Joel N. Weber II
Engineer
I'd done some shopping on Cambridge Street in Boston, and decided to walk from there to Haymarket Station (I wanted to try to get a better sense of where the Green Line platform is there, and how close it is to I-93, under which building Commuter Rail tracks has been proposed). The pedestrian tunnels make enough turns that it's not really clear to me exactly where the platform is; I bet if I find the right map, it would be more enlightening.
I took the Green Line two stops to Park Street. I noticed one of the staircases was propped up by what looked like a jack with four screws on its four legs, and wood built right underneath the stairs. I would have taken a picture if my shopping had not resulted in me getting a free sample of some Montery Jack cheese which, while excellent, had left my hand feeling a bit greasy; given that, I didn't want to handle my camera.
At Park Street, someone was playing an instrument that looked like a somewhat smaller than standard size guitar. I believe he was playing the Oasis song Wonderwall. I sang along with him, badly, the half of it that I actually knew the lyrics to, and hummed the rest; he seemed to enjoy more the parts more that I actually knew the lyrics to. Then he started playing a song I was less into, and shortly into that song the first Alewife bound train arrived since I had reached the platform, so I gave him a tip and boarded the train.
The trip was pretty uneventful until we got to Harvard Square. The doors opened as normal. I think they then closed, briefly, and then they opened again and stayed open. I had been standing for the entire Red Line portion of the trip; when I'm carrying groceries, I usually like to find three seats to hoarde, and the crowd in this train was a little too dense for that to work well. Around this time, the food was starting to feel heavy, so I found a pair of seats together, set the bag down, put my coat down on top of it, and stood. After what felt like several minutes since we'd entered the station, they announced (for the first time they annouced anything) that we were waiting for a disabled train at the crossover at Alewfe to be moved out of the way. The annoucement carried the tone of a short wait, but I also got the impression that this was something that could take a good long while to resolve, and that the door person on my train probably had no clue how long this would really take to resolve.
And I sort of expect that trains don't randomly break exactly at the crossover, so I have been wildly speculating to myself that this may have been a derailment, which does not strike me as something they're likely to fix in five minutes.
There are only three stops beyond Harvard in the direction we were going: Porter, Davis, and Alewife. I was trying to get to Porter, which was the next stop. I can walk it in 10-15 minutes, but I really didn't feel like doing the extra walking at that point.
I think it may have taken me a minute or two after the annoucement about the disabled train to decide that I wanted to attempt to catch a bus. (I have a monthly pass, and it is impossible to buy a subway pass these days that doesn't include most of the MBTA bus routes.) The bus routes from Harvard include the 77 and 96, both of which stop at Porter; the 96 also stops at Davis. I was trying to remember if there might be any other routes that go up Mass Ave to Porter; the signs along that route confirm that there aren't (unless you want to count the 77A as being different from the 77, but the 77A just ends earlier than the 77 and has trolley poles on the top of it, and while the signs at the bus stop say 77A, the current generation of trolleybuses just say 77 on their signs).
The T managed to put the waiting area for the 77 next to the waiting area for the 96, perhaps realizing that people who don't want to go much past Porter will find the two interchangeable. (I believe there is also one stop that both of these have in common with the 83 bus, which will take you to a park very close to Alewife Station.)
Once I got to the right part of the busway, I felt like I only waited a minute or two or three before the 96 came (very lucky, because I think it runs one hour headways at that hour; the 77 is probably less infrequent). I think about 10 people boarded it at Harvard Square. It had a label on the outside next to the front door saying that it seats 39. There are three side facing seats opposite the back door; I took up the front two of those seats, and nobody needed the third seat.
On the one hand, it struck me as silly that more people from the train weren't catching the 96; on the other hand, there were probably several busloads of people on the train who wanted to go to Porter and Davis, so not making an annoucement on the train suggesting the 96 probably was the right thing for the T to do.
I took the Green Line two stops to Park Street. I noticed one of the staircases was propped up by what looked like a jack with four screws on its four legs, and wood built right underneath the stairs. I would have taken a picture if my shopping had not resulted in me getting a free sample of some Montery Jack cheese which, while excellent, had left my hand feeling a bit greasy; given that, I didn't want to handle my camera.
At Park Street, someone was playing an instrument that looked like a somewhat smaller than standard size guitar. I believe he was playing the Oasis song Wonderwall. I sang along with him, badly, the half of it that I actually knew the lyrics to, and hummed the rest; he seemed to enjoy more the parts more that I actually knew the lyrics to. Then he started playing a song I was less into, and shortly into that song the first Alewife bound train arrived since I had reached the platform, so I gave him a tip and boarded the train.
The trip was pretty uneventful until we got to Harvard Square. The doors opened as normal. I think they then closed, briefly, and then they opened again and stayed open. I had been standing for the entire Red Line portion of the trip; when I'm carrying groceries, I usually like to find three seats to hoarde, and the crowd in this train was a little too dense for that to work well. Around this time, the food was starting to feel heavy, so I found a pair of seats together, set the bag down, put my coat down on top of it, and stood. After what felt like several minutes since we'd entered the station, they announced (for the first time they annouced anything) that we were waiting for a disabled train at the crossover at Alewfe to be moved out of the way. The annoucement carried the tone of a short wait, but I also got the impression that this was something that could take a good long while to resolve, and that the door person on my train probably had no clue how long this would really take to resolve.
And I sort of expect that trains don't randomly break exactly at the crossover, so I have been wildly speculating to myself that this may have been a derailment, which does not strike me as something they're likely to fix in five minutes.
There are only three stops beyond Harvard in the direction we were going: Porter, Davis, and Alewife. I was trying to get to Porter, which was the next stop. I can walk it in 10-15 minutes, but I really didn't feel like doing the extra walking at that point.
I think it may have taken me a minute or two after the annoucement about the disabled train to decide that I wanted to attempt to catch a bus. (I have a monthly pass, and it is impossible to buy a subway pass these days that doesn't include most of the MBTA bus routes.) The bus routes from Harvard include the 77 and 96, both of which stop at Porter; the 96 also stops at Davis. I was trying to remember if there might be any other routes that go up Mass Ave to Porter; the signs along that route confirm that there aren't (unless you want to count the 77A as being different from the 77, but the 77A just ends earlier than the 77 and has trolley poles on the top of it, and while the signs at the bus stop say 77A, the current generation of trolleybuses just say 77 on their signs).
The T managed to put the waiting area for the 77 next to the waiting area for the 96, perhaps realizing that people who don't want to go much past Porter will find the two interchangeable. (I believe there is also one stop that both of these have in common with the 83 bus, which will take you to a park very close to Alewife Station.)
Once I got to the right part of the busway, I felt like I only waited a minute or two or three before the 96 came (very lucky, because I think it runs one hour headways at that hour; the 77 is probably less infrequent). I think about 10 people boarded it at Harvard Square. It had a label on the outside next to the front door saying that it seats 39. There are three side facing seats opposite the back door; I took up the front two of those seats, and nobody needed the third seat.
On the one hand, it struck me as silly that more people from the train weren't catching the 96; on the other hand, there were probably several busloads of people on the train who wanted to go to Porter and Davis, so not making an annoucement on the train suggesting the 96 probably was the right thing for the T to do.
