The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority received its first Blue Line subway car for its training center on Monday, marking a major step in opening the underground tunnel to employees training for emergencies.
The MBTA is constructing an emergency training center in an abandoned streetcar tunnel for an estimated $8.8 million in hopes of improving access to training for first responders, said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo in an emailed media advisory.
More subway cars, as well as a trolley and a bus, will eventually occupy the tunnel.
“What we are attempting to do here is develop a state of the art training facility for all of the first responders so that they can hold different types of exercises in here,” said Jonathan Davis, general manager of the MBTA.
The goal of the center, Davis said, is to offer emergency responders a realistic environment “so they can be proficient and efficient if there were to be an event on our system.”
“This is going to be available all hours of the day for training without interrupting service at all,” Davis said.
First responders wishing to train at the new facility will not be charged, he said.
“I would expect that there would be a significant amount of training that goes on here,” Davis said. “We serve 175 cities and towns and I would think they would want their first responders to have access to this facility too.”
The center is being built in three phases and is currently in stage two, Pesaturo said.
“Phase one consisted of water mitigation and structural repairs that addressed infrastructure issues at the site,” he said. “Phase two includes the delivery of two retired Blue Line cars and one retired Green Line trolley to the training center.”
The third phase, he said, will involve further construction work to complete the center and bring the facility up to safety and fire codes.
The center received funding exclusively from the Department of Homeland Security, Davis said, and consequently will not add to the estimated $5.2 billion debt that the MBTA has amassed over previous years.
The center, which is located in a snaking tunnel adjacent to Broadway Station in South Boston, will include light rail, heavy rail, Silver Line and evacuation training areas, according to MBTA plans.
“I would suggest that there is actually no other facility like this in the United States,” said Randy Clarke, the senior director of security and emergency management at the MBTA. “There is one in D.C. that’s similar, but we will probably have the most advanced emergency training center anywhere in the Untied States for transit.”
Clarke said the new center would replace bi-annual simulations that are currently administered on the subway and commuter rail systems.
“Unfortunately, because of our maintenance needs in the evening and the fact that we move almost 1.4 million people a day, we don’t have the ability to give the police and other first responders a facility without taking a piece of service out of schedule,” he said.
Clarke said the training simulations would cover a host of potential situations including fires, terrorist attacks and station evacuations.
Clarke said the MBTA’s goal is to do a ribbon cutting for the new facility in the spring of 2013.
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