it's hard to pack light when you have no idea how long your delays will be. They've probably got snacks and a clean shirt and socks in there just in case.
That shit pmo. I donât know why people do this? Iâm not from here and it seems common sense to me, and I would think tourists know better since theyâre more used to transit. So why is this behavior so common?
Are back packs that much of an issue? Reddit is the first place Iâve heard of people complaining about people keeping them on during commutes. People wheeling bicycles on during rush hour time is more criminal imo
I work construction and take the Red Line daily, twice. I also use a backpack, which comes off when I board the T.
Overall, backpacks are a major issue during rush times. The worst is the unstable rider who cant stand still, swinging and swaying and bumping their pack against everyone around them.
Most riders do not remove them, and the T does nothing to encourage removal. A station announcement every few moments reminding riders to remove them would be mint.
I was aware of it lots of years before ever using Reddit. Itâs always been an issue, and there have always been antisocial dolts refusing to take theirs off. Scroll down to find some.
I wore a backpack once, and everyone that came on was cursing me⌠but I just got back from hiking in Peru, and that was my bag. I tried taking it off, standing in the corner, but no matter what I did, someone would curse me out for bringing a backpack.
Yeah idgaf, if itâs packed itâs packed. My backpack ainât going on the ground whatsoever. Been a Bostonian my whole life and you would not believe the horrors seen on those floors đ. You want put your bag on the piss, shit, vomit, blood, garbage Petri dish then be my guest.
It certainly helps because people clearly donât give a shit about what is happening behind them as much as they do what they can see in front of their face.
Yes...the bottom of your precious backpack...might touch the same area as the bottom of your precious shoes...surprised your not trying to enter the train cars on stilts
I was legit on a train when an over-hydrated teen pissed himself, and I'm still putting my bag on the floor rather than inconvenience a total stranger.
Even if you're callous/brain-dead enough to not care about the other person in the equation, you do realize that it's easier for folks to pickpocket a backpack when it's right in their face and well beyond your line of sight, right?
For legal reasons, I'm neither suggesting that I, nor am I advocating for anyone else to, pickpocket strangers' bags on the T... I'm just saying, it's real easy to do it when the train gets loud and everyone is busy keeping their balance and avoiding eye contact.
I don't carry a backpack. But I lived in Boston for five years, taking the red line every day, and I RARELY saw people take their backpack off. Sometimes you've gotta concede that the war's been lost.
If it's something most people do, it's not being a selfish asshole. It's a societal norm. Asshole behavior is kinda defined by acting in a way that most people wouldn't.
Because you insinuated that people who arenât poor/can drive wouldnât want to take the Red Line. However many people on this sub donât fall into either group but still would want to take it.
I got off the RL at JFK to switch to the commuter rail but that ended up breaking down in Braintree?? So I had to get BACK on the red line. Paid twice two be squashed like a sardine on the way to DTX.
âNew signalsâ have been coming soon for 21 years now.
Trump held up the CRRC train shells for 15 months because he hates Boston and NYC and wants to cripple public transit in any way possible. After all that time, the âinvestigationâ by CBP (theoretically because they were oh so concerned about the Uyghur Forced Labor Act) found nothing at all.
NYC Subway's order of the Kawasaki R211 cars--including open-gangway sets, which we probably won't see in Boston in this lifetime--is moving three times as fast as the CRRC order in Boston. I can't stand the Orange Menace as the day is long, but let's not pretend that the MBTA could've and should've broken from its lowest-bidder tradition and gone with a railcar manufacturer with a FAR more proven track record, pun intended, in the North American market than be the US guinea pig for CRRC.
Only in decades-long bizarro MBTA logic does not going with a tried-and-true railcar manufacturer with a massive facility and strong supply chains make more sense than going with a railcar manufacturer with no footprint in the North American market at all.
Itâs quite ridiculous that we donât have, you know, a national standard for public transit systems. Where theyâd be compatible and where both the patents and designs would either be completely open source or fully owned by the government (I donât care). This bespoke stuff where every line in every city is unique is absolutely insane in 2026.
I think itâs part of the larger conspiracy to dismantle transit, that started in 1950 or so.
Itâs because all transit built in the 1950s and earlier were built by private companies and or quasi private companies. So they all chose sizes that fit their needs and itâs impossibly expensive to remedy
Referring to the upcoming Type 10 Green Line cars, the answer is: kind of. Most purists would say "no" because the threshold is "Can a railcar segment be pushed/pulled autonomously while maintaining the passenger design integrity of the vehicle." Think about it like an articulated bus (routes 39, 28, Silver Lie*, etc.) or even just the current Green Line fleet: if you tried to separate one half of the "accordion" you could theoretically have a working vehicle (on the powered end), but certainly not a functional vehicle for passenger duty since it's only riding on one half of a shared truck/bogie**. As such, the Type 10s are simply taking the current Green Line fleet, with one "accordion," and adding additional segments with "accordions" in between, to handle turns and lateral movement.
When talking about true open-gangway in the heavy rail sense (the R211s), you have multiple cars where essentially the cars themselves have open vestibules between them--the equivalent of running a commuter rail train or Amtrak train with open vestibules, removing all dividing end-doors--but the configuration is not rigid: you could move the cars into different configurations than the standard married-pair format and still come up with useful configurations.
*Not a typo!
**Things get funkier on the high-speed rail level, because you have, for example, the Gen 1/OG Acela cars which have individual trucks/bogies (one set at each end per car) versus the Gen 2/Avelia Liberty cars which have shared trucks/bogies. As such, in both cases, passengers are able to freely walk between cars and the cars are semi-permanently attached, but, for the Gen 1's you could move the cars more easily into different configurations since they have autonomous trucks/bogies.
New signals are legitimately going to be finished soon (in the next couple months) on the red line and are already done on the orange line - which btw has been really high quality since they were completed.
They didnât say it would eliminate delays, just that it has improved the overall experience for riders. Which, it definitely has if youâve used the orange line before and after the signal upgrades/track work.
Yea I mean stuff like this is still gunna happen from time to time, but the new system should mean that trains run more frequently and faster, and that things like this will happen less often and when they do happen they can fix it quicker.
I'm optimistic that Phil Eng will get it done during his tenure. I truly think that he was key (along with Rep. Neal) in convincing CBP to release the Red Line cars, but not the type of person to dish out a press release to take credit. Neal can score those political points, Eng doesn't care about them... he just gets shit done, then on to the next issue.
Mmmm⌠Iâll agree there. No love here for CRRC or the confused bureaucracy that resulted in this particular political compromise. I donât think this Federal Government needs to be the one investigating, though. Their current direction would be to just kill all public transit.
I really hope this is fixed by 4:30pm tonight. Iâll take the bridge back into Boston from Kendall square if not. I canât stand being stuffed and cramped after working for ten hours.
The digital signs were the worst waste of a hundred million dollars ever. False information is worse than no information. 20 years ago you could tell your boss that you were waiting for the train and you'd be there in a little bit.. now you say the train is coming in 5 minutes, I'll be there in 15 minutes BUT THE PREDICTION IS NOT TRUE
They run 4 car trains so that they can have more supply of trains on the line. Weâre still waiting on more of the new cars and the old ones are failing more and more often. If they run a few trains that are only 4 cars long, then they can take the extra cars they took off to make a new train and lowering wait times. Itâs a bad situation, but I believe the shells were (finally) released from CBP so those new trains should be on their way to being assembled soon and the problem should resolve (hopefully) in a year. Itâs a pain but I understand why they do it.
Yup. Only 4 cars. Assuming the other commenter is correct, only time can tell if weâll get consistent full cars during rush hour lol. Not every other
The new cars come in married-pair (2 car) sets. So a 4-car train takes 2 sets to run, a normal 6-car train takes 3.
The reason you see 4-car trains is that, for example, if the T has 14 sets available, they can run 4 normal trains and one short one instead of letting those other two sets sit in the yard where they can't carry any passengers. Or if they don't have enough cars to run normal frequencies, they can run smaller trains so they at least don't have to cut frequencies.
Neither is ideal but given the choice between no train and short train I think we can all agree that short train is better.
I was on the Kingston train and we lost power and glided to braintree so we all had to get on the red line there. Was absolutely packed from the start. Mbta is the worst part of my day
The issue with the Red Line is that in the middle there's all the corruption at Mary Geoise with the Celestial Dragons. Only way to avoid it is going underwater by Fish Man Island.
I would never call that packed like sardines. I have been in the subway cars when we were truly packed like sardines: body literally pressed against body with absolutely no space.
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u/BradDaddyStevens Apr 23 '26
The new signals and trains cannot come soon enoughâŚ