Boston requires property owners to clear the sidewalks in front of their property. Naturally, the law doesn't apply to public authorities, such as the MBTA, which maybe is why one entire side of Belgrade Avenue in Roslindale Square (from South Street to Corinth Street) is covered in ice - it's next to the T's Roslindale Village commuter-rail stop. They couldn't even be bothered to clear away the ice at the bus stop where seven different lines are supposed to pick up and discharge passengers (that's the retaining wall for the train station parking lot next to the sidewalk). Picture taken Sunday afternoon, several days after the nor'icester.

The Metro has a nice write-up of Charlie on the MBTA today.

The reporter also, indirectly, gets an answer to Paul Levy's question about what T officials do with complaints posted daily on Boston-area blogs: Not a hell of a lot (then again, that's hardly a policy change at the T):

It wasn't just that he had to wait an hour and a half at Aquarium for a train home that got Nathan angrier than he can remember:

... I can understand if there's something that causes a delay. But the trains were still running ... they were just so packed that no one could get on. And they were saving one car on each train for T employees. You'd have completely packed cars, and one car with five guys on it. So annoying.

On BadTransit, David R. reports on his two-hour commute from Copley Square to Watertown yesterday that featured: No express bus, a broken Orange Line, a creeping Red Line train that stopped repeatedly in the tunnel between Central and Harvard and, finally, after he gets somebody to pick him up, his discovery of where all the 71 buses were:

... ALL OF THEM - I literally mean all of them, were disabled by the star market. Riders were standing out in the street with the thumbs hanging out. ...

Charlie on the MBTA takes note of an interesting experiment in Toronto: An intense, weekend "transit camp" where transit riders and officials gathered to try come up with some concrete ways to improve that city's public transportation. And he addresses our own Dan Grabauskas:

Toronto perhaps has the most similar transit system in North America to ours in Boston. The officials of the Toronto Transit Commission accepted the invitation of the Toronto blogging community. I feel we should do the same.

Kids, you really don't want to do this: Spend two weeks' collecting old CharlieTickets, then have a ticket-redemption flash mob at Downtown Crossing. It's one thing for Ron Newman to do it; quite another for a whole gaggle of 20somethings to tempt the T fates:

... We will line up and wreck havoc. We might even trash the place in rock star fashion! ...

For those of you following the saga of my discarded CharlieTicket project:

Yesterday, I brought 50 CharlieTickets worth $67.85 to the Charlie office in Downtown Crossing station. In return, I got a CharlieCard with all of that value on it -- but it took 45 minutes for them to do it. I then added 15 cents to it so that it has an even number of subway rides (40).

Tomorrow morning, I'll donate this card to the Somerville Homeless Coalition. They have assured me that they will find a client who can use the card.

Michael Blim slinks by the jodhpur-clad transit cops doing a bag search at Stony Brook, but that gets him to pondering the police's newfound ability to conduct searches without warrants, at least on MBTA property:

For further proof that the Green Line would run so much better without those annoying passengers, we turn tonight to Single Girl in the City, who reports her trolley simply blew by the Sutherland Road stop despite at least 10 people in her car who wanted to get out there: