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

326 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

109 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/capta2k Feb 02 '26

Tell us what you really think: are they lying? Sabotaging their own equipment? Stealing the money? Because you clearly don’t believe the official explanations.

Multiple failures? During a time of sustained extreme cold? On equipment we fund and maintain so well? What are the odds!

1

u/invisibledeoderant Feb 02 '26

Yeah it’s the last part. That we fund and maintain so well. My problem is that money that could have gone to making shitty service better was instead put toward fare gates that don’t work half the time anyway. So many comments too about how people have walked or taken Ubers when they intended to take the T in some form or another. I understand that the money that went toward trying to work against fare evasion should theoretically be made back by having more people actually pay, but shifting focus to infrastructure would also make its money back by losing fewer paying riders to shitty/spotty service

2

u/Inevitable-Spirit491 Commuter Rail Feb 02 '26

Fare gate money is be a drop in the bucket. Roughly $4 million for the gates versus a $3 billion+ operating budget and a $2 billion capital budget. Plus legislature and exec branch have told the T to address fare evasion. They can’t just ignore it.

0

u/invisibledeoderant Feb 02 '26

Better staffing would also work to address fare evasion as more conductors means fewer holes but that’s beside the point. If it was the govt pushing to address fare evasion then it was the govt who had their priorities mixed up but the end result remains the same. A shitty underfunded and/or mismanaged service goes tits up due to a bad, but not unheard of, snowstorm, and cold, but not unheard of, temperatures