Safety First on the T

The MBTA introduced a new video today to encourage people to follow safe practices while riding public transit. I give it mixed reviews.

Yeah, it's important not to fall off the curb...but what about holding on while you're singing and dancing on the bus?  

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.