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Posting slowdown
Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been pretty busy, and there has been a lot to deal with.
One thing that's kind of interesting is that the T has finally - wait, I need to explain first. If you don't read my Charlie On the Commuter Rail blog (and why should you, if you don't ride the T?) you might need a little set-up.
Basically ridership skyrocketed on the commuter rail over the past month or so. Some time during that month, the T cut the train down from six single-level coaches to five. The situation got so bad that people were being jammed into the vestibules of the trains: the areas between coaches, where passengers are NOT supposed to ride. Apparently they're crumple zones.
This was happening every day, and on average there were 12-14 people jammed into the vestibules alone. The aisles in the coaches were likewise jammed. I estimated that there were approximately 200 standees per train, every day.
Since standees are by far more likely to be seriously injured or killed in the event of an accident, a lot of us standees were pretty outraged.
I've mentioned all this this here before, of course.
Anyway, I wrote to the Governor and got a response within 24 hours - and it was a fairly responsive response, too. They made no promises, though, so I decided that I'd continue pushing the issue until something was actually done. So last Friday I brought my camera to take some decent-quality video of the overcrowding situation.
I got a shock when the train pulled up: it was five coaches, all right, but four of them were double-level coaches! I figured it was a fluke, so I brought the camera again on Monday, Sure enough, there were four double-level coaches again. I was even able to get a seat after the Dedham stop, which is much earlier than usual.
I got an email from the MBCR that day. They told me that the train had been "returned" to it's proper capacity. This puzzled me, since it had never BEEN a double-coach train in my experience, and it had never had that capacity. But nonetheless, the Franklin #715 train has continued in the same configuration all week: four double-level coaches and one single-level coach. On Tuesday I actually got a seat when I got on at Ruggles. Nobody rode in the vestibules, and only a few people were standing.
I'm sure that my agitating played only a small role at most in getting an adequate amount of seating put on that run. Odds are that the real reason for the change was that the conductors hadn't been able to collect a penny in fares for weeks. But it's nice to think that my work might have helped make a difference, and made a lot of people a bit safer and more comfortable.
One thing that's kind of interesting is that the T has finally - wait, I need to explain first. If you don't read my Charlie On the Commuter Rail blog (and why should you, if you don't ride the T?) you might need a little set-up.
Basically ridership skyrocketed on the commuter rail over the past month or so. Some time during that month, the T cut the train down from six single-level coaches to five. The situation got so bad that people were being jammed into the vestibules of the trains: the areas between coaches, where passengers are NOT supposed to ride. Apparently they're crumple zones.
This was happening every day, and on average there were 12-14 people jammed into the vestibules alone. The aisles in the coaches were likewise jammed. I estimated that there were approximately 200 standees per train, every day.
Since standees are by far more likely to be seriously injured or killed in the event of an accident, a lot of us standees were pretty outraged.
I've mentioned all this this here before, of course.
Anyway, I wrote to the Governor and got a response within 24 hours - and it was a fairly responsive response, too. They made no promises, though, so I decided that I'd continue pushing the issue until something was actually done. So last Friday I brought my camera to take some decent-quality video of the overcrowding situation.
I got a shock when the train pulled up: it was five coaches, all right, but four of them were double-level coaches! I figured it was a fluke, so I brought the camera again on Monday, Sure enough, there were four double-level coaches again. I was even able to get a seat after the Dedham stop, which is much earlier than usual.
I got an email from the MBCR that day. They told me that the train had been "returned" to it's proper capacity. This puzzled me, since it had never BEEN a double-coach train in my experience, and it had never had that capacity. But nonetheless, the Franklin #715 train has continued in the same configuration all week: four double-level coaches and one single-level coach. On Tuesday I actually got a seat when I got on at Ruggles. Nobody rode in the vestibules, and only a few people were standing.
I'm sure that my agitating played only a small role at most in getting an adequate amount of seating put on that run. Odds are that the real reason for the change was that the conductors hadn't been able to collect a penny in fares for weeks. But it's nice to think that my work might have helped make a difference, and made a lot of people a bit safer and more comfortable.