Hey, there! Log in / Register

Another T bus driver attacked: Slappy spitter sought

Man wanted MBTA Transit Police report they are looking for a man who allegedly slapped and spit at a bus driver for passing him by.

Police report the route-428 driver was attacked around 6:30 p.m. yesterday at Main and Forest streets in Malden. They provide this account:

The 34-year old operator stated that a white male approximately 50 years of age with grey hair, ear length, 6' 0" tall weighing app. 200lbs. wearing a tan coat and pulling a suit case.

The suspect became verbally abusive because the operator had not stopped at "his stop".

The operator went on to explain that some words were exchanged and it ended with the unidentified white male spiting at him and then striking him on his right shoulder.

The assailant then fled the bus at Main St and Vine St. with his suit case in tow, the operator remained on board.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

... In Fonz attire, no less.

up
Voting closed 0

was this in Malden or Saugus? Route 428 does not go anywhere near Main/Forest in Malden.

up
Voting closed 0

I think they meant bus #0428. Which is currently running out of the Fellsway garage.

up
Voting closed 0

Bus 0428 is not camera equipped

up
Voting closed 0

It must be Saugus. There is no Vine Street in Malden.

up
Voting closed 0

But for T bus drivers, I'll make an exception.

up
Voting closed 0

is a great thing! Why do people think this is acceptable? Yes, some of them are assholes, but if you had to deal with assholes all day, you'd be one too. There is NO excuse for attacking a bus driver, and the penalties should be STEEP. You should be ashamed.

up
Voting closed 0

Time to grow a sense of humor. It's called "exaggeration for comic effect."

Here's the serious version:

If there's any group of Boston-based public servants who act more consistently like total douchebags towards the general public, I haven't met them.

up
Voting closed 0

If you're a pacifist by nature, maybe you were nurtured to be a jerk. Nobody deserves to be spit on or otherwise assaulted when they're doing their job, even if they're doing it badly.

up
Voting closed 0

My dad drove for the T for 23 years and took retirement the second it was dangled in front of him. In the summer of 1975 he took 23 stitches in the head and arm on the Kane Square bus when he asked some yummies to pay their fare.

The T bus drivers have my sympathy. There are always a few bad drivers, but for the most part they do their job hauling a motley crew of mouthbreathers, workers, students, deranged people, and professionals from one crappy part of Greater Boston to another.

From watching people on the buses and trolleys for years you can always see a certain number who believe that as a paying passenger they have the wherewithal to boss around the drivers as if they were manservants since they deposited their $1.70 into the farebox.

Be paitent, the bus/trolley/train will get you there. It is not the driver's fault that there is traffic, or the bus stop has a car parking in it so you can't pull into the curb. It is not their fault that you expect sparking new public transportation vehicles and late night service when you vote for politicians who defund public transportation.

When some driver finally has enough and hits a passenger with the fire extinguisher they keep up the front of the bus after they have been spat upon or otherwise assulted, would any lawyer on this thread help me file an amicus curiae brief for the driver?

up
Voting closed 0

We see how much more difficult and stressful a T driver's job is now that roads are being narrowed everywhere with bike lanes, travel lanes removed, street corners tightened, and all the resulting slow downs and impediments to movement on roads if driving a bus, car, or truck. I hope the carmen's union sues the state and cities for making their job more stressful and unhealthy. Its worse than second hand smoke for restaurant workers!

up
Voting closed 0

Arggg... This is a post about a man who got spat on and the infracting mistake does not justify such a behavior. The post you are responding is a story of his sympathy for bus drivers found by experience that reminds him drivers are human beings. That the bus drivers deal with a lot of BS for being the driver despite having no power when things goes wrong many times.

And you have to chime in again with your ceaseless craptrap that always go back to a single theme that seems closer to prioritizing your driving pleasure rather than best design practices for largest demographic of an area. Every post and many in topics like this that have nothing to do with city design and philosophy always seems to go back a theme of expressing concern (with emphasis on expressing concern) in a way that always seems to best promote a central philosophy that always seems to be for your best convenience.

Quit it. If you actually have a real interest in urban design and not just disingenuously expressing concern with advocacy to your lifestyle to every news event then save those for appropriate threads here (and other more focus forums like archboston/citydata/skyscrapercity) and debate with an open mind and numbers from your research. And quit writing everything with a tone of concern.

up
Voting closed 0

You may have an ideology where less popular forms of transportation are to be made more popular at the expense of the majority. Actually, I don't consider walking transportation - it was what we had thousands of years ago before transportation existed (riding horses or camels, or having animals pull carts). You can find stats on travel mode percentages in US Census databases. Carpooling is much more popular than bicycling, and taking public transit, yet more, but driving is still #1.

You may have heard of road rage or going postal. Stress produces them, not "traffic calming", a typical misnomer used in road and urban design Orwellian. I would not keep writing if the problem would stop getting worse with ever more road infrastructure destruction in Cambridge and Boston, impeding transportation. Next spring, as more buildings go up in Kendall Sq., lanes are to be removed from Broadway. We have anti-transportation agencies. The MBTA included for not doing maintenance prior to expansion. MBTA bus service and bus drivers suffer along with private drivers when roads are made worse by ideological changes. Roads are the MBTA driver's workplace. They are being tortured with other drivers, but have no option to take other routes or convert to pedaling passengers to destinations.

I'll stop when road downsizing stops.

up
Voting closed 0

BUT, a city, especially a big and densley populated place like the Boston/Cambridge area, can't be treated by car drivers like it's just another suburb or highway, it's not. Boston/Cambridge's problem is there are just too many vehicles on the roads. This is mirrored in other big cities, especially in Europe. You can add more capacity for vehicles, it of course will just invite more congestion, and it will be be back to square one.

I'd also say the MBTA needs some serious overhauling and modernization in regards to it's bus routes, and of course infrastructure. It still seems to operate as if it were 1980 not 2012. The world has changed, attitudes have changed, our society is now 24/7, Boston and the metro area have grown and continue to grow in population and size. They've done some big fancy projects over the past quarter of a century, but aside from the Silver Line and commuter rail, have not added capacity, with the Green Line being especially glaring. But Boston is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above most other U.S. cities in this regard, and if the MBTA was like MARTA in Atlanta, our roads would be FAR WORSE than what they are now.

up
Voting closed 0

Move, or shut up, or get a fucking job doing roadway design, a field, which, by the way, shares NOTHING in common with network traffic, as much as you would like to believe otherwise. Nobody cares that your drive to work is imperfect. Not a single one of us. Or perhaps you work from home, in which case your opinion is super-duper important.

Your obstinate belief that annoying us with your one single argument, on ANY post that has ANYTHING to do with roads, or transportation, is going to get you anywhere is extremely displeasurable for the rest of us. I would hope you would just stop. Please don't come back. We hate it.

up
Voting closed 0

Your response was condescending and insulting. You're wholesale dismissing my entire argument insinuating that I only speak with ideological conviction without any empirical thought and reasoned philosophy.

And then you make points that talks about nothing I said to responded to me. Did I say anything about walking? Does driving being the most used mode in the US census mean anything to your constant posting posing as concern for your fellow poster while always connecting your concern to the same theme repeatedly? Does giving examples to what you see as ideology-without-empirical-thought justify you push your cause while masking yourself as concern?

Again, stop posting your ideas under a guise of concern. It is transparent, disingenuous, and passive-aggressive. Save your ideas for the appropriate threads and forums. And bring your arguments back by more numbers than saying "cars are the most used form of transportation" and directly address others people views - with perhaps an open mind that not everything on their side of the debate is wrong either.

You know who is a good example. You seen him around here and Archboston sometimes: MassMotorist. He directly address counter arguments, cites studies directly focus on the matter of topic and regularly with examples, and directly address other arguments. All while doing this as an exchange of ideas. He also personally advocates too - his handle reflects it: The National Motorist Association (which you probably won't assume that as he doesn't disparage everything that is not a car).

But again, the most important point is stop concern trolling. That's what you're doing. It's more than irritating. Stop.

up
Voting closed 0

... for this forum. There are some posters whose posts I would rather not see -- ever.

up
Voting closed 0

I've just started work on a major upgrade of the software that runs the site. Once I'm done with that, I'll look at adding an ignore filter.

up
Voting closed 0

That feature might be occasionally useful.

up
Voting closed 0

Yeah those bumps outs that prevent people from parking illegally really slow the buses down. Seriously?

You know what really slows buses down and makes the bus drivers' jobs tough? You in your car and everyone else doing the same thing, clogging up the street so that the buses can't get through.

So since you're so interested in making bus drivers' jobs less stressful, we should probably just ban cars from bus routes. Since they will be so much faster and the bus drivers so much happier, I'm sure you'll have no issues taking one yourself, right?

up
Voting closed 0

How is this relevant at all?

up
Voting closed 0

What is with everyone spitting? I don't get why someone would do that. I don't even think I could even attempt to spit let alone get enough saliva in my mouth to actually do it. Geez people. Keep your bodily fliuds to yourself. -Mea www.hertrainstories.blogspot.com

up
Voting closed 0