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President, Lady Gaga cause T tumult
By adamg on Tue, 03/08/2011 - 8:12pm
President enters the Fenway. Photo by Jeff Tamagini.
The Red, Green and Blue lines all experienced delays this evening as the presidential motorcade passed over or under them.
The placid Orange Line remained stolidly unaffected by Motorcade One, but Nay and Steven Leibowitz report the T held an inbound train at Back Bay when a panicked Little Monster reported a lost ticket to the Egg Lady's concert at the Garden. A passenger found the ticket, the kid was reunited with it and the train resumed service.
Photo copyright Jeff Tamagini. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
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Comments
I was on the Gaga train....
...I don't think we were stopped much more than 2 minutes (if that) -- everyone around me was amused (or charmed) by the incident.
Me too
The announcement said that "A small child has lost her ticket to tonight's Lady Gaga concert" and asked us to look around so we did. Once it was announced that the ticket had been found, our conversation centered on the wisdom of taking a "small child" to a Lady Gaga event and letting her hold her own ticket.
I can't imagine....
...taking a child to a Lady Gaga concert. So the issue of letting the kid hold such a ticket would never arise.
In any event, my wife only hands out tickets to me and our (20+ year old) kids right before they need to be used.
why would the motorcade delay the Red or Blue lines?
I could see it delaying the Green Line if it crossed paths on the surface, but it's entirely grade-separated from any part of the Red or Blue lines.
Fields Corner
You wouldn't want a train falling on the president as he crossed under the Red Line (note: I have absolutely no idea if he actually went through Fields Corner).
You don't want a train falling on anybody
So either run a safe one or don't run it at all.
Boom
If you were a super-genius evil mastermind, you could time a bomb to go off in the train at the exact same time that the President was on the street above you.
If you were a super-genius
If you were a super-genius evil mastermind, you wouldn't be relying on the MBTA to be on time though.
I once heard (anecdotally, from a friend in Treasury), that the US spends more on the PPD than all other leaders' countries from the UN General Assembly spend, combined.
Why?
That, truly, is the Kennedy legacy.
You'd have to be quite a genius indeed
Since they don't (obviously) publicize the route the motorcade will take, they don't take the most direct route (getting from Dorchester to the MFA via Storrow?), and they're always running late but nobody knows exactly how late, if you could figure out where they'd be and when to the point where you could time a bomb on a train, you probably have mental powers powerful enough to blow up Washington, DC, with your brain any time you wanted.
I'm going to go with the more likely explanation: that the MBTA combined a little "wanting to show the Secret Service how cooperative and functional it can be" with a healthy dose of "not caring to show its passengers the same thing".
riggism is right
No one is good enough at math to figure out when the T will be at a certain place at a certain time.
Remember Spencer for Hire?
I saw the episode where they happened to find a *perfect* spot on Charles St. right outside the restaurant they wanted to go to.
Right. Odds of that are ... what?
(what really WAS quite Boston was that Spencer's car was rigged with a bomb, that went off when another car parked by braille ...)
Orange Line back to old tricks this morning
Dead train, not Lady Gaga, means delays inbound between North Station and Downtown Crossing.
Was on a Lechmere train that
was told to re-route at Government Center. However, after we were all forced to exit, the dispatcher changed their mind and we re-boarded the train and went on our way.
This unnecessary indecision on the part of the dispatcher (after all, there is a turnback at North Station which is underground and use of which has no security implications for the motorcade) caused a number of us to miss commuter rail connections.
And the other poster is absolutely correct. There was no legitimate reason whatsoever to delay Blue Line service. Especailly as the purpose of the motorcade was to get Mr. Prez to a private fundraising event.
Guess we have to chock it up to that "stellar customer service" the T is professing is so important.
Nothing new.
That happens all the time. I can't tell you how many times I was late for work at the CambridgeSide Galleria because my Lechmere train (which I would board at Brigham Circle) ended up terminating at Gov't Center or North Sta. with no hope or backup in sight.
What time of day do you take trains to Lechmere?
I normally get Lechmere or North Station trains at Arlington or Boylston between 5:15 and 5:30. Last night's incident was only the second time I can recall in recent memory (the past 12 months) that the dispatcher wanted to re-route the Lechmere train I was on at Government Center or North Station.
It is also the only time I can ever recall (in 30+ years of riding the Green Line) of a dispatcher directing an operator to re-route their train and then immediately countermanding that order after the train had already been unloaded.
Now, inbound trains from BC and Riverside cars are looped at Park Street and Government Center on a regular basis, and it is not uncommon for inbound trains from Cleveland Circle to be regularly looped at Government Center as well.
It was normally during rush
It was normally during rush hour (5-6). Would happen on avg 1-2 times per week.
They would do the "just kidding, everyone back on" once every few weeks. Usually they just left us stranded. This was all through 2009.
Thanks for the clarification.
As we've both been riding the Green Line in approximately the same time frame every afternoon, it sounds like either you've had extremely poor luck, or I've had extremely good luck. Or perhaps a combination of both.
It's all about luck with the
It's all about luck with the Green Line. No matter how early you leave your apartment, you always arrive either 5 minutes early or 10 minutes late. Luckily, I had veteran status at that store and my managers really didn't care. I ended up transferring to Faneuil Hall because the commute was sucking so much. Now it doesn't matter where the route gets cut short because I get off at Gov't Center.
Just when you think you've heard every T alert message before...
I heard: "Attention passengers: we are experiencing 5 to 10 minute delays on the Red Line due to the presidential motorcade."
I'm in town for a few days
I'm in town for a few days and heard that message on the Red Line about the delays for the motorcade....and was completely dumbfounded.
As someone who's moved to DC, I've never been on a Metro that's stopped for a motorcade. In traffic, in my car, yes. Below ground, no.
They stopped the Red Line
They stopped the Red Line because the motorcade was crossing under the longfellow bridge right where the redline pops up above ground to cross the Charles. The metro in DC is so far underground it's not a problem
So far underground...
Damn hipster metro...
Imagine
the outcry in here had this been Bush or Cheney.
He never would have been
He never would have been coming to support education or technology in the first place.
Hello?
Boston Latin
No Child Left Behind
Funny you should mention that
Nothing Obama caused yesterday was anywhere near as bad as the 31-mile backup Cheney caused when he chose to travel from Hanscom to a fundraiser in Hopkinton in a motorcade down 128 at rush hour.
I was looking at the traffic
I was looking at the traffic maps while the WTF Road Show was in progress yesterday and almost everything inside 128 was red.
Wasn't it during rush hour?
Wasn't it during rush hour?
Mike's Pastries Incident
I recall quite a bit of frustration expressed at Bill Clinton when his stopping for 200 canolis caused a long closure/backup of Sumner Tunnel traffic. Road rage trumps politics every time.