Orange Line

If only there were some money associated with being a human freak magnet; Jennifer Stewart would be rich:

... Some drunk guy got onto the shuttle bus last night (the Orange Line was shut down from Wellington to Oak Grove) and sat right across from me and tried to engage me in word games. Yes. Word games. Not that they made any sense, really, because he was completely pickled. I refused to make eye contact though, so he finally turned his attention to the guy next to him and started yelling at him to not touch him with his elbow. ...

Tim McIntire has had enough with daily delays on the Orange Line:

Let's cut to the chase: if any of you had even a shred of professional pride, you would immediately hang yourselves - if you could possibly find rope with the tensile strength to support your flabby, useless asses long enough to do the job.
...

Jenny reports she was transferring from the Red to the Orange Line when a man ran into her:

... Not like was "running trying to get by me and accidentally clipped my side but was entirely sorry" - THE MAN CAME UP FROM BEHIND AND FULL ON RAN INTO ME AND SHOVED ME TO THE SIDE SO HE COULD GET BY. Hit me so hard to the point where I made the noise you would imagine you yourself would make if someone ran into you. The kicker? He did NOT even glance back to say "I'm sorry".

I can't say I was sad for him when he missed the train. By like two seconds. I was actually quite happy. ...

My story pales by comparison, but here goes:

Last night, as my Orange Line train was about to pull into Forest Hills, a T conductor or whatever had to rush to the front of the train, or at least, the next car, for some reason. Dude's sitting in a seat next to the "Do not pass through" door, feet out, as he adjusts his doo rag, totally oblivious to the fact that some seemingly crazed T lady is rapidly approaching. T employee bellows "WATCH YA FEET!" as she unlocks the door and disappears into the next car. Guy looks at the people sitting across from him and says "'Excuse me' would have worked, too."

Some Orange Line riders got an education today in the difference between a door and an escalator.

Stray Bullet Hits MBTA Bus In Boston.

Made for one hella commute, Mike Hillwig reports:

... First, the silver line bus I was on went out of service because its route was blocked by a police barricade.

I tried getting on the Orange line, but the trains weren't running. I believe it was because the entire system went into lockdown.

By the time I finally got to Government Center, the line to get on the blue line was horrific. My train was packed like it was the Tokyo subway. ...

One of the reasons organizers of the recent PodCamp held it at Bunker Hill Community College was because the school is right on the Orange Line. Naturally, the Community College stop was closed that weekend. Steve Garfield shows us what getting to the sessions from Forest Hills was like.

Nice pictures to remind you that subway trains occasionally do go fast here and here.

Last summer, the T had to do some scheduled maintenance on the Orange Line. Even though it was scheduled, the T couldn't figure out how to direct passengers to alternate routes.

You'd think the T would have learned from that. Nope. Yesterday, the T had to do some more scheduled maintenance on the Orange Line. Charley on the MTA provides an account of a ride that normally is about as easy as it gets (Sullivan Square to Back Bay) turned into an exotic adventure:

... Downtown Crossing, when I finally get to it, is such a mess that the ad-hoc signs saying "Forest Hills" (i.e. southbound) are actually pointing to the "Oak Grove" platform. Huh? So I ask a very nice MBTA gentleman where the Forest Hills platform is, and he points to the Oak Grove platform. Riiiight -- the train actually reverses direction at that very platform. Nobody actually said that, of course. ...

Cliff Franceour takes his photo.

Yes, those CharlieTickets can be so annoying. Thankfully, at least for today, the T left a nice open gate at NEMC for anybody who didn't want to bother going through that whole buy-a-ticket thing - which I discovered when I saw somebody taking advantage of it.

Dinane recounts your typical Orange Line commute involving a train going out of service with, of course, the alleged service train right behind it that eventually moseys into the station looking like the last train out of Paris in "Casablanca," then realizes:

... I'm very lucky to have a life where the most annoying and painful things are almost always public transportation in Boston.

It could be way worse.

That's what the T calls it when they find a body on the tracks, this time at Green Street. So buses instead of trains between Forest Hills and Ruggles.

Via b0st0n.

One guess what the new T-Rage blog is about. It's by a former Orange Line rider now living in Dorchester who is starting to hate the Red Line, too:

... Send me your rage, my babies. In painstaking detail. I will post it all. We will compile a massive list of meticulously recounted individual grievances, about anything having to do with the MBTA, from that obnoxious puddle of stagnant piss-water at the top of the escalator in Arlington Station to rats the size of alligators--or was that an actual alligator?--at Downtown Crossing. Tell me your tales of woe. About the crazy dude who got on at Chinatown and terrorized everyone acting out an entire episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" right there in front of you. ...

Today's Orange Line outrage.

Also see: Bad Transit and The Transport Avenger.

Unless you don't mind people scrawling answers to them:

... On my way home on the orange line a few nights ago, I noticed an ad that asked "Is a biolab safe in the south end?" with graffiti scrawled below it that said "No or anywhere else". ... [O]n an ad that said "Where's Whitey" (probably referring to "Whitey" Bulger the FBI informant at the center of recent scandal) the artist had replied below "In the Suburbs". ...

Sarah gets that Emily Post feeling when she notices the young couple across from her on the Red Line making out. At 7:45 in the morning:

... I just don't need to hear wet, sucking sounds while I try and look away as his hand moves from her face down her neck and to her breast/shoulder. ...

But it gets even better when a male acquaintance of theirs gets on at Central and snuggles in.

Meanwhile, over on the Orange Line, idreamlikethis reports:

... When I got on the orange line at north station, I happened to sit in front of a couple that was making out, and doing some REALLY heavy petting. On a fucking crowded train. They were gropping eachother, and put their hands down one anothers pants. It was fucked up. I had to get up and move, because it was gross. They were in their 40s too. ewwwwww. ...

Ed. note: Yes, of course, people over 40 should never leave the retirement home. Don't they know what they look like?

Ed. ed. note: The above ed. note was meant to be a sarcastic comment on the way the poster seemed as disgusted by the couple's apparent age as by what they were doing. It was NOT meant to be a crack about people actually over 40, which would be wicked stupid, given that I am part of that demographic.

Jesse recounts angry people taking off their belts and snapping them at each other at Downtown Crossing on the Orange Line and miscreant poodles on the Green Line:

... Yesterday a woman gets on the very crowded train, kind of a glitzy aging Paris Hilton character. Lo and behold, she brazenly brings two little poodles with her, not in her purse, but walking on the floor. They sniff all around, climb on things and cause five passengers to almost fall while trying to not step on them. ...

Perspicax reports that after he got on the train yesterday afternoon, it took 70 minutes to get from Forest Hills to Back Bay.

I wonder how long it would have taken to just walk?

One of the bigger complaints about the T is about riders who seem not to know about deodorant. Tdiddy had the opposite problem with one sweaty guy on the Orange Line:

... At one point during the ride, he reached into his splayed-open bag and emerged with a tube of generic-looking deodorant. As I looked on in horror, this guy lifted his sweaty T-shirt and began to actually APPLY the deodorant...one side, then the other. ...

Eeka reports on an Orange Line announcement this morning:

IF THERE ISN'T ROOM IN THE CAR, WATCH THE DOORS

Earlier:
These doors do recycle.

While I had a decent enough trip on the Orange Line this past weekend, Jason once again reports on how badly it sucked. One example: He's sitting next to a Chinese woman at the Chinatown stop who wants to go to Malden - which she can't do because the line ended at Downtown Crossing due to signal work:

... Now, it was fairly clear from her response that the Chinese woman's English was limited. This didn't stop the T employee from giving her an explanation of why she couldn't get from Chinatown to Malden on the Orange line. In this explanation, the T employee used extremely confusing jargon associated with subways and spoke rapidly. Obviously, the woman didn't know what in the hell the T employee was saying. So, seeing that the Chinese woman didn't understand. The T employee tried again, this time yelling the same statement at the woman. It was by far one of the most insulting things I have seen. ...

JP Confidential notes an uptick in angry station announcements on the Orange Line:

... How one can load the words, "Next stop, Back Bay" with venom and spite it is hard to say, but if you have ridden the Orange Line of late you will know what we mean. ...