At about 8:30 pm on Friday, reports the Associated Press.

Zolok reports it took more than two hours to get from the Back Bay to Alewife last night, thanks to a messed up Red Line. And then came the giant jam getting out of the garage:

... I didn't want to eat dinner at a normal hour or go to the gym tonight or anything. I'd much rather sit in my freezing cold car burning my personal gasoline WAITING for forty plus minutes to clear the usual exit bottlenecks Fresh Pond. ... Happy freakin' holidays from the MBTA, cattle bound for the slaughterhouse have better expectations of timeliness.

The tweets are pouring in: Hour-long waits on commuter rail; piss-poor plowing around Ashmont station, inaccurate advisories. All leading to:

i hear the CIA is looking into a new torture technique - commuting on the MBTA

It's treemegeddon as the MBTA hacks away at trees menacing the trolleys on the Mattapan line:

"They really butchered it," said cemetery trustee John O'Toole. "We lost some really mature trees that provided a buffer between the cemetery on Madden Street and the trolley itself." ...

Earlier:
Is the D line overseen by the Lorax?

Initial survey responses from riders of the new Big Red boxes of gum seatless cars on the Red Line.

Earlier:
Stand a little longer with Big Red.

Nothing like signal problems on a Monday morning. This morning's best Red Line tweet:

T stuck between alewife & porter. missed the shuttle. mbta bus late. cornered on bus by stranger who Likes To Talk. yay monday.

And file this under: good to know:

So the food stand at the JFK/Umass stop was out of coffee. The employee went into the MBTA bathroom then proceeded to fill pot. No joke. Yum

Like when they're passed out across three seats on an Red Line car on a Saturday afternoon and then the train doors malfunction and people are asked to leave the car:

It took two MBTA employees to literally drag this guy out of the car, and he put up quite a fight. This was after one of the employees extracted a bottle of some clear liquid (gin? vodka?) from his person. Ah, Boston.

With photo of the sleeping beauty.

Jon Bryant reports he was on today's first Red Line car with no seats; posts this action photo. Looks like the T installed some poles for people to grab onto.

Now that the Herald has let the cow, er, cat, out of the bag, the T is rolling out a new campaign to convince us that Red Line cars with no seats represent a good idea. And they're calling it Big Red. Just like the gum, only hopefully less sticky on your shoes. Read the T's Big Red brochure.

Here's what a seatless Red Line car looks like without any people:

And here's what a box of Big Red gum looks like:

Hmm, do I smell marketing tie-in? What if Bill Weld moves back to Massachusetts and runs for Senate? OK, so Kerry isn't leaving, but you never know.

Here is a Herald artist's depiction of what a full Big Red car will look like at rush hour (to go with this story):

Ed. This is Why It's Good to Have a Wife Note: Nancy says the Herald kinda blew it with that illustration, that they should have gone with the sardine-can metaphor because the train is going to Alewife. Get it? Alewife, sardines? You know, fish?

The good news is the T is increasing capacity on the line. The bad news is they're doing it by removing seats on some cars, the Herald reports:

... The move, which will be discussed at today’s MBTA board meeting, will cut seating by half on some trains, which usually have four to six cars. ...

Jay Fitzgerald applauds the T for its bold new plan for removing vomit from seats (by removing the seats, too).

The Outraged Liberal marvels how the T seems to be doing what it can to decrease ridership:

... It's not a joke when many people already refer to trains as sardine cans or cattle cars. Sure you can cram a whole additional 27 people into s small space, but how about some alternatives?

You know like reliable, regular service so that people don't stack up like cordwood on platforms waiting for trains that arrive late and in pairs. ...