buses

Kate Norton reports that a driver on the 215 bus to Ashmont was doing more than just stopping at the regular bus stops: As he saw people struggling in the snow, he'd stop the bus and ask them if they were heading to Ashmont.

He did it for people his whole route. ... I want to write a letter to the MBTA. So amazing.

Unhappy campers at G Street and East Broadway

Ed. note: Amy Ewing e-mailed this photo and the following complaint:

I am a reasonable person. I understand that there is snow, and issues that come up during snow and cold weather. But am I wrong to think that THIS IS NEW ENGLAND?!?! It does this every &$*(& year. Why is it that the MBTA cannot manage to get it together so that they don't leave tons of people on the frigid, un-shoveled, icy sidewalks of Boston in temperatures that could actually cause people hypothermia or worse?

This morning what I experienced was 1) inexcusable and 2) unacceptable. I am seriously considering paying the $400 per month to park, which means I will be driving my car the 3 miles to work because the bus cannot get me to work on time. I cannot rely on the public transportation system.

Cubiclegirl tweets from a snowbound Hyde Park Ave.:

People at my stop on the 32 staged revolt... Stood in street to make bus stop after 3 passed by

Because there seem to be some issues. A concerned citizen posted this photo of a bus shelter on Comm. Ave. at Mass. Ave. on the city complaint site this morning:

The city of Boston, for the safety of its public transit riding citizens, MUST shovel the snow off the curb at its bus stops. Many bus stops across the city do not have a cleared path of travel between the sidewalk and the bus, setting up a dangerous proposition for anyone getting on, or off, a city bus. Follow the lead of your neighbor to the north, Cambridge!

Katy Fritz goes around in circles in an insane discussion with the driver of an MBTA bus she wanted to take to Southie from the Back Bay tonight.

The Herald reports the MBTA has suspended a driver who basically locked a bunch of Boston Latin School students in and then took them for an angry ride off her route after some pranksters kept pushing the stop strip and wouldn't fess up. Among the mini-hostages: Tom Menino's granddaughter.

MBTA Transit Police report arresting a man for allegedly masturbating on a 28 bus as it traveled between Dudley and Ruggles Friday afternoon.

According to a police report, Donnie McLean, 46, snuck on the rear of the bus at Dudley, sat near a woman, put his hands in his pants and "began to motion it up and down in a stroking manner." The woman said she got up and moved toward the front of the bus. McLean, she said, followed her, sat across from her and started up again, only this time he made sure to unzip his pants and turn to face her so she could get a full view.

At Ruggles, she fled the bus and found a couple of transit cops, one of whom reported McLean's pants were unzipped when he started talking to him about the incident.

McLean was charged with open and gross lewdness.

Innocent, etc.

Channel 25 reports the collision happened at 4:30 p.m. at Columbia Road and Washington Street. None of the injuries life-threatening.

Colin Steele posts a photo of a mini-van driving through the Harvard Square bus tunnel tonight.

An argument on a 44 bus on Humboldt Avenue this morning ended in a fatal knife fight, according to the MBTA and the Boston Globe.

The Herald reports police are looking for four people who fled the bus.

The fight erupted around 9 a.m. as the bus neared the Trotter School, 135 Humboldt Ave. A nurse at the school rushed outside and performed CPR on the more seriously injured person, but he died, the Globe reports.

The view from high above the Arborway.

The MBTA and a neighborhood planning group showed off plans for a $200-million reconstruction of the 18-acre Jamaica Plain facility that could mean a new park along with new housing and stores on what is now basically a giant field of asphalt.

Officials from the MBTA and the MetroWest Regional Transit Authority will gather tomorrow to announce you'll be able to use CharlieCards on MWRTA buses.

The formal announcement is at 11:30 a.m. at the Woodland stop on the Green Line.

Our Longwood Medical Area correspondent files the following dispatch to go with his photo:

Nathan Spencer and Rory Razon report the amazing sight this morning. Razon adds:

The most obnoxious thing about people that park at bus stops in Brighton Center is that there is a TON of legal on street parking available. If money is the issue with ticketing more often, deputize me and I'll do it for free.

Moron on a bus.

The Globe reports riders of the 28 in Mattapan love the new, larger buses the T has put on the route but that people in Grove Hall are, um, disquieted by the buses. The Globe doesn't cite any specific complaints about the specific new vehicles in Grove Hall, but seems to indicate that City Councilor Chuck Turner wanted the buses pulled off the roads after one month because of the legacy of 30 years of the T treating the neighborhood like dirt.

A Mattapan man faces arraignment tomorrow on charges he lifted his dress and showed passersby what the Good Lord gave him outside the Mass. Ave. Orange Line stop Friday afternoon.

According to an MBTA Transit Police report, Ray Johnson, 27, of Old Morton Street, lifted his dress several times in front of a woman and her children shortly before 1:30 p.m.. When another man told him to knock it off and stop being disrespectful, the report continues, Johnson said "I'll show you disrespectful" and then bent over and exposed himself again, this time to a larger group that included "three elderly women passing out religious literature."

Johnson was charged with open and gross lewdness.

Innocent, etc.

Channel 4 reports Roland Carr, 51, was arrested on a charge of domestic assault and battery on a child after a witness saw him punch his seven-year-old son this afternoon. AlertNewEngland reports the two were on a 16 bus at the time.

State transportation officials and Gov. Patrick gather at the Ruggles T stop this morning at 10 to announce the availability of next-bus data for all 187 MBTA bus routes. The data is used by a variety of apps to let riders know when the next bus on their route is expected to show up. The T started releasing public bus-arrival info as part of a pilot project last fall.

The Roxbury 16-year-old, not named because of his age, was ordered locked up in lieu of bail for a Tuesday-afternoon knife attack on another rider on a 23 bus at Ruggles and Tremont streets, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office says.

Even if the kid can raise the money, he'll remain behind bars because Boston Juvenile Court Judge Paul Lewis reovked his bail on outstanding drug and assault cases, according to the DA's office.

"From what we've gathered thus far, this was a vicious and utterly pointless attack," DA Dan Conley said. The Herald reports the teen and his victim, a 47-year-old man from Dorchester, got into "a heated exchange" over something as the bus pulled out of Ruggles station. The DA's office says the teen stabbed the man repeatedly before jumping off the bus and running down Whittier Street. He was captured by surveillance cameras on the bus.

Innocent, etc.

MBTA Transit Police say this is the guy who repeatedly stabbed somebody on a 23 bus at Ruggles and Tremont streets yesterday evening, then fled toward the Whittier Street project. He's described as 25 to 30, 5'7" and weighing between 185 and 220 lbs, with dreadlocks.

UPDATE: MBTA Transit Police tweet they've caught the guy.

Channel 7 tweets a man was stabbed several times around 6:30 p.m. on a bus on Tremont Street at Ruggles Street - a photo the station posted shows the bus stopped in front of Boston Police headquarters. The victim is expected to survive.

At 8:30 this morning, Dave Vittorini tweeted to MBTA General Manager Richard Davey about conditions on the Hyde Park Avenue bus:

operator 70135 on the 32 bus NEVER has the ac on. It's sooo hot. I feel like I need another shower when I get to work.

Six minutes later, Davey replied:

we'll take care of that.

Valerie Rose Taylor, an associate professor at Berklee, is singing the praises of an orchestra's worth of MBTA workers who reunited her with the violin her parents gave her more than four decades ago after she left it on a 71 bus out of Watertown Square.

In a letter to T officials, Taylor said she didn't realize she left her violin behind on July 24, until the next day, a Sunday. She said everybody from the bus driver, who "rescued my violin in the first place" to supervisors and dispatchers who checked the North Cambridge car barns for the instrument - and who then decided to lock it up for safe keeping after they found it - were "competent and compassionate."

They also told her this wasn't the most unusual thing somebody had left behind on the T - honors for that go to the guy who left a raw turkey behind the day before Thanksgiving one year.

Because, as Stephanie reports, it just ran out of fuel. How does that happen?