There you go again, carping about the T
What do you people have against poor Dan Grabauskas? Yeah, I'm talking to you, Single Girl in the City. Just because the T reduces the number of cars on Green Line trolleys after the students return is no reason to complain about how overcrowded that makes things:
... When the train came and the doors opened, I was nearly run over by a very butch woman headed for the empty seats. She actually ran into me, plowed into me to be exact and had the audacity to turn around and glare at me for getting in her way. ...
Oh, wait, and I'm also shaking my finger at you, Mr. Left Center Left. Just because you walked from Mission Hill to Allston Village AND BACK AGAIN without once ever seeing a single 66 bus, well, does that give you the right to complain about how the 66 schedule (buses every 10 minutes) is a lie?
... Sure, I don't have anything constructive to tell the T about how to fix that, but I can say that a schedule which says buses run every 10 minutes is a fiction and a lie and is given to T riders in bad faith. Sometimes you can be unreasonable, but sometimes you have to hold someone's feet to the fire. ...
Comments
Dapper Dan
I don't know how many people know or remember his failed candidacy for the state treasurer's office in 2002, but he ran as "the guy who fixed the Registry." Of Motor Vehicles, that is. He's the one to thank for polite greeters, separate lines with deli-ticket style numbers, and, of all things unbelievable, pleasant tellers. Because of this, there are higher standards for him than prior occupants of his position. The T fails in many areas, but especially in its service delivery, just as the Registry did, and therefore people are demanding results.
I, for one, though not a regular T user, would like to see the T modernize, become more efficient and focus on proper expansion within the urban core rather than $500 million commuter rail extensions to the South Coast cities of New Bedford and Fall River.
While commuter rail is important, moving people within the city and its immediate suburbs is key. The Silver Line should be a subway, not a bus. The Red Line Ashmont Branch should go all the way to Mattapan Square (don't get me started on how poorly Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan are served by the T's subway system while the BU and BC student bodies act like have their own dedicated Green Line) and the Orange Line should terminate at the intermodal station in Westwood on University Avenue where the Attleboro/Stoughton line and Amtrak stops. It also shouldn't have been such a hard fight to have a Green Line extension to West Medford.
I live within walking distance of a commuter rail station and a bus line terminus. To get to work, which is also on several bus routes, I would have take commuter rail to Back Bay, then the Orange Line to Wellington and a bus. Or I could take a bus to the Orange Line and a bus from Wellington. Or I could take a train to South Station, the Red Line to Porter and a bus. Get my drift? I don't expect a one-seat ride, but that could be reduced to two if the Orange Line were extended to the station near my house.
Finally, the T might consider light rail in the outlying suburbs that would carry people not only from city to city, but from rail line to rail line (subway and commuter rail). Some of its lines are already connected by unused or abandoned lines. Also I read recently that on of the Mansfield parking lots was closed to commuters. Those familiar know the Mansfield lot is full by 6 a.m. Yet the T has a station at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro - next to Mansfield - that goes unused except for games and concerts. The Gillette stop is on a branch between the Franklin and Attleboro lines, and there's thousands of parking spaces. It could easily serve Walpole, Sharon, Foxboro, Mansfield, Norton, Wrentham, Plainville, and perhaps more.
Rail does have a high front-end cost in right-of-way acquisition and construction, and it is hard to re-route as service needs change, but it is clean, generally quiet and a smoother more predictable ride than bus service.
Perhaps I'm channeling Mike Dukakis, but having ridden subway and light rail systems in other cities (Wash D.C., Miami's elevated tram, Madrid's Metro and London's Tube), I know why people used to pleasant and properly working systems in other cities really dislike the T.