A Romanian doctor in town for a medical conference was arrested last night on charges he groped a 15-year-old girl on the Green Line heading inbound from Boylston Street, according to the Suffolk County DA's office:

Transit Police responded to the station last night at about 7:45 to find the victim visibly shaken and crying. She reported that she felt the man's hands on her buttocks as she had her back to him – a statement corroborated by three independent witnesses who also spoke with Transit Police.

Virgil Baloescu, 60, pleaded innocent at his arraignment this morning in Boston Muncipal Court. He was ordered to surrender his passport and was held in lieu of $10,000 cash bail, the DA's office says.

Baloescu is listed as a doctor at the National Institute of Aeronautic and Space Medicine in Bucharest, specializing in neurology and psychiatry. He was apparently here for a meeting of the Aerospace Medical Association at the Back Bay Sheraton.

One of the last trains on the B Line overnight, running through the Commonwealth Avenue and Chestnut Hill Avenue intersection around 1:30 AM, hopped the tracks. This normally wouldn't be a big deal, as it happens pretty regularly with the new Breda trains. Except, this time it hopped the track right into a power pole. The shorted power lines lit the train car on fire. About thirty people on board were able to get off safely but it's taken all morning and then some for officials to untangle the mess and realign the wheels to put the train back on the tracks to move it out of the way. As of 6 AM, the train is still in the middle of the intersection and the B Line is being bussed from BC to Babcock Street.

Of course, this all began over 4 hours ago, but it is just now "breaking news" on all of the local news agencies and television stations without a single article to link even at this hour.

Part 1 of a series, including the fact that T employees still think they can harass people taking photos on the T.

Or for the four weekends that follow, so the T can make a bridge disappear.

Lys wonders why the Red Line seems so depressed these days while the Green Line is positively jaunty:

... I was coming back from Central, on the Red line, and I noticed how many people riding back looked as miserable as I did. I saw two different women crying, and everyone just seemed to be lost in their own tired and negative thoughts. Maybe the stress of Cambridge, with Harvard and MIT right there, is too much for the fragile human psyche to handle. As I looked around the train, no one was making eye contact, and shoes, fingernails, and blank space were very popular.

I get off at Park Street and switch to the Green line, and the tone is much more peppy. The train fills up with tired but happy students for BU and BC, and people are actually laughing! I am trying to maintain a level of melancholy, but it is difficult with all these wise-ass students around. ...

The Cambridge Chronicle posts the new stops north of Lechmere proposed for the Green Line extension - including a relocated Lechmere.

Another step forward for the Somerville Green Line: State transportation folks announced this afternoon proposed stops in Somerville and Medford (sort of). The Cambridge Chronicle has the list.

Andy reports from the front lines of a battle between an evil hulking bureaucracy and a ragtag band of rebels intent on liberating the stairways that have been closed for months now along the hilly section of Beacon Street:

... Now, one can assume there is a reason for this (my guess is the issue of safety what with no handrails and all). Still, the one thing us Brooklinians won't take, it's some annoying MBTA traffic cone telling us when we can and cannot use a stairway. So, one bold Saturday, the people took action. A anonymous group in the grand tradition of radical patriots claimed the stairwell in the name of the people. May their famous proclamation live with the likes of Luther, Fawkes, and Jefferson. ...

15-year-old lets it all hang out on the Green Line. Maybe his baggy pants were just a little too loose?

Innocent as the driven snow, etc.

Nick is getting more than a little tired of trolleys that don't stop where they're supposed to (C trains stopping on the other side where the E trains normally stop) and trolleys where the conductors tell people to "stand by."