On the mark, get set, never mind: T says it was ready for the big storm
Had snow pummeled Boston, forcing the T to send workers out to chip ice off of frozen switches and shovel platforms to keep trains running, the T would have been ready.
That was the word Tuesday from MBTA Chief Operating Officer Ryan Coholan, who worked on the commuter rail in 2015 when successive storms brought T service to a halt, stranding riders.
“We are not the MBTA we were in 2015, 2016, or even 2022,” he said. “This is one of the most pivotal points in the history of the T. We’re evolving.”
Just before noon on Tuesday in the MBTA’s operations control center in Boston, as flakes started to fall outside, dispatchers calmly relayed instructions to train and bus drivers and station managers across the agency’s sprawling transit system.
The crackling of radios, clicking of landline telephone and computer mouse buttons, and scratching of pencils on notepads could be heard between occasional directives — “you’re clear” — as the agency’s nerve center weathered what was supposed to be a brutal storm, but turned out to be a better-thannormal winter weekday for T service.
It’s days like Tuesday, when a lot of wet snow was expected to blanket Boston, that the MBTA has been preparing for ever since the agency’s widespread failures in 2015.
Coholan and his team began preparing for Tuesday’s storm last Thursday by coordinating with all T departments to implement a plan to keep transit service running no matter the weather, he said.
That plan, known officially as the “Storm and Ice Plan 20232024” (there’s a whole book), designates five levels of T preparedness based on storm forecasts, Level 1 being the least and Level 5 being the most.
The T mobilizes its winter snow and ice clearing equipment starting in November, including sharpening blades and repositioning pieces, Coholan said, and then decides which equipment to deploy, and where, based on the forecast.
With input from the National Weather Service and other state agencies, the T had prepped for Tuesday as a Level 3, meaning no service reductions. The T required some essential workers, like dispatchers, to show up early for their shifts and the agency put together a “storm desk” of designated workers to take reports from the field. The agency replaced Mattapan Trolley service with bus service and some 60-foot buses with 40-foot buses, to better maneuver in icy conditions.
When show time arrived Tuesday morning, Coholan said he was on a call with other supervisors from his home on Cape Cod at 4 a.m. and in his office in downtown Boston by 5 a.m. to make sure the agency was executing on its plan to keep T service running.
But by noon, it became obvious that this was no Level 3 storm.
“We’re having a great day,” Coholan said, looking out across the digital screens that show the movements of the T’s trains and track switches. “Right now, everything is where we need it to be.”
In fact, Tuesday morning was one of the smoothest for T service in recent memory. The only service alert for riders was about a 10 minute delay on the Orange Line while workers removed a wheelchair from the tracks.
“There are 1,000 things going right,” Coholan said.
At the 12 p.m. storm meeting with leaders from track, signals, vehicle maintenance, infrastructure, operations control center, stations, safety, and more, everyone reported business as usual to Coholan. The department heads meet every two hours during storms, a protocol implemented after the 2015 disaster, Coholan said.
If dispatchers had to send workers onto the tracks to keep service running, requiring a lot of coordination, the volume in the operations control center would have been a lot louder, said Kim Dwarika, division chief of the operations control center.
Instead, there was relative quiet.
“All quiet at the OCC,” Dwarika told Coholan on the 12 p.m. call. “No issues at all. We’re good.”
‘We are not the MBTA we were in 2015, 2016, or even 2022 . ... This is one of the most pivotal points in the history of the T. We’re evolving.’
RYAN COHOLAN, MBTA chief operating officer