Charlie Get On the MBTA!

I’m safely ensconced in Van Merc Hill. The trip from the Bronx to Southborough MA took me 8.5 hours door to door. I could have gone to Europe. Emily and I decided that next year we have to find a better way. This was sort of ridiculous.

The leg from Boston South Station to Southborough is deserving of its own rant. Boston built this beautiful transit hub in the heart of downtown. Then they forgot to make it functional. I had to go from the bus terminal to the commuter rail. That’s a common thing to do. There are no signs telling you where to go. I had to ask. I went down an escalator, and then discovered I had to go down another level, this time on an elevator. Then I still wasn’t at the train station. There was a tiny sign pointing to trains. It didn’t lead to the station but to one of the platforms. I then had to walk the length of the platform, outdoors, to get to the train station. Good thing that Boston isn’t in a place that gets cold like Massachusetts. Then once in the train station I saw a food court but no place to buy tickets and no signs pointing to where you buy tickets. I just started walking across the room, squeezing between tables and food stands. I finally saw a sign that said “Tickets,” Too bad that was for Amtrak, not the MBTA commuter rail. Finally, I found two ticket machines. I never found a place to buy it from a person. There was of course a line at the machines, only one of which took cash. The machine on the left had a problem with the touch screen. You had to hit it repeatedly and hope that it would eventually recognize what you hit. I got the other machine. It worked better. What slowed me down as that instead of entering my destination like on MetroNorth and Long Island Railroad, I had to enter the zone number, which isn’t listed anywhere. There’s no map. Luckily, I had the schedule already on my web browser. I figured that would show it. It didn’t. I had to click on the station name to find the zone. Did the people that designed this system ever take a train at a station that they haven’t traveled on before?

Then I had to make my way back across the station, to where I started, to get my train. It took me somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes to simply buy my ticket and find my train.

The train was an antique. Maybe it’s an outlier, I don’t know. You get the occasional old train on the LIRR and MetroNorth, but this was older than any of them. There was no sign telling you what station you were coming to. The PA volume was so low you had to struggle to hear what station was announced, and each was announced only once. When you arrived there was no announcement, “This is Southborough.” On a few of the stations I could see a sign with the station name but not at most of them. The train was understaffed so everyone had to exit from either the front or back of the train. Good thing I was at the front. The reason there needed to be staff when you exited is that the platforms were not at door level. You had to climb down a steep flight of stairs to exit. Forget about wheelchair accessibility.

Emily decided to make it easy for me and pick me up on the side of the station where I got off. There was a parking lot there. Unfortunately, there was no exit to that parking lot. I had to walk to the end of the station where there was an open gate onto a dirt lot adjacent to the lot. I couldn’t wheel my luggage. Boston Metro area peeps, your mass transit system is an embarrassment. It’s even worse than New Jersey Transit. The only one I’ve been on that’s worse is SEPTA in greater Philly.

The US has to invest more in rail and buses. It’s difficult because the Republican base is rural and they see public transit as benefiting, “those people.” There are Republican leaders that think that Democrats are only for trains because they are trying to destroy our individuality. This is not something I’ve read about. This is something I’ve read in mainstream sources written by mainstream Republicans. You can’t argue that trains are environmentally friendly because they think that climate change is a hoax. Well run trains are a wonder. If it were cheaper, I’d have taken Amtrak from New York to Boston. It’s not so much that it’s faster than the bus, but that it’s more reliable. There’s no traffic to get stuck in. If they made the infrastructure investments they should, then it would be much faster. There’s no reason the trip should take more than two hours. It wouldn’t in most developed countries.

Once I got here things were great. I spent the evening with Emily, her four daughters, dog, and two brand new kittens. They arrived earlier in the day. Now Emily and Maggie, the oldest daughter are at work at the bakery, Cate, and Ellie are at school, Gen, the youngest is at the library with the babysitter, so I have the house to myself and time to write this.

I come here just once a year, but it still feels like home when I arrive. That’s a strange but clear line. In the old days that was easy to define, it meant I didn’t wear my glasses in the house. Now, not so much as I only wear glasses for reading, and before that I even needed glasses in my own room. I guess the tipoff is that it’s 11:17 and I’m still in my sweats and I’ll probably never get out of them. Of course, that means NERFA is home too.