Today's MBTA tales of woe come from the Franklin Line, where "mechanical problems" caused big delays and major crowding:
Suzie Mac, an hour late for work, reports:
Stopped at Norwood Central and train too full to let passengers on! Left them on the platform!
State Rep. Dan Winslow, a regular on the line, adds:
We're crammed on like sardines on Franklin train. Three train routes combined on one @mbtaGM? Why ^ breakdowns?
Meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. at 100 Cambridge St. Details on the upgrade.
After 25 years, weekend passenger service to the Cape will start in April, Wicked Local reports. Trains will include cars outfitted for bicycles.
Becca Westelman tweets it took her Green Line trolley 35 minutes to get from Park Street to Arlington this morning.
At 1:30 this afternoon, city and state officials gather in Somerville to ceremonially dig the first shovel of dirt for the first phase of the long fabled Green Line extension north from Lechmere.
David notices Boston transportation services tend to be built in fives and then the powers that be eliminate one of them: There used to be five Green Line branches, five Silver Line routes and five terminals at Logan.
What's going on here? Do the planners have spooky Mickey Mouse hands? Does Boston overbuild then scale back? Shrinkage?
Outbound service on the Orange Line came to a halt around 4 this afternoon when a fight broke out on a train pulling into Ruggles. Suzi Mac tweets:
That was interesting. Witnessed a big fight at Ruggles on orange line. Busted the window of the subway car.
The train was taken out of service - after police pulled off any brawlers they could find.
A roving UHub photographer snapped a Green Line rider talking a bunch on his bananaphone today.
How has the MBTA changed / grown / shrunk during the past 117 years?
Check out the visualization below to see the birth of the Green Line in 1895, the expansion of the Red Line through 1985, and the "repositioning" of the Orange Line. Descriptions of the changes included under the map.
http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2012/04/an...
(Permission granted by author)
Jed Hresko captured a new train countdown clock at Mass. Ave. on the Orange Line tonight. The T began rolling out the service on the Red Line a few months ago. He reports:
Keryn Egan reports the T had to take a train out of service at Broadway around 5:30 p.m. when a pack of 12-year-olds kicked out a window. She adds one of the doltlings almost followed the window out of the train. All together now: Awww.
Christoper tweets from Boylston this morning that a Sob Story Guy held a trolley door open and refused to let it close until somebody gave him some money.
A.P. Blake spotted this poster from the T Riders Union on the Blue Line today.
The MBTA said today it is firing the driver responsible for a collision at Boylston station last week that sent three dozen people to the hospital with minor injuries and caused $500,000 in damage to trolleys.
Acting MBTA General Manager Jonathan Davis said the driver told investigators he had come off a midnight-to-8 a.m. shift at another job when he started his first run of the day on the Green Line at 11 a.m. - about 45 minutes before the collision at Boylston.
MBTA Transit Police report a guy who didn't feel like getting off the Orange Line at Forest Hills around 1:20 this morning started screaming at workers
The Globe reports on the planned September, 2013 shutdown, which will include making the station ADA compliant and replacing the current bomb shelter of an entrance with something glassier.
Meanwhile, on Dec. 18, the Parks and Recreation Department holds a formal tree hearing on the T's request to chop down 21 trees along Cambridge Street to make way for the renovation project - 13 linden trees and 8 crabapple trees. The hearing starts at 10 a.m. in the department's 1010 Mass. Ave. offices.
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