Posts Tagged “MBTA”

I tried to exit North Station this morning and found two of the doors padlocked from the outside.  Not that it would have mattered if they were padlocked from the inside.

Vandalism or overzealous security, it’s hard to say.  7:30 is not exactly the wee hours of the morning for commuting.  In the rare (ok, not so rare on the MBTA sometimes) event of a fire or emergency, reducing the exist capacity by half seems a pretty bad idea. Maybe an alert reader with some clippers can pop over before rush hour hits in earnest.

I was excited to hear that Google maps had finally added Boston’s public transit system.  Now you can get directions around Boston for driving, walking, and public transit.  Of course, the MBTA website has been providing a trip planning service for some time.  So I figured I would compare the two services recommendations.  Too lazy to do anything particularly scientific, I asked both to tell me how to get from limeduck world headquarters (a secure undisclosed location in Central Square) to Modern Pastry in the North End at 8:30pm tomorrow.  The variance is shocking.

The defending champ, the MBTA Trip planner coughed up two suggestions:

• Red line to Orange line to Haymarket in 23 minutes
• Red line to Green line to Haymarket in 28 minutes

This pretty conclusively reinforced my preference for the Orange line to the Green, even if it means an extra stop on the Red.

The contender, Google Maps, brought four different routes, although two of them are essentially identical.

• Red line to Green line to Haymarket in 19 minutes
• Red line to Downtown Crossing, then walk the rest of the way in 22 minutes (duplicated with different Red line departures)
• Red line to Green E line (at Symphony) to Haymarket in 37 minutes

Both sets of times include the walking time on each end.  I don’t know which of these plans is more accurate.  I have to believe that the MBTA should know the schedule better, but I also believe that Google might be reporting more realistic data.  Both systems agree that the Red line departing Central at 8:33 will arrive at Park Street at 8:39, but it all goes haywire after that, with a whopping nine minute difference in estimating the same trip, with Google saying it’s quicker to hoof it than to take either of MBTA’s Green or Orange legs.

I checked, the Orange line does show up in some Google routes at different times, but it looks like it doesn’t arrive very often, which might skew things.  Google’s last suggestion is so off the wall that it makes me doubt the whole system – take the #1 bus down Mass ave past the B C & D Green line station at Hynes and the Orange line station at Mass Ave to get on the E branch of the Green line at Symphony??  Feh.

Poor Google, has Boston’s beany maze bested your mapping mojo?

Sure, it’s fun to backseat drive the beleaguered public transit systems of this country – and there’s no shortage of news of their beleaguerment – but here are some things that every transit rider can do that can help keep things running better.   These things are not going to rescue public transit from the death spiral of service cuts, decreased ridership, deficits, fare hikes, decreased ridership, service cuts <repeat> but they can help move things along just a bit faster during our commutes.

1. Move the @#$% in if you’re not getting off at the next stop.  If you’re standing in the door and it’s not your stop, you are part of the problem.  If you find yourself unavoidably in this position, the right thing to do is to get out of the way, even if that means temporarily exiting the vehicle.

2. Let people the @#$% off before you try to get the @#$% on.  Isn’t this one of the laws of thermodynamcs?  Do you try to get into taxis or airplanes before the last passengers get out?  There’s more room outside the train than inside it.  Stand aside, the train will not leave without you.

3. If there is one, use the back door to @#$%ing exit so people can get the @#$% on through the front door.  If we do this one right, #2 becomes moot, at least where back doors are present.

All of these things cause a buildup of delay in an already fragile system.  Next time you wait twice as long for a bus, get on a bus that’s packed like a sardine can, and see two more empty buses tagging along behind it, you’ll be looking at the imapct of the accumulation of small delays caused by lousy public transit manners.

A correspondingly west-coast and cool-headed critique of public transit etiquette is authored by the SFMUNI ladies here.

I got on the T and sat down next to a seat occupied only by two copies of that free newspaper that I’ve been thinking too much about.  I picked one up and started reading it.  At the next stop, the woman sitting on the other side of the newspapers, who was herself reading yet another copy of that free paper, picked up the other copy from the seat as she exited.

She was already reading it, why did she take the extra copy?  Was she saving both of those copies for friends?  Who would bother to pick up extra free newspapers to share with somebody else?  (OK, I did once, but I needed cheap packing materials)

Did I steal a free newspaper?  Is that even possible?  Well, at least I recycled it.

Mysterious marks on a red line seat cushion.

A new form of tagging?  A Rosetta Seat?  Bad upholstery adhesive?