Joel N. Weber II
Engineer
Last night, I took the MBTA Red Line subway to see the fireworks, which I had learned were scheduled to start at 10:30 PM.
I left home around 10:00 PM (a bit later than I would have liked), walked to Porter Square, where I noticed a sign saying the T was free after 10:30 PM. The train spent a while stuck in the tunnels, I think both between Harvard and Central and between Central and Kendall, which I think cost me 10-15 minutes of fireworks watching; I was still on the train at 10:44. The fare gates were already all open when I got off the train to watch the fireworks.
I wandered over to Memorial Drive, watching bits of the show from several different vantage points as I kept trying to find a place that was relatively free of trees obstructing the view. At one point there were fireworks visible at about three different heights, and it struck me that finding a place that would work well to see all three levels was probably pretty hard.
Then the fireworks ended about the time I'd found a spot where I could see the upper two levels and most of the lower level.
I have memories of some previous year watching the fireworks on the Boston side of the river, and when I got to Charles / MGH, finding that I could easily board a northbound Red Line train, but Kendall had been overcrowded with people who couldn't all fit on the train, as Central had also been. So I'd been thinking I might just have to spend an hour walking home.
This year when the fireworks ended, I walked towards Kendall Station about as quickly as I could. There was an MBTA Inspector telling people to move down along the platform; the main entrance to Kendall is approximately even with the first two cars of a 6 car Red Line train. There's also a back entrance even with the last car of a six car train. I wandered down to where I could ride in the second from the rear car. There were a few occasions where I thought people moving in the same direction as me were being annoyingly pushy when I was slowing down to allow people to pass who for whatever reason were determined to go in the opposite direction.
Much to my amazement, I ended up on the first outbound train that came after I reached the station. As we pulled out of the station, I saw that the inspectors and police were holding people outside of the fare gates so that almost all of the people who had been on the platform fit onto the train. There weren't yet many people at Central when we got there. Few people seemed to be getting on or off at Harvard or Porter.
I think it was somewhere between Harvard and Porter that it occured to me that I could choose to stay on the train all the way to Davis and get ice cream (the walk home from Davis is a bit longer, but not by enough for it to be a problem if I have some reason to want to be in Davis), so I went to Davis and got ice cream. I was surprised by how short the line at J P Licks was, and how generally uncrowded Davis Square was while I was eating my ice cream outside; on a random summer evening, it's not uncommon to see roughly 5 times as many people there.
Just after I walked through the fare gates at Davis, I saw someone holding a CharlieTicket (the magnetic stripe kind) and looking confused, and I told her the T was free after 10:30. I think all of the fare gates were saying ``GATE CLOSED'' or something similar on their LCDs, even though they were stuck open. In retrospect, I should have waited for the crowd from my train to clear out, and then taken a picture of what the fare gates were saying.
I left home around 10:00 PM (a bit later than I would have liked), walked to Porter Square, where I noticed a sign saying the T was free after 10:30 PM. The train spent a while stuck in the tunnels, I think both between Harvard and Central and between Central and Kendall, which I think cost me 10-15 minutes of fireworks watching; I was still on the train at 10:44. The fare gates were already all open when I got off the train to watch the fireworks.
I wandered over to Memorial Drive, watching bits of the show from several different vantage points as I kept trying to find a place that was relatively free of trees obstructing the view. At one point there were fireworks visible at about three different heights, and it struck me that finding a place that would work well to see all three levels was probably pretty hard.
Then the fireworks ended about the time I'd found a spot where I could see the upper two levels and most of the lower level.
I have memories of some previous year watching the fireworks on the Boston side of the river, and when I got to Charles / MGH, finding that I could easily board a northbound Red Line train, but Kendall had been overcrowded with people who couldn't all fit on the train, as Central had also been. So I'd been thinking I might just have to spend an hour walking home.
This year when the fireworks ended, I walked towards Kendall Station about as quickly as I could. There was an MBTA Inspector telling people to move down along the platform; the main entrance to Kendall is approximately even with the first two cars of a 6 car Red Line train. There's also a back entrance even with the last car of a six car train. I wandered down to where I could ride in the second from the rear car. There were a few occasions where I thought people moving in the same direction as me were being annoyingly pushy when I was slowing down to allow people to pass who for whatever reason were determined to go in the opposite direction.
Much to my amazement, I ended up on the first outbound train that came after I reached the station. As we pulled out of the station, I saw that the inspectors and police were holding people outside of the fare gates so that almost all of the people who had been on the platform fit onto the train. There weren't yet many people at Central when we got there. Few people seemed to be getting on or off at Harvard or Porter.
I think it was somewhere between Harvard and Porter that it occured to me that I could choose to stay on the train all the way to Davis and get ice cream (the walk home from Davis is a bit longer, but not by enough for it to be a problem if I have some reason to want to be in Davis), so I went to Davis and got ice cream. I was surprised by how short the line at J P Licks was, and how generally uncrowded Davis Square was while I was eating my ice cream outside; on a random summer evening, it's not uncommon to see roughly 5 times as many people there.
Just after I walked through the fare gates at Davis, I saw someone holding a CharlieTicket (the magnetic stripe kind) and looking confused, and I told her the T was free after 10:30. I think all of the fare gates were saying ``GATE CLOSED'' or something similar on their LCDs, even though they were stuck open. In retrospect, I should have waited for the crowd from my train to clear out, and then taken a picture of what the fare gates were saying.
