MBTA
This holiday season, no weekend red line service north of Harvard Square.
By WickedPissah - 10/23/11 - 7:39 pmEveryone can agree that the economy is rough. This holiday season, more than usual, is important to local retailers. Small businesses in Porter and Davis squares now have another hurdle to deal with starting November 5th, no red line service on the weekends. The residents probably aren't happy about it either.
According to service advisory posters in red line stations, and yesterday's article on Boston.com, the red line will terminate at Harvard until March 2012! On a side note, the MBTA's own website doesn't mention the service advisory yet.
The MBTA's brick and mortar location for their merchandise website, MBTAgifts.com, is located in Porter Square.
No Red Line north of Harvard on weekends
By BostonUrbEx - 10/22/11 - 9:32 amRecently, if you look out the windows on the Red Line between Harvard and Porter, you'll almost always find workers pressing against the wall to let a train by. In case the water-stained tunnel walls don't give it away: they're working on the corroded tracks as we speak. However, that may not be enough time to keep the tunnels in shape, and as The Globe explains:
The MBTA will close the Red Line north of Harvard Square on weekends from November through March to complete $80 million in repairs designed to keep trains from derailing, transit administrators said yesterday.
Starting Nov. 5, weekend service will stop to allow T crews to plug tunnel cracks and seal water leaks that have eroded the concrete track base and corroded power lines. Then crews will replace damaged track, supports, and electrical components.
Where Have All the Bus Stops Gone?
By Brett - 6/14/11 - 11:15 amFire up Google Maps to find out where to catch the bus, and it won't help much; dozens or hundreds of stops are displayed in the wrong locations, have the wrong bus lines associated with them, or aren't shown at all.
Try this mess at Brigham Circle, for example. You'll spend a long time waiting for the 39 on Tremont Street, yet that's where Google Maps now declares the 39 stops; the stop for the 39 on Huntington Avenue is gone.
By the way, here's what we were promised for live transit updates about a week ago. Here's what we got instead.
Want to report that the stations or stops are in the wrong locations? Sorry, can't do that.
MBTA's 2010 Blue Book is out
By JohnAKeith - 5/16/11 - 1:53 pmThe MBTA's annual Ridership and Service Statistics report, a.k.a., "the blue book" was released on May 10.
This report includes a true treasure-trove of statistics through which to pour - most popular / least popular lines and routes, including number of entries and exists, schedules' adherence, types of buses and subway cars in use, etc. This is for all bus, subway, trackless trolley, ferry, and THE RIDE routes.
Top 25 subway stations
Top 25 bus routes
To download your own copy, click on this link. (Warning, .pdf)
www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/documents/Bluebook%202010.pdf
Oh, and here's an interesting tidbit of information. The T estimates that upwards of 1/3 of riders use an app to check bus/subway schedules on a regular basis. (Source: TransportationNation.org)
What, there's a road race and a ball game today?
By roadman - 4/18/11 - 10:42 amApparently that's news to the MBTA management, based on the latest T alert:
Green Line experiencing 15-20 min delays on all lines between North Station & Kenmore stations due to increased ridership for the Boston Marathon & Red Sox game. Please allow extra time for commute. 18/2011 11:26 AM
Get to the MBTA's website ten times faster
By Brett - 2/1/11 - 5:14 pmCan't get to the MBTA website? Use the automatic Coral content delivery network. Simply append "nyud.net" to the real website hostname for any site, like so: http://mbta.com.nyud.net/. This works for almost any URL.
The information does seem to be up to date; at 5:07PM one page I pulled up showed an alert from less than ten minutes ago. It's also significantly faster, as the main MBTA page loads in about 3-4 seconds via Coral. By itself, it's over 30 seconds.
Please help spread the word to other blogs, Facebook, twitter, etc- the more people that use Coral, the less load there will be on the MBTA's website, which means everyone wins. Bookmark mbta.com.nyud.net for the next snow emergency!
How do you get to Fenway?
By JohnAKeith - 1/11/11 - 2:36 pmSeen inside the Copley Square outbound stop.
The Green Line Revisited
By TheRLeePost - 12/18/10 - 9:05 pmPlease check out this sight on a better alternative to the GLX proposal and saving $705 Million in the process. The Green Line Revisited.
Mass. Ave. bridge shut as cars collide head on
By bostonzest - 12/1/10 - 6:04 pmA head-on collision at rush hour on the Mass. Ave. Bridge left one dead and created massive traffic problems.
Proposed Alternative to Current GLX
By TheRLeePost - 11/22/10 - 8:16 pmI've done up a multi-page web site on an alternative to the proposed Green Line extension into Somerville and Medford. I'd like to get some feedback, and/or otherwise promote it. The alternative isn't dissing the use of the Green Line, merely making better use of it than the GLX will do. The current price tag for the GLX is a mind boggling, highly exorbitant expenditure for a short extension of a light rail tram in an already owned rail corridor.
There are no words to describe the size of the ripoff that is the GLX. For $10 billion the Swiss bore TWO tunnels, each 30' wide and 35 miles long, yes, 35 MILES, through the mountains, TWO of em. The price tag actually includes another 24 miles of connecting and support tunnels. The tunnels are sized for HIGH SPEED trains to be traveling at well over 160 miles an hour (which is the minimum in the EU for high speed rail).
