MBTA Red Line Moment

I can put up with just about anything on the T. For starters, the people who hang by the door when people are trying to get in or out, even when they are obviously in the way.

Or people who talk loudly on the phone incessantly, like the guy yesterday morning who turned his face into the door (yes, he was also hanging out in the doorway) and still managed to share his moronic business call with the entire car.

I've even learned to accept all the commuter with their backpacks, the young and old alike, who don't seem to get that that big honking backpack 1) takes up just as much vertical room as another person, and 2) whenever they make the slightest move the backpack swings proportionately more. Think pendulum.

Yes, I can even, God love them, accept the people who sneeze, cough, or whatever into their hands, then grab the overhead bar--with the hand they just expelled bodily fluid into.

The one thing I cannot tolerate, though--the one thing that's fingernails on a chalkboard to me--are the people with the headphones who have their music on so loud, you can still hear this tinny tune going on. It's like a listening to a dripping faucet. Which is exactly what I finally told the guy this morning on the Red Line who was standing next to me. He was wearing full-size headphones, no less, and you could still hear this tinky, tinky, tinky thing going on.

I tapped his bag. Hey man, can you turn your music down a bit. It's like listening to a leaky faucet.

He did, but he didn't seem too happy about it.

MBTA hits a home run with Big Red cars on the Red Line

Man, is it true? Is the T really starting to use its collective noodle? Actually opening the eyes for a little visionary thinking?

I got on the Red Line yesterday at DTX after work and almost fell over. Fell over because the car wasn't crammed with people who propped me up. There was space to stand and move around. I didn't have some dope's backpack whacking me in the back because the idiot is too clueless to realize that every time he moves his backpack whips around like a lizard's tail. That's because it was one of the T's experimental Big Red cars--Red Line cars without seats.

The T is experimenting with running two cars without seats in the middle of a train. To me, this is pure heaven. I pretty much stand on the train anyway. I'm fit and healthy and choose to give the seats to people who need them, like the elderly, pregnant woman, and people who generally look like they could use taking a load off their feet. And yeah, it makes my teeth grind to watch young or fit people elbow and hip check people out of their way to get their precious seat. Bunch of fat asses. It's just the way I was raised, and yeah, I open doors for women, too. Call me old-fashioned.

And I don't want to be crammed, butt-cheek to jowl, with people whose ankles buckle from the sheer weight of the pachyderm-like body types.

Yeah, it's nice to sit down for the ride when it's not crowded, open a magazine, read, like I did on this morning's commute. But it's a subway, not a luxury liner. I'm getting on to get someplace. There aren't enough seats for everyone, and I'm fine with that. The T might want to think about a 50/50 split in the cars, opening up the space a bit, but still leaving seats for the people who really need them.

Nice going, MBTA. Keep the ideas coming. Not everyone's gonna like this, but you can't please everyone.

The T is looking for feedback here.

Floored by the MBTA's "courtesy campaign"

I'm still floored that the MBTA launched a "courtesy campaign" of really lame, amateurish posters chiding people to be polite on the T. I know the headlines were written in-house at the T, presumably to save money, but listen, the T should stick to public transportation and not mass communication. It has enough trouble doing what it's supposed to know how to do.

I mean, for some people, is it really that hard to be polite? To know when they're being boorish? You know, I think there are some people who are completely clueless, so self-centered that they have no perception of the outside world, or at least how they're being perceived.

It's not that hard. There are simple rules:

Get the fuck out of the way. I mean, you, the guy on the Red Line inbound this morning in the snappy running suit standing by the door and reading your book. Lots of people stand in the door and seem a bit unsettled when the doors open and people try to get past them. Haven't you heard the announcements time and time again to get away from the door, step in the car, let people through? Oh, I get it. Those announcements don't apply to you. The big space by the door made by the rest of us was so you had some place to stand.

And in the same vein, on the platform, stop wandering around like a cow that got loose from the pasture. This is a public transportation system. Do you see all of these people walking fast around you?--they're trying to get somewhere. Jobs. Doctor appointments. Some place important. You just sort of walking aimlessly like you're in your apartment on a rainy Saturday only annoys people and makes their lives just a little harder.

And you, one of the gazillion students or the guy who's dressed to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in your trekking pants, hiking boots, and snappy North Face jacket, take off the backpack when you get on the train and put it by your side or on the floor. That hump on your back takes up the same space an upright person would take up, and every time you turn or make a move that thing swings around and hits people. Yeah, it's comfortable for you. It's about you...you...isn't it?

Mommy and daddy with your little, precious bundle of joy, leave your SUV baby carriage at home. There are small, lightweight, collapsible strollers with handles shaped like umbrella handles for commuting. The other day there was a woman with a child on the Red Line sitting in a seat with the child in a huge stroller in front of her, taking up the space in front of two seats. She and her caravan, in essence, were taking up the space meant for six people. At rush hour!

Do we really have to talk about cell phones? Sigh. I guess we do. Like the guy today sitting right in front of me, leaning forward in his seat like he was sitting on the hopper taking a dump, talking, talking, talking...not only were you encroaching in my space--do you know what it's like to have to stand further back and reach over you for that overhead handrail?--but your loud, long-winded conversation in Chinese no less was so loud I heard it through my iPod.

Don't push for the door. You're not the only one getting out at Downtown Crossing or South Station. Half the effing train is. Let someone go ahead of you. Take turns. I know that's hard for a lot of people raised in the Northeast to do, but for those of us who were raised in the rest of the country, we understand there's no prize for getting out first.

An MBTA Red Line moment

Coming home after dinner in the North End with my 20-year-old daughter, we were riding the Red Line. A real South Shore townie was further up in the car--excuse me, the cahr--talking loudly on a cell phone.

Suddenly, the rest of the passengers were riveted as the guy said in the most surprised voice, "You need a rubber for a blow job?"

Of course, he pronounced it rubba...

Little peeps on the Red Line

Heading into work today on the Red Line, just standing there as always just letting the Pod go down a playlist. Got to the afore-posted song, Goodbye. Such a good song, but so hard to listen to, about suicide. But it's a good song that knows what it's doing, and you can't be afraid to go there, to go where a song takes you.

And that's what I was doing.

Then we pull into Andrew and above the song ...wtf? ... the train swells with little peeps ... a school or something and they do make noises just like little peeps. One big racket. Their life and their voices and just their presence made all the difference.

Fire shuts down Park Street and Downtown Crossing

An electrical fire in a subway tunnel shut down Park Street and Downtown Crossing stations today at rush hour. Not a big deal. Fire trucks and ambulances all over the place. Lots of people milling around, not knowing where to go or what to do. I normally get on at Downtown Crossing and a guy at the station told me to go to Park. I go to Park and a guy told me I could catch a train at South Station. 

Everyone was polite and no one knew what was going on. 

I got over to South Station and go through the turnstiles and a small group of people standing around a guy who I noticed had a T on his sleeve. (All the T employees seemed to be wearing different uniforms today.) Anyway, this guy was a lot more flustered than the others I talked to. He kept saying the station was shut down and we had to go upstairs and grab a shuttle bus to Broadway. 

Grab a bus....where?  

Upstairs. 

Upstairs, where? Geez, there's a whole freakin' city upstairs. 

Where you catch the Number 9 bus. Well, it seemed none of us catches the Number 9 bus, but we still dutifully trudged upstairs and out into what was becoming steady rain. 

I stood first in one spot, until some woman came by yelling to everyone that the shuttle buses were down further. God love the loudmouths in the city sometimes, huh?

I walked farther down, not a bus was in sight, and it was imminently clear that there weren't going to be enough buses for that mob. 

I went inside South Station. There's a bar and I figured I'd get a burger and a beer, and wait for this whole mess to blow over, but once inside the bar I just turned around. I'm in a train station, for God's sake. There has to be a train going where I'm going. 

Once again (I was getting good at this) I looked for a small group of people standing around someone with a T on their shoulder. A man was over by the Amtrak desk, and he knew the train schedules. Yes, there were not one, but two trains heading South. He answered each question calmly and accurately. (I wish I would have gotten his name; he deserves a commendation for this, or at least whatever it is the T uses to reward good service.) 

I bought a ticket and in about ten minutes I was heading home. Of course they didn't collect the ticket on the train. 

This was just a small fire. Not a huge crisis. And the thing I learned is this city is not prepared for any kind of major crisis. But we knew that, right? 

Fleas on the Red Line

Why not start off the new week with a subway story, because that's how so many of do.

Some guy on the Red Line was sitting there, jammed into the seats the way people are on the Red Line. That's the reason I rarely sit on the Red Line; I don't love my fellow humans that much to be cheek by cheek like that.

Anyway, this guy is sitting there right in front of me, leaning over because he can't sit all the way back in the seat for the two people on either side of him, then he starts scratching his head like an old dog. Just going at it. Not just a couple of scratches to get the itch. Nope, this guy is going at it like Bob goes after a flea under his collar.

I was thinking, Whoa there, fella. I was looking for dandruff and gnats and all kinds of stuff to start jumping off the guy. I mean, who does something like this in public??

Loud mouth on the MBTA Red Line

It's the age-old complaint living in the city...some idiot talking (too loudly) on a cell phone.

We all talk on the phone: Hi hon, we're pulling into the station right now....do you want me to pick up anything before coming home?

But there is this thing that we all should be aware of now, and that's talking loud and long...like the dude on the Red Line this morning.

You know who you are, because I stared at you until you noticed. I heard you over the sound of the train and my iPod turned up full, that's how loud you were. Do you have any idea how loud you have to be to drown out the racket of a subway train? And you kept it up. You. The guy in the blue-striped shirt and the khakis (the uniform of every tweaker in this city) and your teeth too big for your mouth.

You had to have a clue, bud, but you just kept talking and talking. I mean, I was glaring at you. Don't know what you were saying because it wasn't English (or Spanish, French, or Italian because I would have been able to deduce a bit of that) but you just kept it up in your tired, monotonous tone.

MBTA morning rant and rave

It's always good and easy to start the blog with an MBTA rant. Not so much a rant, but just observations--observations that I'm sure others have noticed/blogged/ranted about.

The seats on the Red Line...who designed those tiny little seats and then lined up along the wall the car like that? Whoever it was, they weren't thinking about big American butts and shoulders, that's for sure. And for the life of me, I can't understand why people squeeze themselves in those seats. Most of the time I stand, even if there is a seat. It's just too uncomfortable to be jammed in there, not being able to move your arms or cross you legs. A lot of times you see people sitting on the edge of the seat, like they're on the bench at a close basketball game.

The other thing is people who are crazy about getting to and out the door. They're usually sitting, (and it seems I'm standing over them), and the train is pulling into the station. The door is a few feet away, but before the train stops they got to at least stand up and start pushing toward the door, desperate to get out, making the people standing and clinging with outstretched arms to a tiny pole or overhead bar teeter around. Guess what? I know this is gonna come as a big surprise to you, but you're not the only one getting off. And the train isn't going to take off you with still in it. If you're having a tough time getting off, so is everyone else, so that means the train is going to wait.

Gotta love the city.