buses

Dudley Square Main Streets reports June 25 is Art Smart, featuring art, food and entertainment between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. But also, Mayor Menino and MBTA General Manager Rich Davey will be on hand to unveil the Dudley station's newest amenity: A state-of-the-art public restroom.

Liam Day is writing poems about specific MBTA bus routes.

Compare to subway poems.

Unless you want to wind up on a wanted poster.

The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports the City Council's Environment and Health Committee will hold a hearing on June 13 to press the MBTA to replace the allegedly temporary bus facility for which the T has been planning a replacement since 1998.

The committee is chaired by JP's own Councilor Matt O'Malley. In April, the T didn't include a proposed $200 million overhaul in its five-year capital plan. In addition to a new bus-maintenance facility, the proposal would have turned part of the current site - used as a trolley yard until the T "temporarily" halted Arborway trolley service in the mid-1980s - into parkland and new residential and retail space.

An SUV driver and a passenger on an MBTA bus were taken to the hospital when the two vehicles collided on Hyde Park Avenue around 5:30 p.m. - the driver with a cut left arm, the passenger with a hand injury, the MBTA says. Two more passengers were taken to the hospital for observation.

According to the MBTA, the SUV pulled out of a driveway in front of the inbound 32 bus, at 1715 Hyde Park Avenue. The left front of the SUV struck the right front of the window. The SUV careened through a chain-link fence and down a two-foot drop near an old factory building; the bus's right front window shattered. T police are continuing to investigate.

State and Boston Police sealed off Hyde Park Avenue on either side of the collision until after the last of the passengers was taken away in an ambulance.

Williamson and BrittThe MBTA reports two teens were arrested yesterday on charges they tried to rob a man by grabbing him as he was getting on a bus at Warren and Waverly streets in Roxbury.

According to a police report, the man, 63, was able to maintain his grip on his wallet after he was pulled off the 23 bus and the two teens fled - along with a pack of eight other teens, all dressed in black and red, and one with a pit bull.

Andrew Britt, 17, of Dorchester and Sadiq Williamson, 18, of Roxbury, were charged with attempted armed robbery after, police say, officers found a knife on Williamson.

Innocent, etc.

The two MBTA bus drivers caught yelling at each other as they tried to maneuver around a tight turn in Chelsea's Bellingham Square earlier this week will be suspended for 30 days, then fired, the T said today:

Video footage from Bellingham Sq Police surveillance cameras was reviewed and revealed that the operators did not maintain a high level of professionalism, did not comply with all traffic regulations of the city, and failed to operate the buses in the safest manner possible at all times. The safety of MBTA customers is paramount. Employees must not engage in so-called "horseplay" or practical jokes since doing so can lead to injury or damage to property. To engage in this type of behavior is not only discourteous but it also goes against the Authority's training of Defensive Driving and taking the safer course of action at all times.

Chelsea Police cited both drivers for operating to endanger late Tuesday afternoon.

Channel 25 reports:

Sharina Byrd describes her ordeal.

It was near the end of another routine run for a driver just settling into her route. But then, out of nowhere, a hulking man grabbed Sharina Byrd's neck with one beefy arm and took control of the 86 bus's steering wheel with the other.

Byrd, a Dorchester resident who has only been driving an MBTA bus without an instructor for three weeks, instinctively pulled the emergency brake up with her left hand, stopping the bus and keeping it from careening into traffic and parked cars on the other side of Chestnut Hill Avenue last night.

The poles holding up the overhead wires for the 71 and 73 electric buses may be too declassé for leafy Belmont, but gritty Watertown wants nothing to do with diesel buses, Wicked Local Watertown reports:

Town Councilor Vincent Piccirilli read several letters from Watertown and Belmont residents requesting that they vote to maintain trolley service to save on noise and air pollution. Residents attending the meeting agreed and many said that the trolley system adds character to the town.

UPDATE: Lyons was ordered held in lieu of $10,000 bail in Brighton District Court, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Police charge an Everett man who had trouble keeping his pants up had no problems wresting control of an 86 bus and trying to crash it - but was foiled by a fast-thinking rookie driver who managed to apply the emergency brake.

MBTA Transit Police say Donald Lyons, 52, reached across the 24-year-old driver - on the job for just 2 1/2 months - around 7:30 last night and grabbed the bus's steering wheel as it approached Commonwealth Avenue on Chestnut Hill Avenue:

A 14-year-old student who was punched, robbed and warned not to snitch by two classmates at the Ruggles stop on the Orange Line around 2 p.m. yesterday thought he'd managed to escape them by making his way to the Cambridgeside Galleria.

But, he told police, the two - and an older guy - were waiting for him when he left the mall around 5:40 p.m. and they jumped him again, stole his cell phone and threatened to "drop him" in class if he told anyone what had happened.

MBTA Transit Police report arresting two teens at the upper busway at the Forest Hills T stop yesterday morning on charges they attacked a police officer trying to stop them from smacking around a woman who objected to one of them lighting up a cigarette.

MBTA Transit Police report arresting one of three men who allegedly held a woman up at knifepoint just past midnight Sunday at the Sullivan Square T stop - after a police dog bit him in the ass.

According to a police report, a woman was standing by the upper busway when three Hispanic men approached her, pulled out knives and demanded her money. For good measure, they called her a "nigger." She told them, in Spanish, that she was Hispanic herself, but that didn't work. After they fled, and police arrived, she got in an cruiser with an officer - and Marco, the police dog.

Mat Marquis tweeted from the 77 bus this morning:

Driver just put the bus in park in the middle of Mass Ave., between stops. "People aren't moving back enough, so I'm not moving."

"You're already twenty minutes late," a woman protests. "Buy a car," he replies. She exits; he stands, punches the ceiling, then drives.

This was it, for me. This was the one - the commute wherein I swear off that bus forever. Henceforth, I walk to the train station.

MBTA Transit Police today charged Brian Donovan, 18, of Dedham, in connection with a crash that left an MBTA bus in a Dudley Street storefront, a teen pinned against the wall, on April 11.

Donovan, who can be seen in a Pepsi jacket in a video of the crash aftermath, was charged with assault and battery on a public employee and wrongful interference with a common carrier.

The teen pinned to the wall, Felix Garcia, was charged a couple days after the crash for similar offenses, as was Michael Baptista (who can be seen in the video wearing a suit and tie).

Police charge the three began beating the driver after he went to the back of the bus to demand whoever was smoking cut it out, and that the bus crashed after the driver lost consciousness under the hail of fists. Garcia and Baptista, however, allege the driver attacked them and deliberately aimed his bus at Garcia after the teens got off the bus.

Innocent, etc.

The Globe reports on the arraignment today of two Roxbury teens for that bus crash on Dudley Street.

Michael Anthony Baptista, who said he was on his way to a job fair, was released on personal recognizance. Felix Garcia was ordered held for violating bail conditions on unrelated larceny and assult charges.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's office paints a different picture, saying in a statement:

Channel 4 reports Michael Baptista, 19, and Felix Garcia, 18, were arrested in connection with Monday's crash on Dudley Street.

Innocent, etc.

AlertNewEngland reports a 34E bus and a car collided outside the Stop & Shop at the Dedham Mall around 3:20 p.m. Five bus passengers and the driver of the car were taken to local hospitals with minor neck and back injuries.

The T reports the driver of the car was cited for failing to stop at a stop sign, and that the bus suffered minor damage to the right side; the auto moderate damage to the front.

The MBTA has released excerpts from the radio call from the driver of the bus that crashed on Dudley Street yesterday, as well as a copy of a call from a passenger to 911:

Denies he attacked driver, Channel 5 reports.

Firefighters at the bus crash. Photo by BFD.

A driver's request that a teen put out a cigarette on an MBTA bus led to a fight that ended with the bus crashing into a building on Dudley Street and leaving a pedestrian with his foot pinned underneath a bus tire.

Police say the crash at 389 Dudley St., around 3:15 p.m., was caused by kids attacking the driver after he told one of them to stop smoking on the bus. The Boston Fire Department reports it had to use emergency air bags, jacks and the Jaws of Life to lift the bus off the man whose foot got pinned under the bus's right front tire.

Cynthia King, 46, of Brockton, was arrested at the MBTA's Cabot bus yard yesterday afternoon on charges of possesssion of cocaine with intent to distribute, according to Boston Police and the Suffolk County District Attorney's office.

The Herald reports she had driven a bus since 2002. She was arrested while in her MBTA uniform. Police say they also seized cash.

King was scheduled for arraignment today in South Boston District Court.

Innocent, etc.

State officials didn't add a $200-million rehab of what was supposed to be a temporary facility to their capital budget, the Jamaica Plain Gazette reports.

Don't worry, it's probably not part of the MBTA's new anti-terrorism campaign. Instead, it's an advertising vehicle for L.L. Bean, which will be picking up the tab for riders on certain buses on the 1, 9, 47, 57, 66, CT1, CT2 and CT3 - the ones that look like examples of abandoned boxes the T has been telling us to call Transit Police about.

That gets Margaret Willison to thinking:

Hopefully next Swatch will sponsor MBTA bus lines that actually run on time.

Via BostonTweet.