Red Line commute caution
This evening the Red Line was completely FUBAR'd, supposedly because of a crack in the tracks near MIT/Kendall. This was resulting in a combination of weird subway patterns (the outbound train I was on ended up on the inbound platform at Charles MGH), busses, and of course, delays. At Downtown Crossing, the Ashmont/Braintree platform was packed with people waiting for a train.
Around 8PM, they had just started busing from Charles MGH with impressive efficiency- rather than line up a block's worth of buses to the same place, buses were running to individual stations along the red line. I saw buses to Harvard, Kendal, and Central, and drivers were waiving people on fast and furious. Plenty of exasperated riders were happy to show some hustle.
As usual, the Boston Globe could give a damn about reporting problems with the MBTA, so who knows whether they fixed the problem or not. If you believe it, the MBTA status board shows an all-clear.
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Broken rail at Kendall Station
There was a broken or cracked rail on the inbound track at Kendall station. Around 9 pm workers were busy welding and doing other noisy things to the track there. I guess it was bad enough that they couldn't just issue a slow order for the evening and fix it after service ended?
Brett, I haven't really been
Brett, I haven't really been following the transportation writing in the Globe (not enough time), but I thought I'd seen some reports in the Globe of large problems with the MBTA, under a couple different bylines.
Are you looking for a running log of incidents, or do you think there are ongoing problems that are not being reported?
The Globe transportation writing I did get a chance to read this year was mixed. On occasion, it seemed more human-interest or romanticizing than informative (and too long, with too many quotes). On some other occasions, I thought it was conspicuously good.
I *would* kinda expect the Globe to be erring on the side of aggressive with the MBTA, after the awkwardness of last year:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/07/globe_transport.html