The faces say it all. Aubrey Bracco captures the mood at Park.
Who knows why the Red Line lurched to a halt and wheezed its last this afternoon? At some point, it just ceased to matter. Riders crammed into stations waiting for trains that wheezed into stations so crammed the crammed riders on the platform could not cram into the crammed trains, which then slowly, ever so slowly crammedly made their way to the next crammed station, where the next futile door openings occurred.
One of the first reports of problems came around 2:45 p.m., when Lillian DeVane sighed from an inbound Braintree train somewhere deep under Mass. Ave. in Cambridge:
Red line train stuck in a tunnel for fucking ever with no announcement
It got no better as rush hour approached and then, being the Red Line, turned into go-nowhere-fast hour. If anything, it got worse, at least for the particularly unlucky. At 5:16 p.m., Jack Cawley retched:
Whomever the person is on this packed redline train with the rancid food, I hope karma finds you.
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Comments
What a fine way to deploy Beckett.
By Chris Rich
Wed, 09/17/2014 - 6:09pm
In honor of the long suffering
http://youtu.be/rNh3m2xp0k8
Nasty ride home
By Ryan0751
Wed, 09/17/2014 - 6:14pm
Super crowded, irritated passengers pushing and yelling, and there was no AC on the car I was on.
Ick.
I'm astonished that the MBTA
By Scratchie
Wed, 09/17/2014 - 6:32pm
I'm astonished that the MBTA didn't even have the courtesy to make an announcement, said nobody ever.
There were several on my
By jmeltzer
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 10:32am
There were several on my train, but (of course) no one could hear them.
Current Boston UberX rates
By Will LaTulippe
Wed, 09/17/2014 - 6:45pm
$2.00 base
$1.20/mile
$0.21/minute
$5 minimum
No rancid food and no stops because somebody else wants to get off or on. Cabs? It's the T that will really lose business to rideshare.
Yes well that doesn't exactly
By Ryan0751
Wed, 09/17/2014 - 9:26pm
Yes well that doesn't exactly scale well for commuters...
Could be offset
By Will LaTulippe
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 1:13am
By working at home 2 or 3 days a week, if applicable. I still suspect that there's far more rush hour commuting in Greater Boston than is essential.
Uber is great
By anon
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 1:47pm
But a one way trip from home to work would cost me about $15, assuming no traffic. Even if I were allowed to work from home part time, couldn't afford to use it as a regular commute.
I do use it occasionally when there are major delays and I don't want to wait.
Downtown to Davis. $2 + 4.5*
By Ari O
Wed, 09/17/2014 - 11:23pm
Downtown to Davis. $2 + 4.5*$1.20 + 20*$0.21 = $11.60. $23 a day if you ride it both ways. Good thing they can zip across the Longfellow.
Now even if you have people sharing the cabs, you're still looking at 800 people every four minutes, say, 200 vehicles, or about one per second. 3000 per hour. That's three lanes of freeway traffic, except there's no freeway to Cambridge and there ones that go near there are gridlocked anyway.
The 1% can take their Uber and Bridj and whatever. The rest of us can ride bikes and hopefully the 1% will pity us enough to pay for some new subway cars in 2019 while they commute in their hover-Bentleys.
(In other words, vote no on Question 1.)
Hahahaha yes, because only
By gotdatwmd
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 9:04am
Hahahaha yes, because only BILLIONARES use Uber.
It competes pretty well with downtown parking prices...
By b from Ros
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 9:12am
Alternative choices can be a good thing. As commuting option's real costs become more transparent, people start to make more rational choices.
Maybe we don't have a freeway in Cambridge but more efficient car use is a certainly a step in the right direction!
It does compete with downtown parking spaces, but...
By lbb
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 11:42am
...it's still more than the average person can afford. $23 times 250 days a year is close to $6000. People don't use the T because they love it, because it's easy or convenient -- they use it because they can afford it.
A picture worth more than 1000 words
By Belmont
Wed, 09/17/2014 - 8:04pm
A collage of pictures like this to show to the Olympic Committee would be most apropos.
See?
By Scratchie
Wed, 09/17/2014 - 11:26pm
Bet y'all wish you had all brought your own chairs now, huh?
Other Train Systems
By anon
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 8:00am
Since I only ride the MBTA I'm curious about other train systems in other cities (not countries). Is ours the worst? Does this happen as frequently in NYC? This is becoming very embarrassing. Or maybe it already is.
I think it would be hard to
By lbb
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 11:44am
I think it would be hard to answer the question without saying what it's worst at. Worst at breakdowns? It seems like it's getting pretty bad. Worst in terms of neighborhoods serviced? Almost certainly not. Worst cost-wise? Definitely not.
Worst?
By anon
Fri, 09/19/2014 - 7:27am
Worst in is the picture above normal for other cities? It seems normal for ours.
Too Few Tracks
By BlackKat
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 8:42am
The next T upgrade, when they finish the green line extension, should be installing more passing spurs on all the lines. Yes, underground construction can be prohibitively expensive. But a few locations where an expanded tunnel or parallel tunnel can provide ways for the T to keep running around a disabled train would be invaluable.
The dead train
By jmeltzer
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 10:30am
was sitting on the "outbound" track at Alewife when I went through there, about 5 PM. What a mess. Isn't there a siding further on down the tunnel?
(agh, hit wrong "reply" ... should have been to the main story, not the above comment)
They did, just took them a while
By anon
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 12:57pm
It was when I went there at 5:05. As my train loaded, they moved the disabled train into the alewife yard. Just took them a while, that's all.
I had to google Godot :-\
By CS
Thu, 09/18/2014 - 3:02pm
I had to google Godot :-\
Give yourself credit
By BikerGeek
Fri, 09/19/2014 - 2:20am
At least you looked it up. That's how people learn stuff.
That's why I put the Samuel Beckett reference in
By Chris Rich
Fri, 09/19/2014 - 5:36am
..at the top of the page.
Adam did a very deft send up of Beckett's writing style to fit the Waiting. theme.
The you tube link is another Beckett play with a similar theme.
And, of course, it is interesting to see if anyone 'gets' it.
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