Phil Eng – Media Nation

With South Station unveiling fare gates, it’s time to rethink an annoying and unnecessary practice

Fare gates are coming to South Station, as they did to North Station several years ago. The way it works is that you tap your ticket (on paper or on your phone) at a gate to gain entry to the waiting area for commuter rail. If you’re arriving, you simply reverse the procedure and tap it to leave. It’s convenient and helps prevent scofflaws from evading fares. But there is one massively annoying aspect to this, and it could easily be solved.

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As Michael P. Norton reports for State House News Service, “Conductors will also still check tickets on board trains to verify travel zones.” That makes sense. Let’s say you ride the Lowell line out of North Station. It costs just $2.40, one way, to travel between West Medford and North Station. By contrast, a one-way ticket between the end of the line in Lowell and North Station costs $10.50.

(Let me pause here and observe that the longer your train commute, the more you’re helping to ease traffic congestion and air pollution. Given that, a flat rate would make more sense. But I digress.)

Now, here’s the aggravating part. I commute between West Medford and North Station. A lot of riders get on or off at that final (or first) stop, so the train is often overcrowded. Yet the conductors — always friendly and helpful — have to squeeze their way through so that they can inspect our tickets.

Why? West Medford commuters are already paying the cheapest fares. There is no reason to check our tickets. Thanks to the fare gates, we could not have gotten on unless we’d already paid and scanned our way in. If the conductors did their job before the train arrived in West Medford, or after it left, the train would be much less crowded, and it would be a lot easier for them to do their work.

This is not a big deal except that it’s completely unnecessary. With South Station fare gates coming online, this would be a good time for MBTA general manager Phil Eng and commuter rail contractor Keolis to eliminate a minor annoyance for those of us who take the train.

A long and frustrating ride home on the new, (mostly) improved MBTA

The MBTA is a miracle most of the time. Just the other day I was telling friends who used to live here how much better it’s gotten under general manager Phil Eng. Then there was today.

I had no trouble getting to BU for a conference. But when I left a few minutes after 6, the fun began. The Green Line car I was on stopped moving almost immediately. We were told there had been some sort of emergency, and that we needed to to get out and take a shuttle bus. We walked to the bus stop, and no one could tell us whether a shuttle was showing up or not. A Boston police officer who was there saw someone in a T maintenance truck. He ran over to the guy (in 93-degree heat), came back, and told us the shuttles were leaving from Kenmore Square.

So I walked to Kenmore, broiling the whole way. At this point a large crowd had gathered to take the shuttle. The T workers who were there weren’t sure what was going on. Finally, we were told that we should get back on the Green Line to Arlington Station and pick up the shuttle there.

I got off at Copley and walked to the Orange Line, which proved to be a smart move. I got to North Station in time to take the commuter rail home. A trip that should have taken an hour or less had taken two hours, but it could have been worse.

Things happen. What upset me was the lack of communication and no accommodations for riders who had already paid. Everything should have just been opened, as it sometimes is in such circumstances. Instead, we all paid over and over whenever we switched lines.

Very poor performance today.

The latest Green Line Extension problems are an outrage

Green Line trolley at the new Tufts/Medford station. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.

It’s hard to describe how outrageous it is that the brand-new, $2.3 billion Green Line Extension was built with miles of tracks that are too close together. Bruce Mohl writes at CommonWealth:

At a confusing press conference on Thursday that raised almost as many questions as answers, MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said it appears the prefabricated plated rail ties for the Green Line extension were made to incorrect specifications and then installed. A plated rail tie consists of a wooden tie with steel plates on either end for holding the rail in place.

Gov. Maura Healey blamed her predecessor, Charlie Baker, which is a pretty safe call — the GLX was built on his watch, so surely someone in his administration was responsible. The Boston Globe reports that Eng also said his underlings didn’t inform him of the problem in a timely manner. Let the firings begin.

One thought that occurs to me is that Baker canceled a more expensive version of the GLX approved by his predecessor, Deval Patrick. It would not surprise me if Baker let an unqualified contractor sweet-talk his administration into doing the job on the cheap.

I don’t usually take the GLX because the Medford/Tufts terminus is too far from my house and is s-l-o-w. Instead, I generally take the commuter rail to North Station and then the Orange Line. But the GLX can be valuable as a backup, and of course a lot of people depend on it. This is literally unbelievable, except that it’s the MBTA.

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An excellent commentary on the MBTA crisis

Excellent commentary in CommonWealth by Jim Aloisi on why it’s time to treat the miserable state of the MBTA like the crisis that it is. I especially recommend his criticism of the Federal Transit Administration for what he regards as an overemphasis on safety at the expense of actually getting anything done: “As a regular T rider, I care about safety as much as anyone, but we cannot sacrifice ridership on the altar of safety — a perfectly safe system would be one that simply stops moving.” Which it pretty much has.

Aloisi blames the crisis on every governor, legislative leader and transportation official “since 1991,” meaning everyone since Michael Dukakis, who really did take the T seriously — adding that he includes himself among those who made mistakes, since he served for a time as state transportation secretary. And though he believes that the MBTA’s general manager, Phil Eng, is off to a reasonably good start, it’s clear to Aloisi, and to all of us who depend on the T, that he doesn’t have much time to make real, lasting changes.

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