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7 not so lucky for South Boston commuters
By adamg on Tue, 12/06/2022 - 10:01am
Andrew McCourt shows us the line for a 7 bus in South Boston around 8:30 a.m. He had some time to ponder the situation:
Can someone at the T help #7 riders understand why morning commuters have to constantly deal with this absurdity? You’re failing us.
McCourt later learned there might have been some sort of accident downtown that jammed things up this morning, but adds long lines are nothing new for 7 riders: "It's been bad on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays," he says.
Paul Chartier reports on the condition at L and Broadway around 8:10 a.m.
Three 7 buses just came to L and Broadway, and all 3 were completely full. The line was 67 ppl when I got here at 8:10. Another 40 have gotten in line behind me.
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Comments
MBTA
This nonsense has been going on for years. It predates COVID. There has been meeting after meeting on this and this is still a common occurrence.
There's no excuse for it.
The 111 in Chelsea has been
The 111 in Chelsea has been like this for decades and they never seem to figure out how to make things better at the MBTA. At least this is a nice orderly line, the 111 when it comes to Haymarket is a recipe for disaster and it's always a huge mass of people. I've begged the MBTA over the years, as have others, to institute a line area and ensure the drivers stop at the same spots every time. I haven't been on it for a while but I sometimes could tell the drivers purposefully picked random places to stop just to watch the crowd react and push to get on.
It's back!
This was a frequent occurence/complaint pre-covid. The T's data shows ridership on the 7 at just 51% of pre-covid, so this is probably because there is a lot less service: before covid, the T ran 18 uses per hour between 7 and 9 a.m., now it's 10.
So ridership is down by 50%, but so are the buses, hence the lines. (I wonder if ridership might be higher, too.)
Also assumes the scheduled trips all ran...
https://www.pantographapp.com/newengland/missed
Even the reduced schedules are still above what the T seems able to actually operate these days. Fun when scheduled headways may be twice as long as pre-Covid, and then you mix in the dropped trips on top of that. The route I live near seems to be reliably missing at least one operator shift each morning (which amounts to at least one round trip per hour being dropped). Every day...
My favorite website
The 7 seems do be doing pretty well on missed trips, in the past few days it has run 96 to 97% of trips (one day was 92%) and that might include some trips where the bus didn't track appropriately.
They've already cut back a bunch of trips and are not leaving enough time in between trips to maintain schedule, so buses are often running late and may be dropping trips by pushing the actual trip back from where it should be. Bunching > dropped trips.
The blocking for the 7 is kind of crazy: 7 buses on the route at rush hour (and I think it was like 13 pre-pandemic) and just one during the midday running just every 45 minutes.
A little patience
Now that the millionaire tax has been approved by voters this will all go away shortly.
/s
Amateurs
If you see 67 people in line at L and Broadway and are able-bodied, you're probably going to be better-off walking to the City Point bus terminal or to World Trade Center station for the Silver Line.
That's not an excuse for the daily failapalooza which is the T, but as others have pointed out, this is nothing new for the 7 or the 111.
Such a pleasant walk, too
I guess it's better than the walk from Chelsea.
I've done that walk a bunch of times
It's not any worse than walking from Charlestown to Haymarket or from the South End to downtown via Washington or Harrison. Construction happens.
South Boston commuters
Retired now but was a Number 7 rider in the past. Walking to South Station will save you the fare, provide you with exercise and give you a good self-sufficient attitude!
That building on the right is
That building on the right is the house of horrors.
Deja Vu
Except for the panorama shot (Nice one Andrew!) these pictures look exactly the same as the last time this was reported on here. Absolutely nothing seems to have been done since then.