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HERE WE GO
By adamg on Mon, 01/26/2015 - 4:44pm
Crowds at North Station as North Shore trains delayed. Photo by Andrea Eberly.
UPDATE, 5:50 p.m. The Red Line surrendered in advance of the storm and is now just dead.
'HERE WE GO." With those three words, the National Weather Service begins its latest report on the impending snowpocageddon, one its forecasters say could re-shape parts of the coastline with winds and waves punching out new inlets.
Later in the discussion, the NWS adds:
ITS BOMBOGENESIS BABY!
Downtown emptied early as workers heeded the increasingly frenzied weather updates. And that, of course, did not go well for many.
There was a 45-minute line to get into the Boston Common garage. A stuck drawbridge in Beverly meant delays on the Newburyport/Rockport line. The Blue Line felt like that last helicopter out of Saigon. The Zakim was all lit up - with the brake lights of stopped cars. A little bit of police action at Andrew jammed up the Red Line. Then the customary dead trains jammed it up even more.
Gareth K. was at Kendall Square:
And the Somerville Stop & Shop ran out of tofu.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
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Comments
NO TOFU
OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT
Hopefully
Hopefully cooler tempehs will prevail.
I enjoyed this short exchange.
That's all really.
Yes we have no bananas
People went so bananas for bananas at the Charles Whole Foods that as of 10:30 this morning, they were out.
Please
Send some of these pictures to the IOC. WE ARE A WORLD-CLASS CITY until the slightest thing goes wrong.
Wrong Sports
Maybe we should have bid on the winter Olympics(TM).
yep
We could tell them we would love to host the winter olympics. But if it snows all bets are off.
My edict
"Nobody allowed on the road after 6 pm except people taking public transportation."
#votejohn
MBTA General Manager
How much do you want to bet the T's General Manager is making her way home via her car.... Probably saying, "Let them eat Cake..."
[citation needed]
[citation needed]
how much
how much do you want to bet Dr Scott is at the T's Control Center at Park Square until end of service or at the MEMA bunker? She is considered essential by the state.
No picnic on the roadways
I'm betting ops center.
I left downtown at 4:50, got home at 6:10. Ten miles, tops. I barely got out of second gear for more than a few minutes. Everyone, his brother, sister, mother, father, and every truck in the area is out there, beating the storm.
Not that I minded - I was dry, clean, warm, had a heated and adjusted seat to sit in, my bestie riding shotgun and managing the soundtrack and all that. But, make no mistake - driving in this is no picnic, either.
It's a grand fracking multimodal clusterchuck out there.
Doing What??
The T has proven worthless in a crisis. So what does it matter where she is!!! Totally out of touch with reality and has probably never ridden the #15 when it is consistently packed SRO with three baby carriages taking up the handicapped area of the bus. She is following the long tradition of T General Managers who collect a hefty pay check and do nothing to improve the services.
*whine*bitch*moan*
Seriously? Its a BLIZZARD outside, do you except Dr Scott to be out plowing snow or shoveling?!? And I'm sorry but I feel the T did the RIGHT thing by closing today.
Look I'm not saying riding the T is like being in a limo, but seriously, shut up. You're just looking for an excuse to rag on the T.
Did you know that the MBTA GM is nothing more than a figure head anyways. Much of the T's problems has little to do with her since her hands (and most MBTA GM's) are tied. So please take your bitchin and fold it in four corners as its pretty irrelevant.
As far as your over crowding, I ride the 111 so I share your pain, however, I'm not complaining every two minutes about what Dr Scott is doing or where she is. Its public transportation.. you want better service? Pay more and use Uber.
Shut up?
You must like being treated like sh*t!! That's why the T can operate like it does. You just sit back and take it like a sap. There are so many improvements the T can make that would not cost a dime.
When she takes the large pay check she takes the hits!! She is the leader of the T but by all accounts she is out of touch with reality, much like yourself. Ride your #111 and zone out!!
Yeah shut up
But I also understand that the MBTA is PUBLIC TRANSIT. You're the one who's out of touch and doesn't understand how the T really works, because if you didnt, you wouldn't be so vapid about your comments. Again, you want perfect service, pay more and ride Uber.
Okay I'm snowed in. So let's hear your suggestions on how the service can be improved, and how Dr Scott can DIRECTLY improve service from her position. Don't forget to include costs of such idea, and facts, and figures to support your argument. The more detail the better.
While you're at it, lets also hear why you think she's out of touch and what she can do to improve that? And don't say "ride the service" because I would hope the GM have far better things to do, like PLAN BETTER SERVICES, or EXPAND SERVICE, than to ride the subway all fucking day to appease bitchy customers like you
But you probably wont because you don't have any ideas, and just want to express your vapid comments. But prove me wrong.. come on.. I have all day. I'm not going anywhere.
The Scalded Dog Yelps the LOUDEST!
So you work for the T... Overcrowded bus routes like the #15 can easily be addressed by redirecting more buses from less used bus routes . Addressing the baby carriage issue can be addressed by someone (GM) strapping on a pair of balls and requiring that they be folded up prior to boarding. SUV baby carriages should not be allowed. The handicapped sections are for the elderly and handicapped as required by federal law!! Giving the stations a periodic scrubbing from top to bottom. Soap and water are not that expensive. Andrews Station looks so ghetto.
PUBLIC TRANSIT does not mean ANYTHING GOES. Atlanta has a beautiful subway system that the keep spotless. Washington DC same thing.
You just are happy with SH*T and don't want to hold anyone ACCOUNTABLE so it is OK to admit that. If you don't want to hold her accountable please provide the name and position of the person who is!!
Uh
First off, I don't work for the T. Not even close. I work in Information Technology for a startup. So you're 100% wrong there.
Secondly, your ONLY complaint is about baby carriages. Once again, you're clueless and just being vapid. You are aware that a year or so ago, they TRIED to force strollers to be folded on the bus. Mothers groups were outraged and made huge complaints to the MBTA about this. So the policy was folded.. so to speak. So the issue has been tackled and dealt with and the outcome was something YOU DIDNT LIKE.
You claim its a federal issue. I'm almost 100% sure the MBTA is aware of this. They've been sued before for this. The T knows this and WILL force a stroller to move if a HC person needs to get on. Trust me, they do. You may not see. But they do.
You're making this your sole argument. This is a customer service issue, not a GM issue. It's like asking the CEO of a company to wash dishes in the company sink, it ain't happening and they have far better things to do. You should take your issue up with Customer Service and/or write to the supervisor of the bus garage (it's their job to enforce this)
Station Cleaning.. Once again clueless. Those stations are cleaned daily. How would your home look in the evening if you cleaned it every day, then had 10's of thousands of people walk thru your home daily. It wouldn't look good. You couldn't keep up with the cleaning. Blame the passengers on this one, not the T. They do clean. But also be aware that budget cuts have severely cut cleaning companies to stations, so if you want to complain, complain to MassDOT, not Dr Scott for your cleaning woes. Its MassDOT that deals with the budget.
Funny you mention Atlanta and DC. I used to live in Atlanta, and I can say their subway system sucks by comparison to the MBTA. Sure its clean. But it has higher crime than the T. And did you also know its hemorrhaging at the seams for money (it is only funded by a 1% sales tax and very little state funding). They cut service all the time. MARTA sucks and sucks in a big way, so its a very bad comparison.
Same with DC. I bet if you asked ANY rider of both systems they would have the same complaints as we have with the T. Your complaint is not uncommon for public transit.
You really didn't answer my question nor provide any real information anyways, so you're just vapidly bitching. Thanks for playing.
PS - I never said everything was coming up daisy with the T. Far from it. Trust me. I have my fair share of complaints against the T. But I know if I want better service, I pony up and just take Uber. What do you expect for $2.10 ? You want better service and cleaner stations, be prepared to pay more, which you'll just bitch at anyways.
Don't bother replying. You're just incessantly bitching for the sake of doing so. And besides, your arguments don't hold a straw to me, as I will win every time.
Broken Record
Your comments are now like a broken record. Please go grind your ax some place else...
Oh really?
I'm the one who has an ax to grind? Really?
Who's the one being vapid with their comments about the T? Not me. I think you're the one with the axe to grind. And really? "broken record"? Where above did I say ANYTHING repeatedly in any other comment in this thread? I didn't.
Nice cop out btw.. I gave you facts and you didn't like that I totally called you out on your vapid commenting. Typical "let's bash the T" commentor.
one other thing
You said
Once again clueless.. You can't just 'add more buses' to a route and 'take away ones from less used routes'. You have no freakin idea how this actual works, because if you did you'd understand that
1. It has ZERO to do with the GM (so once again you didn't reply to my request)
2. Any route changes (adds/moves/changes) need to have many public meetings to make changes. This is required by the federal gov, not the MBTA.
3. Changes like this do not happen on a whim, see above
4. It could take YEARS to make such a change
Again you're clueless and just want to be vapid.
Who in the name of God is ACCOUNTABLE for the T?
Scoobie Doo?
not a simple answer
I'm only replying because I'm bored...
But the answer isn't a simple one. It depends on what you are asking.
Sure Dr Scott is an easy scapegoat because she's the 'head' but she can only do so much as the MassDOT allow her to do. And of course, much of your complaints such as service level, station cleanliness, reliability of equipment, and many other things really can be traced to funding. Without proper funding the T will fail every time.
And you know who's at fault for that, your Legislators. It's up to them to properly fund the T. More money means more drivers and buses for your route. More money means more people to clean all the stations more frequently throughout the day. More money means newer, more reliable equipment more often. It's all about the money!
(and yes I'm well aware of the 'gov't waste' and the whole pension argument as a reason NOT to give more money to the T, but for the sake of the debate I am not arguing that because at a base level, many of the problems with the T are funding based issues)
And I'm also going to throw this out there too. Some of the fault with the T are the riders themselves. Not only in cleanliness and annoying-ness and stuff like that, but I mean stuff like planning.
When was the last time YOU went to a planning or a service change meeting?(or wrote your comments about said topics to the T?) Yes they do listen, and yes public comment DOES drive much of what the T does. It's just that very few do so, and then we end up with boondoggles with poor public input. This is why things stay the same. Everyone is 'too busy' for this but people are never to busy to complain about the T. Funny how that is.
(And for the record I attend many MBTA planning meetings, and current am active with the Silver Line Gateway Project.)
Anyhow, let's not confuse people will facts, ya know.. :-)
Thank you, cybah
For intelligently explaining why it's so difficult to solve many seemingly simple transit problems. A private business can move it's resources around more or less as it sees fit. The T cannot - public process prevents that. To put it bluntly, try removing a "lightly used" bus route and see who shows up at the hearings. Every person of limited mobility affected by the change will be there, often with the support of state reps, etc. Very, very hard to ax a bus route...at least in a neighborhood.
Also not helping - the T is currently maxed out of garage space for bus ops. They can't add any more service until garages are expanded or a new one added. And that's before Cabot garage gets wiped out of the Olympics.
And please...I lived near DC as a kid and have logged a lot of miles on the Metro (though never as a commuter). It's a great, amazing system, and yes a lot looks nicer than the T. But just look at some of the problems they've had over the last few years (even just a few weeks ago when a train was stuck on the Yellow Line and a rider DIED of smoke inhalation while WMATA, Fire and EMS couldn't communicate for 45 minutes) and you'll see that underneath that occasionally fancy exterior they have a lot of serious, often life-threatening, issues to deal with there as well.
The common thread - both are suffering from years of underinvestment as well as political micromanagement, and yes, bad management at times. The gripes are well put, but I hope that some folks will realize that A) what looks easy to solve from the outside isn't always so, B) there are a lot of talented people working at all agencies despite what it looks like, and C) the more that everyone who depends on public transit is willing to make it a political issue, the better off we'll be.
I'll get off my soapbox now and go back to cursing the snow.
Write Secretary of Transportation and General Manager
I have lost count of how many times I have written directly to the Secretary of Transportation and the General Manager. I also participated in an extensive daily survey. I put my money where my mouth is! I'm n not letting either one of them off the hook for anything!!
What a shame that they're not
What a shame that they're not wise enough to take advantage of your sage advice.
Rationization
"You know, we always tried to rationalize by saying you take the good, you take the upside, you got to deal with the downside, you've to take the downside."
Julius Erving
Dear Deer...
Oh. My.
Not to break into the little conversation that you and Cybah are having but I just don't get the animosity. Look I understand the T has "issues" but I am so very thankful that I live in a part of the country where we have public transportation (bus and train). And I am sure you realize that the millions of folks that ride the T each month are taking some cars off the road...can you imagine the Boston road gridlock if we did not have public transportation, like the T?
http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/news_events/?id=23283
I take the Red Line on a daily basis. And I have been riding the T since the 1980s (green line, mostly) on a regular basis. By and large, I have had pleasant rides with some aggravation (like last night) but, all in all, I have been very lucky in my travels. The stations always look clean to me so I am not sure what stations you are visiting.
So I am really not sure why your panties are all in a wad, but you might want to go outside today and play in the snow. It would be good for ya.
Peace.
You must like being treated
Not like you, huh? You do something about it! You bitch about it on the internet! Fight the power!
what the what
I live in Vermont where public transportation is like a unicorn (or at least like a siberian tiger). We barely have any. Can the people b*tching about the T please stop. Until you live in a rural state where public transportation doesn't exist and it costs f***ing $30 to go ANYWHERE, please quit it. just. stop.
Leave Pete Bouchard alone!
Apparently, people keep pestering him about the word "bombogenesis." He snapped this evening:
Last helicopter out of Saigon
Well done, Sir!
I've consumed as told
now I'm adding to the ratings of Ch. 5 and living in fear, as I was told to do.
The OLYMPICS will make better
Speeding, reliable trolleys and trains are forthcoming!
Heavy Pedestrian Traffic On The Longfellow Bridge
The Kendall/MIT Ⓣ station was completely jammed with people, including the staircase leading down from Main Street. I knew enough not to even bother with the Red Line, and decided to walk over to Bowdoin instead.
Lots of other people had the same idea, as the Longfellow bridge had heavy pedestrian traffic going in both directions. Although it was a cold and windy walk, I was glad not to be one of the passengers trapped in the train stalled on the middle of the bridge. By the time I got to Boston, it hadn't moved an inch.
Luckily, the Blue Line was running just fine!
I was in the first wave over the Bridge...
Left Kendall as the platform filled to capacity with no train in sight around 5:15pm. Made it to South Station in about 40 minutes and snagged my 6:15pm commuter rail train home. Not too bad, at that point, but by the time I arrived at SS, the wind started to whip.
A new world record?
It snowed for maybe 4 seconds before everything turned to shit.
The rush would have been less hectic...
If Charlie Baker had done a state of emergency thing earlier.
I don't know; seems a little early to pass judgment
on the rookie Governor's performance on his first crisis. Right-wing blogs criticized Patrick for being too aggressive with emergency measures in past storms because it restricted our freee-dum, or some such nonsense. I don't agree with him on all the policy ideas he advanced in his campaign, but I suspect this set of problems is the sort of thing he's well-equipped to tackle. Ask me again on Friday.
One thing I'll give Charlie: I respect his choice of suit-and-tie uniform for the bunker. I liked Patrick, but always thought the MEMA vest was a hokey bit of theater.
I doubt it
Most places and most people were intent on finishing their workday. For many, that time is 4:30 to 6:00. There was no justification for having people go home earlier than that, given that most will have a day off or work from home tomorrow.
We were told that the office would close at 5:30, but we should probably leave before 5. Not everyone has that kind of control of their time.
Dylan Dreyer is back
Dylan is back in Boston for this storm. She just did a report for All In on MSNBC driving around in a car somewhere around here. I miss her on 7.
Her Forecasts Didn't Always Live Up To Her Name
Is it me?
Why is everyone in that Park St platform photo dressed like it is 70 degrees out?
.
Excellent point!
Stock photo?
Click on the link....
If you click on the link above the photo, you'll see the picture that was posted - definitely shows people dressed for winter. Must have been a mix-up in selecting the photo to post.
Because They've Been Waiting For A Train Since July?
Oops, sorry about that!
You guys are right: It was the wrong photo, from an earlier Red Line collapse. I've swapped in the actual photo from tonight.
it's ok
So many photos of fail.
Minor details
But I think that's Kendall. And holy crap I'm glad I left work at 4:30.
I love reading the NWS
I love reading the NWS forecast discussions. They're always professional and full of meteorological mumbo-jumbo talk, but once in a while they get super excited and then you get gems like "HERE WE GO" and "ITS BOMBOGENESIS BABY". Glad someone else took note.
Here in the metro suburbs the roads are not being plowed - presumably because it's futile and to encourage people to get off the roads. But - snow tires for the win.
Wait...
…so it wasn't just lies when, during my hour and a half ride from Downtown to Alewife, they said it was a) a police action b) a dead train at Alewife c) a dead train at Alewife AND a dead train at Park and d) a switch problem at Harvard? That seemed like too many excuses for them all to be true at once. On the other hand… MBTA.
Whole Foods Charles River Plaza
CVS opened when I checked at 9 and Whole Foods posted it will be (or at least attempt) opened at noon.
So glad I fled from my office
So glad I fled from my office early before the Red Line called it quits. Close call! *phew*
UPDATE, 5:50 p.m. The Red
Should we change the name to Maginot Line?
Thursday morning ultimate disaster
Anyone have anything to say about the ultimate commute disaster. Feel free to rationalize it to death!!