Green Line hell
By adamg - 3/17/08 - 8:30 am
That would be outbound on the B trolley the night the college kids get back from spring break AND people return from the St. Patrick's Day parade, Ms Maggie Moo reports:
... [A]ll of the students from the 2 colleges I live between were coming back from the airport. They were sports teams and had TONS of bags. In addition, people were still coming back from the pubs and they were extremely smelly and extremely drunk. Normally, this would be funny, but when you are wedged between a large man in a mustard colored leather jacket and a small old Asian woman who's breath smells like dog poop, it just makes you angry. ...
Comments
You can't spell T without U.
Shockingly, you cannot have public transit without the public. You could always take a cab, or move if you can't take life in between the B's.
Come on, how is this news? Next we'll be hearing there are drunk people on the T tonight! Deal with it or move to Westford.
Hey Adam!
Come on, how is this news?
Looks like you have a new "volunteer" named O.M.O.- he wants to screen your content and decide if it is up to the standards of his no- doubt "award-winning" blog before you can post it.
If you ran UH for a day
What would you post on it?
Also, maybe it's time for a UH forum where people can discuss what gets covered here.
A forum? That would be wicked good!
+1
+1
because it's fun to grumble
...So fuhgheddaboutit, chief.
Adam: No death by committee, please!
Forum is up and ready for, um, whatever
http://www.universalhub.com/hubtalk
Open just to registered users (in part so I can begin to test such stuff).
Since when did UH turn into such a snarkfest?
Is it something about the press Adam's been getting and a rise in readership? Is it the pent-up rage of office types yearning to be out in the sunshine? This is The Hub Of The Internet, as far as I'm concerned, and I don't like to see things getting all nasty. Discuss. (Nicely, now.)
It wasn't so much the crowd...
This is my first time visiting here-thanks for linking my blog! As for OMO, I'd like to just say I was shocked to read how angry he got...it's kind of ridiculous, actually. I say, post whatever the heck you want.
And also, if I'm being told to move out of the city simply because I was frustrated by the overwhelming odor of dog poop breath, I think that OMO should be told to stick to reading his own blog if what other people write makes him so hostile.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!
Text correction
Green Line Hell: That would be outbound on the B trolley
the night the college kids get back from spring break AND people return from the St. Patrick's Day paradeYou don't need to qualify the time of day or situation outside of the train in the rest of the city when you're discussing the B Line.
I have regularly timed the B train at "rush" hour in the evening from Kenmore to Harvard Ave. 15 minutes. 2 miles of street, about 15-20 city blocks, and 9 freaking stops along the way.
For me to go the ~4 miles from my house to Kendall Square each day takes 1 hour one-way. 40 minutes of that is on the Green B Line (or the 86 bus if I am feeling what I call "schedule lucky").
Don't worry
BU is getting another stop because their precious students can't be expected to walk all the way across the BU bridge to get to the stations on either side of it.
Of course, eliminating stops is impossible because the T has ridership statistics indicating that they are the busiest on the line. But when you've got people taking the B Line 500 feet you shouldn't consider that a success.
Do what??
Another stop?? Where?
Given that the 57 bus runs the EXACT same stops at nearly the same schedule all day, they should push the BU locals onto the bus or the BUS (which runs less frequent but more BU-centric)!
For a time, once they started announcing the stops that had "bus service" the B Line drivers were announcing "Bus Connection" for every stop from Packard's Corner to Kenmore. When I asked what bus they were talking about at stops like Pleasant St and BU West, they said the 57. It was so stupid, that's not a "connection" that's a concurrence! Fortunately, they only announce Packard's Corner and Kenmore now.
Removing stops between Packard's Corner and Washington St (and beyond all the way to BC) significantly increased the speed of the line and most people don't even remember there were stops in-between these days. They need to do the same and have any others ride the busses leaving the trolley to be more of a hi-speed line. Ridership will cope and anyone other than a BU student will be relieved. You can hurl a baseball from BU West to St Paul and St Paul to Pleasant for crying out loud.
I say it should go:
Blandford->BU Central->St Paul->Packard's Corner
Maybe you keep Babcock in there since Packard's Corner is on the opposite end of the large intersection. Anything else can be handled by busses. The number of people at these stops is so great they *already* ignore the fares and open all doors to be expedient. Doing so with a 50% jump in numbers would not slow them down or leave too many on the platform.
How about this
Ask a BU student why they take the train and J-walk.
The answers I got (from a very small sample) were a unanimous "they don't give us enough time to change classes". BU has sprawled out along a linear trajectory, but nobody seems to be paying attention to the human scale of getting from here to there.
Perhaps Herr Silber should commission a little analysis of the timing of getting around the university, no? Or does fact finding clash with meglamaniacal ego?
Silber isn't BU president anymore
and hasn't been for several years.
Yes, but the hand-picked
Yes, but the hand-picked control systems live (more quietly) on.
From what I hear, he's hardly retired.
Ask again.
There is a new regime in town.
Over on the "E"
They still have some drivers that announce bus connections on every stop that runs parallel to the 39 Bus. Which is all of them except one, of course. Oddly, though, at Symphony, where the 39 bus doesn't really stop, they do announce connections to both the 1 and 39. Sometimes they wait until Brigham Circle and some drivers only do Brigham Circle and then Symphony, but there are definitely drivers announcing every single stop on the "E" line as having bus connections.
Is the 57 still limited stops from Packards to Kenmore?
It was when I was using it a couple of years ago. Meaning you could get off the bus at one of those stops before Kenmore, but it wouldn't pick anyone up (outbound it would pick up people, but not drop off). I really liked that it avoided all the BU stops for the most part and was not used as a local bus in that area.
BU should just get a more frequent shuttle.
Not anymore, I don't think
The printed and online schedules no longer say this.
I haven't been out that way
I haven't been out that way much in recent months, but every time I take the 57 it runs as a normal bus route.
57 Bus
I believe that when the fare structure changed (i.e., no more free ride outbound) they added local stops on the 57 along Commonwealth.
That's too bad
But doesn't really surprise me much to hear it. It's been over a year since I had to use it.
Shifting passengers
Well, there are two points. One is that passengers making a surface-only trip shouldn't have to pay the full subway fare when the same route is covered by a bus, which is cheaper. Plus it speeds up the B line's trip (wasn't that what folks were complaining about, elsewhere in this thread?) by shifting BU riders away from the streetcar and onto the bus.
BU is going to build over
BU is going to build over the highway, and they want a commuter rail station at the bridge, with a Green Line stop above it. I'd be fine with this if they'd shed 3 or 4 other stops in exchange.
It's important to keep in mind that (last time I checked) Harvard had its own transit plans that are incompatible with BU's. They want their own CR station a bit further west (can't have two so close together, so it's one or the other) and light rail branch of the Urban Ring. They are about as enamored with the plans for a "Bus Rapid Transit" Urban Ring as the riding public is. Which is to say "not at all".
Probably replacing the BU Central stop, though
When I've read about that in the past, it sounded like the BU Central (or maybe BU West) stop would be moved to this location. It's a pretty speculative plan, though.
Just a proposal, for now
Yes, pretty speculative is right. That's not to say they may not have their hearts set on it, but it's far from a done deal based on everything that's been printed or announced thus far. The BU proposal has apparently been thrown into the mix at the Urban Ring planning meetings run by the Executive Office of Transportation, though, for what it's worth.
Huh! Where would I be able
Huh! Where would I be able to find more information about both of those plans?
Try these, for starters
The link in my comment above is one place to look, and try this for the Urban Ring Project itself. And this gives a report from a March 10th meeting.
Neat, thanks!
Neat, thanks!
Agreed. It should
Agreed. It should definitely go Blandford -> BU Central -> St. Paul -> Packards Corner. I think Babcock can definitely be eliminated considering how close Packard's Corner is. And I think it's ridiculous that BU students can't walk more. That's the whole idea of college - walking to class... that's what every other college kid does, not to mention there are buses...
Non-student riders
Don't forget about the rest of us! There are other users of the B Line besides BU students - especially around Babcock.
I agree that a few stops might be eliminated - BU East, maybe BU West if the bridge does get developed, Pleasant Street. But there are residents in the neighborhood, especially on the Brookline side of Commonwealth Avenue, who also use the line. BU Central serves folks down Saint Mary's Street, and Babcock serves the whole neighborhood down Babcock, not to mention the Shaw's. (Yes, you can walk back to Shaw's from the Packard's Corner stop, but you have to cross Brighton Avenue as well as part of Commonwealth from there.)
Perception
BU Central was one of the stops I proposed to keep, so no argument there for anyone walking over from St Mary's St.
The Shaw's is actually closer to Packard's Corner than it is to Babcock St. It's at the corner of Alcorn St, not Babcock. The signal at Packard's Corner actually stops all traffic for people to cross N. Brighton/Comm Ave there, so it's actually safer to cross than Comm Ave at Babcock which is concurrent crossing (with nearly every car making a turn there and not crossing straight across Comm Ave). Anyone needing to reach Brookline housing could walk down Fuller or Naples and not lose more than a block in distance than when they walked down Babcock currently. Babcock is an outdated stop and could be eliminated with nearly no influence on pedestrian patterns.
It might make sense in the long run
BU has grand plans for the future of the BU Bridge intersection, including a new student center:
archboston.org/community/archive/index.php?t-1536.html
onbrookline.com...-ring-meets-partly-dr-seuss
(Scroll down to the posts titled "BU Proposal")
If they put a trolley stop there, it would make sense to get rid of either the Boston University West or St Paul St. stop, which are practically a stone's throw away.