Buying Time on the T

I haven’t written in some time, mainly owing to sloth and the lack of anything interesting to say (not that the second has stopped me before). Partly I have been thinking a lot about time, and how I spend my time. Lately at least, this random pondering about commuting doesn’t seem to be worth a whole lot of anyone’s time.

I’m at the point in life where time is more precious to me than almost anything else, because I’ve got so little of it left. I haven’t been diagnosed with a terminal illness or anything, but both of my parents died in their early seventies, and that’s only twenty years down the road for me.

So for me, it’s been both good news and bad news that the T has installed LED signs—electronic billboards or, in the T’s terminology, “countdown clocks”—that announce how many minutes before the next train arrives. The signs have been installed on a rolling schedule, beginning with South Station in summer 2012. As of June 2013, the MBTA reported that “51 of the 53 stations on the Blue, Orange, and Red lines” have the devices.

Reports suggest that, by and large, commuters love them, and the T management positions them as a small touch to help reduce stress on commuters.

I like them—for the most part. I’ve even trusted them enough to let a crowded Braintree train go by in the morning on the promise of an Ashmont train arriving in 2 minutes. It’s really handy. Except when the timing is unpredictable. For example, you're waiting at the platform and the sign says the Braintree train is 2 minutes away, the Ashmont train 9 minutes away. You wait, and soon, the Ashmont train is only 7 minutes away, but the Braintree train is still 2 minutes away. How can that be when there is only one stop (Alewife) before the stop where I wait. What the heck is delaying that Braintree train? 

As for reducing the stress of commuting, well, the clocks help, but we are a long way from the stress-free commute. Now if I miss the heart-pounding announcement on my trip home—“Attention passengers, the next Red Line train to Alewife is now arriving”—I can still see the message very visibly on the ticker, making the palms sweat and the heart pound, just as always. 

And then there will always be anxiety connected to the bleakness of standing on a train platform, watching the minutes of one's life tick away.