Where on this platform do I stand?

For a new rider on the commuter rail, one of the most basic questions is “where do I stand” to wait for the train?  There are long areas astride the tracks for boarding and disembarking. The areas typically are long enough to accommodate a maximum-length train of six or maybe even more cars, at eighty-five feet apiece.  That’s more than 500 feet, or well more than a football field — endzones and all.  In other words, it’s a lot of space to cover.  And there is only one of me, the rider.

The question of where on the platform to wait is all the more pressing because the midday trains only open a few doors.  There may be 12 doors to the train but rest assured only two of those doors will open — the doors where the MBCR conductors are located.  The same train generally will follow the same practice … but different trains apparently follow different practices.  Some trains board passengers on the leading cars, while other trains board passengers on the trailing cars.

How can a rider predict where on the platform the train will stop and which doors will open?  The easy answer is that you should stand with the other riders.  But that only works if you are slow to arrive at the station and time the train closely.  As you can see there are no riders in this picture of Mishawum/Woburn station a few minutes prior to the arrival of a Boston-bound train.

How about standing on the elevated platform?  The MBCR and MBTA have made handicap accessibility a priority, so more boarding is conducted from the platform in recent years.  However, clearly not all elevated platforms are in use.  You can see the picture above was taken from an elevated platform that was in a state of disrepair and not the correct choice.  The train did not board from the elevated platform.

In fact, riders boarded on the far end of the Woburn/Mishawum stop, and that only was clear when the usual riders began gathering in that area just moments before the train arrived.  There has to be a better way to help riders who are unfamiliar with a train or a station.

Walk this way to board the train

And it turns out that the MBCR already has the solution, in the form of the sign to the left posted at the Needham Junction station.  Call it obvious (or brilliant) but it is a hurtling leap forward in communications with riders.  Stand where the sign says to go and you will be alright.  Now if we could just get these signs at all of the stations!

Red is fast; blue is not.

Let’s say you live near Porter Square, Cambridge.  From Porter Square, destinations in Cambridge, Somerville, and downtown Boston are close — less than a half-hour by T. Almost by default, practically speaking that becomes the entirety of your city.  You might plan a shopping trip to Harvard Square, a movie at Kendall or Boylston, or you might schedule a bus out of South Station. You’d think carefully before you would put the time into visiting places like Chestnut Hill, Roxbury, or Mattapan — even if you needed to be there — because those all are basically day-long excursions on the T.  The ride one way on the T is at least an hour, including a bunch of connections.  (By contrast, in an hour of driving in a car, you could be at least a state away.)  And places like most of Needham, Westwood, or parts of Dedham?  Fuhgettaboutit.  Two hours or more, on average.

Well, finally we have an interactive graphical representation of what this looks like, on a map.  Software guru Dan Tillberg has done a fabulous job illustrating the world traveling by T, in color.  Using the T service information database posted by developers at MassDOT (kudos to the government folks for posting the extensive dataset), the map shows in red and yellow the places that are relatively close by T (and walking).  The places that are further away are in greens and blues.  Dan’s map is interactive, and it is pictured above.  Click the image to browse through to his site, and check T connectivity of other locations.

Of course, there are some assumptions behind the map that would change the way it looks depending on, for example how far or fast you were willing to walk, and whether you were willing or able to time your trip precisely to meet a particular bus or train.  Transit diagramming is tricky.  And this map probably is something like a best-average case … the dataset of delayed or dropped MBTA routes isn’t presently available and so Dan was left to assume that, for example, the Number 1 bus midday from Harvard St. was right on time.  Even though we all can guess is was late and overcrowded.  That will be another project ….

Kudos to Luke Bornheimer and the “Put the MBTA on Google Maps” Facebook group for influencing the T and Google to make this happen.

[eds. note:  After this was posted, Google adjusted the way that it selects routes; the original post contained another link that now is outdated]

A second express bus pass, with an identical monthly fare! Two passes for the price of one!

Buy one get one free ... oops!

I was confused so I asked the station attendant what the second pass was all about. He said that I must have paid twice, and that the pass was indeed a second monthly ticket to the bus. He recommended that I write the machine number and return the pass to the monthly pass office at a different station, when the office reopened. He figured that I must have paid for the extra pass.

But surprise! Later I confirmed that the second pass was indeed a live monthly ticket and not a receipt — it is accepted by card readers on the express bus — and best of all, my credit card only was charged once — meaning I only paid for one of the two passes! I’ve heard that I’m not the only person who has experienced this “surprise;” I wonder how often the MBTA has done this unannounced two-for-one deal.

I previously had heard of stored value Charlie Cards that erroneously had some special unlimited access for unlimited time, and I’ve had intermittent problems in the past with the fare system. For example, once when the clock struck midnight on the last day of the month my monthly pass for the previous month no longer worked and my monthly pass for the subsequent month was not yet recognized. Stranded at midnight with two monthly passes but no train fare! Imagine.

But a whole free pass — very unexpected. This potentially is an $89 mistake by the T. Mistakes like that add up quickly. The T spent thousands chasing two MIT hackers who had devised some theoretical exploit to ride the T more than they were entitled. And then the T turns around and it prints extra monthly passes for free.

Is there a contractor somewhere that owes the T some money back? I wonder how much money the T has lost through this particular quirk.

In Emergency to Stop Car and Open Doors Pull Lever Down and Push Doors Apart

Ever seen the red levers on the Green Line trains?  Ever wonder what happens when you pull the lever?  The train stops, right then and there.  No matter what it was doing before; 20mph to zero in a flash.

When is the lever supposed to be used?  “In Emergency.”  The T attracts all kinds of folks, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the word “emergency” can mean different things to different riders.  To a regular commuter, “emergency” might mean “life or death situation.”  But how about to a gaggle of tween girls on a shopping expedition without a chaperone?  What might “emergency” mean to them?  Could it mean “accidentally got on the E train outbound to Brigham Circle when we wanted to go to Kenmore?”  If you believed that no one possibly could think that would qualify as an “emergency” enough to pull that lever … you’d be wrong.

MBTA: Where are you going today?

I boarded a Green Line “D” train a few months ago at Longwood station.  The station was in the midst of yet another renovation, and there were several workers around.  One of them handed me a flyer.  Turns out that the MBTA is running a passenger survey.  They wanted to know my origin, destination, mode of payment, and purpose.

There are two more pages to the survey and I’m still not sure what to make of it.  I have to applaud the effort … but to what purpose?  Doesn’t the MBTA collect most of this information at the farebox?  Well, perhaps not.  The T knows who goes into their system and where … but where the passengers go … that is anyone’s guess.

I feel a little guilty for not completing the questionnaire and mailing it in.  The last few lines even ask for grades for the T service on several criteria: reliability, safety, cleanliness, courtesy, announcements, availability of seats, frequency, parking, station amenities, and fare collection.  Maybe I should just send them a link to this blog.

5:58

I love the new digital displays in the commuter rail stations at Back Bay and South Station.  The old, fuzzy, monochrome television displays were due for retirement.  For now the systems display side-by-side. But that creates an unexpected dilemma.  With two displays apparently feeding from two separate computer systems, riders are left with the very basic question of …. what time is it?

5:54

The pictures on the left and right are from two displays side-by-side in Back Bay station.  One reads 5:54 and the other reads 5:58.  Which clock is correct?  I really don’t know!  I know what you’re going to say: maybe it is better not to know the time when you are dealing with the MBTA.  Perhaps, but these trains in particular run with big headways of 30 minutes to 2 hours.  There is a long wait between trains.  If you miss one, you’re in trouble.  It is important to know the time.

And as an aside, the new boards (on the left) have another bizarre feature.  When the time comes for the train to arrive in the station, whether the train is there yet or not the listing falls from the display.  What if the 5:59 train arrives at 6:01?  Tough luck; hope you saw the track number before it fell off the screen.

Green Line at Chestnut Hill station

I recently bought a bicycle.  I decided on Sunday to ride it from Providence to Boston.  Awesome.  After a series of misadventures preparing for the ride — including a 40-minute late MBCR train to my starting destination — I was a little short of daylight, but still optimistic.

So at about 8 p.m., here’s the situation: I’m crossing Route 128 on the Westwood/Dedham border and I know I’ve got only about 15-minutes of daylight left to get where I need to go … but my destination (on the T system) still is about 45 minutes away.  Ideally, I’d go to the nearest MBTA station stop, right?  So which stop to I choose?  West Roxbury Station on the Needham line?  Forest Hills station on the Orange Line?  Chestnut Hill station on the Green Line?  Readville Station on the Franklin Line?  Find a bus?

I go for the familiar, frequent Green Line service, right?  The Needham line doesn’t run on Sunday, parts of the neighborhood around Forest Hills can be tough after dark, and who knows when a bus or a Readville train will come bounding down the tracks.  Right?  Bicycles, carriages, bulky luggage — all the same, right?  Equally welcome.

Wrong! Sunday night isn’t exactly a busy time on at Chestnut Hill station.  The parking lot is empty, and so are the inbound trains.  But don’t take the ample space on the trolleys and lack of posted guidance as indications that you and your bicycle are welcome.  We weren’t.  It doesn’t matter if it’s dark and you have no lights on your bike; if you’re stranded; if you have money burning a hole in your pocket; if the train is completely empty.  All irrelevant.  The only thing that matters is that at some point in the gauzy past some MBTA administrator convinced all of the Green Line drivers that they would be fired if they allowed anyone onto the the trolley with anything resembling a bike.  Ever.

This may be the stupidest MBTA policy yet.  I completely understand that my bicycle takes up space.  On the foolishly slow MBCR train I rode to the start of my bike ride, my bicycle and I occupied four seats (the three bikes on the train occupied six seats total).  Would I object to paying for some of those seats?  Not really; I’d pay, probably a premium, and particularly if it guaranteed me the ability to transport the bike onto the train (apparently you can be denied boarding if more than six bikes are on the train!).  Would I have done the same on the Green line?  Certainly.  I was tired enough I practically would have handed the MBTA my entire wallet.

But they didn’t want my money.  They wanted to run their empty train into Boston instead.

Well, I think I’ve found a far more efficient way to communicate with the MBTA. It’s simple. Here’s what you do: stand in front of whatever happens to be the problem, and take a picture. This morning I took two pictures. Well, in fairness I took about ten, but they were only of two things.

An escalator on the Red Line, unit No. 504, was condemned by an inspector a few weeks ago and it has been out of service ever since. It’s been about three weeks. So I stood at the top of the escalator and I took a picture. And elsewhere on the Red Line, beneath South Station, a message board that ought to be announcing trains has instead been spewing mystifying garbled nothings. As if the MBTA is trying to speak to passengers in some unknown alien language. I took a picture.

Gibberish on a message board at the South Station subway

Apparently nothing focuses the MBTA’s collective mind like the prospect of jpeg-based public humiliation, no matter how mild. Twelve hours later, the message board, although not fixed, was not displaying gibberish. And the escalator was running. That has to be the fastest response time ever! So, in the course of trying to snap a picture of what I assumed was the the MBTA’s language– the gibberish– I inadvertently began communicating well enough to be understood! Did I accidentally speak MBTA-ese?