BadTransit posts another cheery tale, this time involving a Green Line driver who thinks everybody's out to cheat the T, when he's just being an idiot.
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The T
By adamg - 1/22/07 - 11:38 pm
Tape watches as some guy follows the add-value instructions on the CharlieCard machine - by tapping his card repeatedly against the screen, displaying a picture of a card - instead of against the actual sensor a couple feed to the right of the screen.
By adamg - 1/22/07 - 4:55 pm
Adaptive Micro Systems makes those displays at MBTA commuter-rail stops, the ones that get their messages from some happy place where the trains are always on time. Go to their success gallery and click on the middle photo for a souvenir photo showing commuters waiting for the next Needham Line train direct to Watertown.
By adamg - 1/22/07 - 3:06 pm
Amazingly, not a single Cantabridgian rose to debate the man as their train hurtled underneath Mass. Ave. and he doled out cookies and speechified on behalf of both W. and the tabloid, Spatch reports.
By adamg - 1/21/07 - 5:43 pm
On BadTransit, Susan, who gets on the Fitchburg Line at Brandeis/Roberts, reports a conductor let her in on a little secret: People who pay in cash only get levied a surcharge if they try to pay with a $20 bill:
... "So if I pay with a $5 I won't get the surcharge?" Conductor: "Yeah just don't use a $20. We always run out of change."
By adamg - 1/20/07 - 1:55 pm
Last month, Jenny reported on a horrifying incident involving, among other things, a door on a Red Line car suddenly opening while the train was moving.
By adamg - 1/19/07 - 11:38 pm
So much going on on our humble public-transit system these days. Here's a round-up of the latest:
File this under: Can't let the terrorists know how many stars are on our flag: When JS pulls out a Polaroid (Yes, a Polaroid) to take a photo of an American flag under glass at the Airport stop on the Blue Line, a T employee immediately orders her to cease and desist:
By adamg - 1/19/07 - 12:31 pm
The T has fixed that Friday Orange Line trip-planner glitch on mbta.com, so now, when you tell it you want to get from Oak Square to Forest Hills on a Friday, it sends you on a direct, 33-minute Orange Line ride instead of a hellish two-hour trek involving four bus lines.
Caveat: You have to type "Forest Hills Station" into the planner. If you just stupidly type "Forest Hills," you'll get back a list of lots of Foresty, Hilly possibilities in JP and then, when you select "Forest Hills station," the thing spits back a list of places in Stoneham.
By adamg - 1/19/07 - 9:00 am
Colleen the Subway Knitter is holding a drawing for her pair of CharlieCard mittens. Just make a donation to Rosie's Place via the PayPal link on her home page by noon on Jan. 26 and you'll be entered.
By adamg - 1/18/07 - 12:03 pm
Do you show your monthly pass when you get on the bus or off? A BadTransit correspondent was told repeatedly on the 424 bus to Wonderland to show it when he got off, then gets a bus driver who starts yelling at him when he didn't show it as he got on:
... As I took my seat on the bus, this driver continued to yell at me for what he perceived to be my evading the fare. When I told my friend, who also rides this bus, what had just happened, the driver yelled scripture at me - "it's wrong to bear false witness against your neighbor." ...
By adamg - 1/18/07 - 7:49 am
Mac Daniel reports in the Globe:
The cash-strapped MBTA lost more than an hour of fares on numerous bus routes yesterday morning when dozens of new automated-fare boxes failed on their first true Boston winter day. ...
By Ron Newman - 1/17/07 - 3:43 pm
This is brilliant. How long before someone starts producing them commercially?
By adamg - 1/17/07 - 2:34 pm
Charlie on the MBTA swears he isn't making up the problems he's having. He also posts e-mail from a rider of the 101 bus:
... This morning I boarded the bus for my commute. I am one of those commuters who still pays cash for my rides using a dollar bill and a couple quarters. The driver waved me on without paying and told me the fare box was frozen due to the cold weather. It was obvious the whole device was incapacitated and not powered on. ...
By adamg - 1/17/07 - 9:03 am
On Esoteric Diversions, Jeff explains his feeling about riding the T now that he no longer has to be at work downtown every morning:
... There's something about the hustle and the bustle of the city, the act of getting to the train station and riding the T, the fact that you're not in a crappy suburb. It all just makes things so interesting. Of course, at the same time all of that can make your commute utterly and completely crappy and from hell. ...
By adamg - 1/16/07 - 8:37 pm
The subway lines might get more complaints, but Charlie on the MBTA makes the case that a lot of what is wrong with public transportation in greater Boston has to do with the fact that the T has never shown much imagination - or sometimes just simple common sense - when dealing with the antiquated bus routes it inherited more than 40 years ago. Just one example from his essay:
By adamg - 1/15/07 - 2:47 pm
Peter Kingman posts a video of an MBTA locomotive almost taking out a couple of graffiti sprayers near Fenway Park:
By adamg - 1/14/07 - 4:48 pm
At the bottom of Mac Daniel's latest paean to the CharlieCard (but just before he acknowledges there might be one tiny small problem with them), he writes:
We also checked out reports that folks were throwing away CharlieTickets that still had value on them. We're not saying it's not true, but after donning latex-free rubber gloves, we rummaged in the trash and found 20 CharlieTickets. After running each one through the machine and checking their values, not one cent was found.
By adamg - 1/13/07 - 9:41 am
A reader of Charlie on the MBTA's discovers a fun fact: If you try to use mbta.com's online trip planner for a Friday trip, it refuses to admit the Orange Line exists. Wha? Of course I had to try it for myself. I pretended I'd just moved to Malden and wanted to visit my cousin in Rox-beh-ree on Friday, Jan. 19, so I asked the trip planner how to get from Oak Grove to Roxbury Crossing. And here's what I got. Notice which subway line that connects Oak Grove and Roxbury Crossing is not mentioned?
OK, how about from Central Square in Cambridge to Forest Hills? EZ: Take the Red Line to South Station, then catch commuter rail down to Forest Hills. Central Square to Oak Grove? The planner had me take three buses and then walk seven minutes to Oak Grove.
But wait, it gets even more fun! Try planning a Friday trip from Forest Hills to Central Square. I dare you! The best you can do for Forest Hills is "Forest Hills St and Washington St." But the planner won't even let you chose Central Square in Cambridge, instead limiting your choices to locations in places such as Bellingham and Burlington.
Also, try a starting time at, say, 11:30 p.m. - see just how long a trip time you can run up.
By adamg - 1/12/07 - 3:08 pm
Ben posts a friend's account of an incident in Coolidge Square this morning involving a bus driver on route 71 who refused to let a woman board the bus at a red light - even if it meant the woman then proceeded to stand right in front of the bus, preventing it from going when the light turned green - just like that guy with the tanks. And then the story gets even better. It's the must-read stupid-T story of the day.
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