MBTA is the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, and with the word transportation in the title you would imagine that their specialty would be getting people from point A to point B. this would be incorrect. Instead, MBTA could best be described as the world’s largest, longest running experiment on how badly you can treat people without causing riots.

My line is the Framingham/Worcester line.

Today (22 July 2008) was a great example of people being willing to get burned twice in a row, and take it willingly. Upon arrival at the station there was a message that stated (This is not verbatim, but my best recollection) “Due to a conflict/operational problem with CSX the next Train to Boston will not run until approx. 8:25am.” Nice message to see at 7:30. But it had an explanation. The cargo company that owns the tracks had caused some sort of problem. However, on an earlier train that had been delayed there was a different story.

The 6:55am train from Worcester had some significant delays. The following messages from the conductors were relayed to me by a friend on this train. Their first announcement was that “There was a mechanical problem.” They happen frequently for us, because despite being a transportation company, they prefer to operate defunct, broken vehicles. After awhile though, the story changed. The new announcement was that MBTA had failed to file proper paperwork for right-of-way access with CSX (who owns the tracks). How both parties involved can miss the fact that trains run every Monday for a full year except one day in July is a bit odd. But hey, we’ve all made paperwork mistakes. I was angry about that information, but at least it provided a plausible explanation for how CSX and MBTA were in conflict for railway access this morning.

So, 8:25 rolled around. An MBTA employee then walked onto the train platform and announced that there would be no train to Boston. Instead there were two busses. I was, of course, over joyed to learn that I would now be able to stand on a bus the whole way to Boston. I was also party to witnessing a number of people get turned away from these busses because there was not nearly enough space for only the commuters at this one station.

On the bus ride, I was party to learning a third explanation for this SNAFU that had managed to reach the designation of FUBAR. This comes from a friend’s father who works for MBTA.

Sometime overnight the air conditioning at the central control office failed. Rather than paying overtime and sending in a crew to fix the problem immediately, they waited until regular operating hours. However, once the control reaches 83 degrees, the systems shut down. So these systems failing is what caused the trains to stop running.

I assume this control center operates the switches and other support systems. So it was good to know that we were being lied to, and that on all ends the story was different.

Update - The Real Story

Here it is, right from MBTA:

At approximately 6:10a.m. today train P502 experienced a mechanical problem at Southborough.The train crew was able to recover, after an 8 minute delay, and proceeded to Framingham

Upon arrival at the Framingham station MBCR received word from the CSX dispatcher that they (CSX) were experiencing a system wide failure in their communications department. As this is the company who manages and dispatches this territory we are not allowed to operate our trains without the mandatory paperwork required by CSX; this paperwork is what enables trains to operate safely through that area. This outage left MBCR without the ability to operate trains either inbound or outbound to Worcester until the CSX system problem could be fixed. As a result, train P502 was held at Framingham to operate as an on-time P504 making all stops into Boston. The MBTA ordered 12 buses to enable passengers who board at the Worcester stations to travel between Framingham and Boston.

So, two of the three stories heard were generally correct.