogs will mention one or two incidents to prove these points.
Incident number one:
One night I was out taking care of business in Queens, and I came back home VIA the E. So I catch the E train over at Kew Gardens/Union Turnpike. Everything is going well until the train departs the 71st/Continental Avenue Station. All of a sudden, the train is either running at about 10 miles per hour, and then we get stuck at a red automatic or time zone block signal for about 15 minutes. Then, the conductor announces that due to a malfunctioning signal at the 48th-50th sts/Rockerfeller Station, V service is suspended and all the F trains are running VIA the E down to West 4th St. But, to me, just by having all the F trains to run with the E is just plain out of this world and hurrendously incompetent and just plain stupid. For any of you that have taken the E or the F out to Queens, you will see that both of these lines have frequent service and a large amount of trains in proportion to the line. So now, you have all the E’s and F’s running into Manhattan together, which is already causing massive delays on the line due to too many trains running together near each other, so when one has to stop, all the others behind it have to stop as well. And as time goes by, when the E’s and F’s are running out to Jamaica and then run back into Manhattan, there will be more trains that clog up the line, and then this delay will ripple back into Queens bound service. Basically, the same applies to a traffic jam. The more time goes by, the more trains are stuck right next to each other, thus effecting service in both directions on the entire line, and then it will take longer for the delays to clear out if possible.
Anyway, as this is going on, I noticed that the TA was having some E trains run local between Roosevelt/74th St. and Queens Plaza, thus adding to more delays since the E trains will have to diverge to the local track, and then diverge back to the express track, and also have to contend with the R and G trains. Once again, another “brilliant” move by the MTA.
Overall, it took the E train I was on an hour and thirty-five minutes to go from Kew Gardens/Union Turnpike to reach the 23rd/Ely Station, which is completely absurd. In that time, the A train can run from 207th st to almost 75% of the way out to Far Rockaway!
Besides having the E’s and F’s run all over the place, it appears that the MTA is not aware of the domino effect that their mismanagement causes. For instance, when the E train becomes quite delayed, this will also effect service on the C since the C and E run local on the same track on 8th Avenue, and if the C becomes tardy, that will back up B service on Central Park West and above 110th st, and if the B begins to become late, it will also effect the D. On top of that, if the C really becomes delayed, it will effect the A when the C trains have to run on the same track as the A between Hoyt/Schermerhorn and Canal St.
When the F becomes delayed, besides effecting the V service since I did see some V trains running out to Manhattan and back out to Queens, it can also effect the G service. If the F is backed up around the area of Bergen St. Carroll St. and Smith 9th, this will definetely delay service on the G. And when local service in Queens delays the R, this will spill out and delay the W, the N and then the Q since the N,R, and W use the same portal between Queens and Manhattan, and delays on the N cause delays on the Q.
So there you have it folks! Incidents such as these can show you two things, one being that the MTA is not proficient with dealing with service disruptions, and if two or more lines suffer massive delays, these delays will spread throughout the subway system! For the MTA to claim that only 7% of trains were delayed in 2007 but incidents such as these occur, maybe they forgot to place the zero after the seven with the decimal point being after the zero, not inbetween the seven and the zero.
Please stay tuned folks! I will keep telling you folks some more stories! Once my stories have been told, its time to show you what my data is showing so far in my data collection.
Have a good day folks!
Yours truly,
BrooklynBrightliner55
