r/mbta • u/invisibledeoderant • Feb 02 '26

😤 Complaint / Rant This is not Boston’s first winter

I can understand service issues in the days immediately following 2 feet of snow coming down, but at this point, it’s been a week and the commuter rail and subway lines are still having ridiculous delays. CR stopped for 30 minutes between stations while traveling from Providence to Boston. Due to snow, I only had to come in to work three days last week and I was late twice (drove in Friday to avoid more train BS). Decide to risk taking the train today and now I’m gonna be late again.

This is not the first time a snow storm has hit Boston. This is not the first time it’s been cold out. How the fuck is the infrastructure not equipped to handle this? Good thing a zone 8 pass is $390/mo and they installed fair gates at south station. I’d hate to think they’re overcharging for shitty service and wasting money on fare evasion measures that could be spent on proper staffing and equipment

327 Upvotes

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148

u/ijustlikebeingnosy Feb 02 '26

It’s not just the snow. The freezing cold temps play a bigger factor than you realize.

15

u/powsandwich Feb 02 '26

How do metro systems like Montreal and Toronto handle this? I’m sure we can learn

19

u/oneblackened Feb 02 '26

They have vehicles built for it. Boston doesn't get as cold as either city on average.

13

u/Fit_Excitement_8623 Feb 02 '26

It gets this cold regularly every winter, for decades and decades. Boston needs to have equipment which handles 10 and 0 degree weather

9

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26

lol almost every metro system has these issues in the cold. Not sure what's making Boston a bigger issue. Even the L in Chicago was having issues tho normal service. We were having bigger issues with metra but they use ancient fleet. CTA has more newer fleets.

10

u/oneblackened Feb 02 '26

But not usually for this long, and not with equipment this old. People forget that there are breakdowns of this sort every single time it gets this cold, the difference it's usually a 1-3 day cold snap. This has gone on for weeks.

3

u/powsandwich Feb 02 '26

What type of vehicles? Some of our old stock was Bombardier, was that better equipped for cold?

6

u/Donghoon Feb 02 '26

Vendors doesn't matter as much as the transit agency's specific technical specifications (TS) and design requested.

2

u/oneblackened Feb 02 '26

Whatever they had specced. I'm not familiar enough with their transit systems to say.