Joel N. Weber II
Engineer
The MBTA is apparently in the process of designing the Type 9 Green Line cars. (I haven't quite figured out why they don't just buy more Type 8 cars.)
I think their basic goal is to get a different manufacturer to design something that behaves about the way a Type 8 is supposed to, but I've gotten wondering what could be done differently if imitating a Type 8 wasn't really terribly high on the list of priorities.
For example, would adding articulation points to make a longer car be practical? I'm thinking that a car roughly 1.5 times or 3 times the length of a Type 8 might work if the goal is to make trains the length of three Type 8 cars, and that a car roughly twice the length of a Type 8 might also work. I don't spend much time on the Green Line, but I get the impression that it tends to be congested enough that the long term goal really ought to be trains that are roughly the length of three Type 8 cars (unless, of course, someone is planning to build more Green Line tracks along the Boylston-Copley corridor, or some other route through the downtown core, which I don't expect to see anytime soon).
Would it make sense to put a farebox by each door on the right side of the car? That would help with allowing wheelchair users to directly interact with the farebox, which I don't think is possible on the Type 8 cars. It could also help in the morning with collecting fares on the surface lines. Perhaps there could be lights above and next to the non-front doors on the right side similar to the lights above reversible highway lanes, with a green indication at prepayment stations, yellow at surface stops where the farebox at that door was in use, and red at surface stops when that farebox isn't in use. (You'd also want different shapes associated with each of those colors, to help the colorblind; and since an inability to distinguish between red and green is the most common form of colorblindness, maybe blue would be a better choice than green, or perhaps something with a mix of blue and green could be used. Perhaps red in the shape of a do not enter sign, yellow in the shape of a CharlieCard, and a green/blue arrow.)
I once was on a Green Line train at Park Street headed towards Government Center, and watched as the operator had to get out of the seat at the front of the car, walk to the door near the middle of the car, and extend the ramp from the car so that a wheelchair user could board, and then retract the ramp. I felt like it has got to be possible at the downtown stations to design something that works faster than that.
I think their basic goal is to get a different manufacturer to design something that behaves about the way a Type 8 is supposed to, but I've gotten wondering what could be done differently if imitating a Type 8 wasn't really terribly high on the list of priorities.
For example, would adding articulation points to make a longer car be practical? I'm thinking that a car roughly 1.5 times or 3 times the length of a Type 8 might work if the goal is to make trains the length of three Type 8 cars, and that a car roughly twice the length of a Type 8 might also work. I don't spend much time on the Green Line, but I get the impression that it tends to be congested enough that the long term goal really ought to be trains that are roughly the length of three Type 8 cars (unless, of course, someone is planning to build more Green Line tracks along the Boylston-Copley corridor, or some other route through the downtown core, which I don't expect to see anytime soon).
Would it make sense to put a farebox by each door on the right side of the car? That would help with allowing wheelchair users to directly interact with the farebox, which I don't think is possible on the Type 8 cars. It could also help in the morning with collecting fares on the surface lines. Perhaps there could be lights above and next to the non-front doors on the right side similar to the lights above reversible highway lanes, with a green indication at prepayment stations, yellow at surface stops where the farebox at that door was in use, and red at surface stops when that farebox isn't in use. (You'd also want different shapes associated with each of those colors, to help the colorblind; and since an inability to distinguish between red and green is the most common form of colorblindness, maybe blue would be a better choice than green, or perhaps something with a mix of blue and green could be used. Perhaps red in the shape of a do not enter sign, yellow in the shape of a CharlieCard, and a green/blue arrow.)
I once was on a Green Line train at Park Street headed towards Government Center, and watched as the operator had to get out of the seat at the front of the car, walk to the door near the middle of the car, and extend the ramp from the car so that a wheelchair user could board, and then retract the ramp. I felt like it has got to be possible at the downtown stations to design something that works faster than that.
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