Robert David Sullivan

Boston’s new slogan: “Don’t sweat it”

Lean into it, Boston.

I know, you’re depressed by two weeks of frostbite temperatures and more than five feet of snow. You’re furious to discover that your public-transportation system is just a movie set, always ready to shine in its scenes with Matt Damon but incapable of getting people to work in bad weather. You’re flabbergasted when you hear the phrase “world-class city,” and you can more easily imagine Death Valley as a suitable spot for the Olympic Games.

But this crisis brings an opportunity.

Boston has a reputation for rudeness, for uptightness, and for excessive punctuality. This winter, God, and the MBTA, are telling us there’s a better way. We don’t have to go on Caribbean cruises to get away from the clock. We can take this once-in-lifetime rebranding opportunity and turn Boston into a city so laidback that San Francisco will go mad with envy.

Forget “the Hub” and “the Athens of America.” Our new slogan will be “You’re in Boston: Don’t Sweat It.”

We can stop worrying about Harvard and MIT graduates skipping town and taking their talents to Austin or Seattle. Imagine if local biotech companies pursued the most promising minds in cancer research by saying, “Your interview is at 11 a.m., but I know you live on the Red Line. So you’ll get here when you get here. Don’t sweat it.” Boston’s Financial District could woo the best and brightest of the Millennial Generation by telling employees, “It would be nice to come in before the stock market opens. But we know that’s not going to happen. Just shove enough people out of the way to get on a train before noon and we’re good.”

Do you have a social obligation you’d rather skip? Don’t sweat it. If a co-worker invites you to her baby shower, stay at home with Netflix. The next time you see her, say you tried to get there but your Orange Line train broke down because of a gum wrapper on the tracks. Tell her about the eight miles you had to walk through dark tunnels (the tinsel on the gum wrapper shorted out the electrical system), dropping bits of your homemade cream-cheese brownies the whole way to keep the rats from crawling up your legs. In another city, your co-worker might respond, “But I didn’t see anything about that on the news.” But in Boston she’ll remember that on the same night, a switching problem resulted in a commuter train crash that killed most of the Red Sox—while they were in the middle of a game in Fenway Park. A dead Orange Line train just isn’t worth a tweet anymore.

Marijuana is going to be legalized in Massachusetts anyway, so let’s do it now. At 4:20 p.m. every day, the entire MBTA can pause while passengers and crew take a mental-health break. Wait, what? You’ve got a plane to catch? You’re late for your shift as an emergency-room nurse? You’re trying to stop a wedding because you’re in love with both the bride and groom? You’re in Boston. Don’t sweat it.

Oh, you’re late for a meeting with the governor? If you can get a signal, call and tell him you’re stuck on the T. That’ll shut him up right quick.

Boston doesn’t yet have the Olympics, but it still has me

After spreading the news about an imminent move to New York, I despaired about what to do with all my possessions and signed a six-month lease to stay in my Boston-area apartment. The rule is not to spend more than two-thirds of your income on rent, right? Or at least not much more than two-thirds. So I’m good until mid February, a marvelous time to go apartment-hunting in various cities of the Northeast.

In the meantime, I’m still blogging about politics at America magazine. (See recent posts on the Wendy Davis “wheelchair ad,” voter ID laws, and the Supreme Court’s punting on gay marriage.) I’m also copy-editing and proofreading for various clients among the boxes in my living room. Should there be a comma somewhere in that sentence?

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has stepped up his efforts to keep me here by making a serious bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, at the risk of inspiring several movies about South Boston mobsters controlling the construction of the Olympic Village. Just about everyone living in Boston is horrified by the thought of the Olympics coming here and leaving more sweat all over the seats on the subway.

Late-night T a tiny step toward a 24-hour Boston

Our expectations for Boston are low enough that the coming of subway service until 3 a.m. on weekends is cause for jubilation. The Globe’s Derrick Z. Jackson says the extended service, set to begin in the spring, gives the MBTA “a chance to be a global player in public transit.” He quotes Rick Dimino, CEO of the Boston civic organization A Better City: “This has got to be part of a focused effort to keep 25- to 35-year-olds here.”

Exactly. It has to be part of a much larger effort to keep the city awake around the clock.

Late night subway service to make bashful return to Boston

The Boston Globe's Shirley Leung reports that the MBTA plans to offer limited post-closing-time service in 2014:

Starting next spring, the T will run all subway trains and the 15 most popular bus routes until 3 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Yes, the T is still cash-strapped, and the state budget remains tight, but Governor Deval Patrick has found about $20 million, along with pledges from corporate sponsors, to launch a one-year pilot program to begin in March or April.

Could this be the camel's nose under the tent for a city notorious for its resistance of 24-hour living? More important, does it offer an opportunity for more drunk dining?

MBTA etiquette not one-size-fits-all

via www.universalhub.com

In general, the "let people off before you board" rule is an excellent one, and it should be extended to all elevators as well. (I'm astonished at how often I'm in an elevator that opens to someone charging into the car with apparently no conception that someone may want to get out.)

But be warned that I don't wait patiently for people to exit if they are:

• Chatting or texting on the phone as they make their way to the door, under the totally mistaken impression that they are doing two things well at once.

• Gathering up the half-dozen shopping bags or suitcases that they spread out as if they were making themselves comfortable for a four-hour Amtrak ride rather than a four-minute subway trip.

• Eating or drinking anything, especially if they take a moment to stuff trash under the seat.

• A group of students or tourists who refuse to step off the train individually, instead waiting until everyone is in position for a Rockettes-style synchronized exit.

If you fall into any of these categories, I may brush past you and even smirk if the doors close before you can get out.

 

Sorry, Bruins fans, but the MBTA really can't plan for once-in-a-lifetime crowds

One of the most frustrating dilemmas for mass transit advocates is that many (most?) people are exposed to subways and buses only during the worst conditions imaginable.

So there was plenty of bitching about MBTA service on Saturday, when hundreds of thousands of people came to downtown Boston for the Bruins victory parade. The T told the Boston Globe that a record 120,000 people took the commuter rail on Saturday, or almost double the ridership on a typical weekday. And there were plenty of horror stories about crowds stranded on station platforms while packed trains zipped by without stopping on their way into the city.

Is this really a surprise? I imagine a lot of suburbanites are asking, "How do people put up with this every day?", just as they do after New Year's Eve, the Fourth of July, and blizzards that force "drill, baby, drill" SUV owners onto noisy, smelly buses and trains. Some of them may be angry enough to demand cuts in public transit funding on the grounds that there's no point in throwing good money after bad.

Well, we true urbanites don't put up with this every day, and we stay the hell away from the T (or Boston altogether) when the bridge-and-tunnel crowds invade the Hub for a few hours. We know that it's impossible for any public transit system to double its capacity for one day. We also know that no public transit system can or should maintain staff and equipment levels to meet once-in-a-lifetime crowds. Indeed, if a subway system doesn't have crowded trains during rush hour — so packed that lots of people have to let a train or two go by before they can fit on one — it's surely wasting money.

I enjoy luxurious subway service, with short waits and plenty of seats, because I generally travel outside of rush hour. (There are occasional glitches with disabled trains and "signal problems," but they occur most often when unusually large crowds tax the system.) Same thing with popular restaurants: I tend to go on weeknights, when the service is better than on Friday and Saturday nights. Thanks, people who come into the city on weekends, for subsidizing the other nights when these restaurants are bearable!

As for the people injured on an escalator at Back Bay Station: That was terrible and shouldn't have happened. But next time you might consider not getting on an escalator that's overloaded with people who just swarmed off a crowded train. You could take the stairs or even hang back for a minute or two to let the crowd disperse before trying to get out of the station. Believe it or not, those of us who use the T every day are not trampled on a regular basis.

Winthrop heads Top 10 in usage of MBTA's "The Ride" program

At Universal Hub, John A. Keith alerts us to the arrival of the MBTA's "Blue Book," which contains data on ridership for all of the T's stations and services.

What caught my eye was the section on The RIDE, which is a door-to-door van service for the elderly and disabled. Costs for the program are soaring with increased usage, and the Boston Globe recently reported that the RIDE eats up almost 10 percent of the T's budget while accounting for less than 1 percent of all service. (Disclosure: My parents in Malden, who can no longer drive a car, use the RIDE and are generally very happy with it.)

I was curious about which communities depend most on the RIDE, so I compared the Blue Book data to the latest Census population figures to come up with a per-capita measure. The top 10 cities and towns are listed below.

Winthrop isn't a huge surprise at No. 1, since it's a small peninsular town with no train service. I wonder whether a regularly scheduled (and publicized) shuttle service to get people on and off the finger of land would take some pressure off the RIDE, which is a taxi-like appointment service. Of course, the RIDE might also become more efficient as more of its users become adept with smartphones and can schedule needed trips with a few keystrokes instead of calling the T a day in advance. (I don't see any RIDE apps on the T's website yet.)

Sacre Bleu Line!

Note: I first ran this post in Spring 2007 on a now-defunct blog. I'm pleasantly surprised that it's still accurate. But I'm as confused as ever. See additions at bottom.

The MBTA's new Web site is in 15 different languages, but the translations, at least in French, are a bit too literal. I don't get why the station names are translated at all, since a French speaker who reads that "Coin de champs" is the closest station to where he wants to go would be better off knowing that all the signs at that station say "Fields Corner." And he would be better off asking a Bostonian "Does thees train go to Feeelds Cornair?" than saying the name of the station in French.

Here are some of my favorite stops:

BLUE LINE
Le Suffolk avale la station (Suffolk Downs, or "The Suffolk Swallows the Station"). Run for your lives!
Vénérez la station de plage (Revere Beach, or "Venerate the Beach's Station!"). The MBTA, naturally, prefers the imperative tense.
Station non-conformiste (Maverick). It spits on your bourgeois Charlie Cards.

UPDATE: I should have also mentioned Station du pays des merveilles (Wonderland) just because the French version leads to greater disappointment if you get off the train there.

GREEN LINE
Station de prudence (Prudential Center, or "Caution Station").
En arrière de la station de colline (Back of the Hill, or "The Back of the Station Called 'Hill'").

UPDATE: Note that the Heath Street stop on the E Line, which would seem pretty simple for a French speaker to remember, is translated to Station de rue de bruyère, which may make one wonder whether it's named after this guy.

RED LINE
Station carrée de bagagiste (Porter Square, or "Person Who Carries Bags Square").
Station de maître d'hôtel (Butler Street, or "Butler Whose Name Is Probably Not Butler Station")*

*Marilyn Monroe warned about this possible confusion in All About Eve:

[a butler passes by]
Miss Claudia Caswell: Oh, waiter!
Addison DeWitt: That is not a waiter, my dear, that is a butler.
Miss Claudia Caswell: Well, I can't yell "Oh butler!" can I? Maybe somebody's name is Butler.
Addison DeWitt: You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.

UPDATE: There have been a couple of changes since 2007. The Orange Line, which was kind of boring, now has Station de centre médical de touffes (Tufts Medical Center, needlessly translated to "Clumps of Grass Medical Center.") And the new Silver Line bus route can bring you to the Centre de conception (Design Center, which is actually an accurate translation but could sound racy to English ears, thanks to a partial faux ami.)

Suburbanites show lack of gratitude for commuter rail line

Seems kind of pointless to blog today about anything other than the election (which everyone is sick of, but you can see my snarky tweets here) or the World Series (which I know nothing about), but here's an item about a very expensive commuter rail in south suburban Boston that isn't exactly on fire. From the Boston Globe's Eric Moskowitz:

SCITUATE — Three years after the Greenbush train made its inaugural run, ridership on the $534 million commuter rail extension is far below the MBTA’s projections, and those who do take it are more likely to be former passengers of the T’s own commuter boats than motorists lured away from the South Shore’s congested highways.

Last week, according to the T, an average of 2,133 weekday customers rode the line toward Boston, about half the 4,200 riders the transit agency had expected within three to five years of opening Greenbush. Even more sobering for the T is the fact that ridership in each month from October 2009 to June 2010 — the most recent month for which complete statistics are available — had dropped below the levels in the same month a year earlier.

I'm a big mass-transit supporter, but the lack of return on the Greenbush line is especially disappointing given all the lower-income cities and neighborhoods (much of Dorchester, Chelsea, Lynn, etc.) that could have much better public transit and would be delighted to use it. (See my post on "The Gentrification of Mass Transit.")

But, of course, high-income suburbs have higher voter turnout than urban areas, so legislators are more interested in pleasing them. Which means that this is an election-related post after all.

Sacre Bleu Line!

The MBTA's new Web site is in 15 different languages, but the translations, at least in French, are a bit too literal. (Go to Charlie on the MBTA for good gripes about all things T-related.) I don't get why the station names are translated at all, since a French speaker who reads that "Coin de champs" is the closest station to where he wants to go would be better off knowing that all the signs at that station say "Fields Corner." And he would be better off asking a Bostonian "Does thees train go to Feeelds Cornair?" than saying the name of the station in French. Here are some of my favorite stops:

BLUE LINE

Le Suffolk avale la station (Suffolk Downs, or The Suffolk Swallows the Station). Run for your lives!

Vénérez la station de plage (Revere Beach, or Venerate the Beach's Station!). The MBTA, naturally, prefers the imperative tense.

Station non-conformiste (Maverick). It spits on your bourgeois Charlie Cards.

GREEN LINE

Station de prudence (Prudential Center, or Caution Station).

En arrière de la station de colline (Back of the Hill, or The Back of the Station Called "Hill").

RED LINE

Station carrée de bagagiste (Porter Square, or Person Who Carries Bags Square).

Station de maître d'hôtel (Butler Street, or Butler Whose Name Is Probably Not Butler Station)*

*Marilyn Monroe warned about this possible confusion in "All About Eve":

[a butler passes by] Miss Claudia Caswell: Oh, waiter! Addison DeWitt: That is not a waiter, my dear, that is a butler. Miss Claudia Caswell: Well, I can't yell "Oh butler!" can I? Maybe somebody's name is Butler. Addison DeWitt: You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.

Labels: Boston, French, language, MBTA

Better living through public transit

The MBTA's computerized Charlie Card is another way that America's favorite transit authority is helping to rid Bostonians of bad habits. As I was reminded today, an unlimited-ride Charlie Card will not work at a subway stop if it has been used at the same stop less than 20 minutes earlier. So if you're standing on a subway platform and you suddenly remember that you just left your cell phone in a restaurant — or an embarrassing document in a printer at work, or your footprints in the yard of a house you've just burgled — it's going to cost you $2 to fix matters and get back into the subway without falling behind on your schedule. That will teach you to go through life without carefully patting your pockets and racking your brain every time you walk outside.

Other T tools for life include strategically stopped escalators that force you to get a bit more exercise; erroneous station announcements to teach you the value of being more aware of your surroundings; and T personnel who no longer sit in token-vending booths but instead mingle throughout the rush-hour crowds, which sharpens your skills at playing "Where's Waldo?" Today I also rode on one of the rehabbed Red Line trains, in which hard vinyl seats have been replaced by seat with about an eighth of an inch of upholstery. This fabric could be more comfortable than the old material only if you are riding the subway bare-assed. Anything to attack Boston's prudishness is laudable, but I would prefer cage dancers in the now-abandoned token booths.

Not-so-good-time Charlie

My "permanent" MBTA pass suddenly stopped working yesterday morning, just shy of two months after I got it. The HR person at my company said he'd get a replacement, but in the meantime I'd have to pay individual fares as if I were a daytripper from the suburbs. This was intolerable, so last night and this morning I played dumb and kept waving my now-useless card in front of the turnstiles, making a lot of noise (rejected cards produce a loud EH-EH!) and getting in other commuters' way until a T "ambassador" opened a gate for me. Thanks, MBTA, for making me a liar and cheat so that I don't have to pay for rides that I really already paid for.