neu8ball

neu8ball t1_j5wuolf wrote

I took the Red Line to work every day from about 2012 to 2015. Then when I changed jobs and moved, I took the Orange Line for a year. Back then, as we all know, delays were awful, and the MBTA dangled new cars “coming soon in 2019!” that would miraculously fix everything.

In 2017, I bought a car and moved to Quincy. Driving was immediately 100x faster even with the shitshow that always is 93 South.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I hadn’t taken the T in years, but I was going to an event at Fenway and figured I would give it a shot. Drove to Braintree and hopped on the good old Red Line.

A northbound train didn’t come for 30 minutes. Then, shuttle buses from North Quincy to Broadway. Then, the train held at the station for about 20 minutes until it was packed. The Green Line from Park Street was fine. But my total time to get from Braintree to Fenway was over 2 hours. Ridiculous. This was at midday on a Saturday. I decided to Uber home rather than deal with the same shitshow on the way home.

The MBTA has been pure dogshit since my college days in the city. In the almost 20 years I’ve been in Boston, nothing has changed at all. Same service delays, same issues with stations and trains in a perpetual state of disrepair, same tone-deaf attitude from MBTA leadership, same massive debt and budget problems. The whole system is rotten to the core - nothing short of a complete, multi-tens-of-billions-of-dollars overhaul will fix things.

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