Trying to improve the T from the outside
Politico profiles two of the main movers behind Transit Matters, which is trying to push the T into becoming a better service.
One Sunday night two years ago, Marc Ebuña and Ari Ofsevit stayed up past 1 a.m. to watch the city’s transit system grind to a pointless halt.
Sitting in their respective apartments, they were monitoring a website that tracks Boston’s rapid-transit trains in real time. “I live-tweeted the late-night ballet, the last-trains ballet,” Ebuña says. Except what they were seeing was more of a citywide muscle spasm than an elegant dance.
The author focuses on them because they're young and so fit the author's conclusion that T improvement is something only Millennials could think of. A third major person behind the group, Jim Aloisi, is dismissed as "the token Baby Boomer," even though he has a bit of transit experience himself - as former secretary of transportation for the entire state.
Ad:
Comments
PULLLEAZE!
Over many decades, every one generation that has moved here from a metro area with a strong public transit system, from NYC to Chicago to SF, is struck by how much the T needs improvement. It's often younger people, but that's just because so many come here for college. I moved here in the late 70s and we were griping back then and never stopped.
But, but, but
Sometimes little changes could help, like the one Adam pulled out of the story. A subtle tweaking of the last trains could make things a lot better.
You've heard the rumors that they are going to restructure the bus lines majorly. The reasoning is that Dallas (or maybe it was Houston) created a brand new bus system from scratch that made the system work better, using less resources and somehow drawing more riders. I'm curious to see how this is going to play out in Boston. My gut feeling is that the buses will stay mostly the same, since most feed in to the hub and spoke system as opposed to the Texas crosstown system. In my neighborhood, I see the 51 being changed and maybe more consolidation of the 40 and 50, but that's about it.
Buses in Houston
Are very different than buses in Boston. (i.e. never full)
So it's Houston then
Thankfully, there is no one to offend by confusing them (and yes, I know they are as different as Los Angeles and San Francisco.)
Yes. This is nothing new
I've only been here a few months and know the T is terrible. It's always important to speak up. However if you have every day and every hour to speak up. Well. There's a problem there.
Need more regionalization
The biggest problem is that our entire system is hub-and-spoke, built under the assumption that its purpose is to bring people in and out of what is considered the core of Boston. We desperately need a system that allows east-west and north-south travel across multiple vertical and horizontal axes.
NYC and Chicago, sure
But SF's transit is pretty shitty, too. Also on that note - its not just transplants who have moved here who know the T sucks - us native Bostonians have been well aware of it for our entire lives.
I know natives also know it
But we transplants know how much better it can be from personal experience.
Sure
Cause, us backwards natives never go to NYC or anywhere else. Also on that note - the MTA is pretty screwed nowadays, too.
As a transplant...
I know it could be a whole lot worse. 90% of the country has nothing anywhere close to Boston for public transportation.
Plans for Improvements we have
Don't be so egocentric, narcissistic, sumg and miso-T-nistic
The various and sundry historical entities running what is today's T have always had Big Plans for improvements -- didn't always work out as planned.
After all, outside of London and Budapest almost all innovations in public transit started here --
in Boston [
]. .
We had electrified trains [West End Street Railway electrified in 1889]*1 while all of your aforementioned cities still had horse drawn trolleys on the streets or coal fired stinking trains suspended in the air.
We had a dedicated line providing a one-eat ride along Atlantic Ave from North to South Stations -- built just in time for the Great Molasses Flood
We had plans for lines running out to a nascent Rt-128 in the 1940's and again in the 1960's when Today's T was finally organized.
But as we all know sometimes the plans don't quite pan-out
1* Power System of Boston's Rapid Transit, 1889
IEEE Boston Section,
Dedication: 10 November 2004
https://ethw.org/Milestones:Power_System_of_Boston's_Rapid_Transit,_1889
The plaque may be viewed by the side of the door (left hand as you are facing it) of the northernmost of the two Park Street T stations at Park and Tremont Streets, 42.356478,-71.062507
2* In a few cases we even had not just plans but operational stuff such as the largest power plant in the world to power the various far flung trolly lines
Michelle Wu does what these transit fanboys do in mere minutes
And she has kids, a husband, and a full-time job. Politico should have done a piece on Wu. Not a barista and an unemployed grad who send tweet storms in the middle of the night
Nice to see a U-Hub regular in other contexts
Hat tip to Ari O.
A hat tip for tweeting and complaining?
What a sad day. My grandma called in a complaint about her bus stop. The T fixed it. Should politico run a story about her?
Yes, they should
Provided she also does the other stuff Transit Matters does beyond tweeting.
oops
they're, not their
been one of those days
Oy, thanks
Fixed.