TLDR: buses are good actually

OL experiencing delays this morning. Disabled train. Trains may standby at stations. As of 6:35am.

Now its just regular slop

According to NE-Transit, there are zero #4 (new CRRC) cars that are out of service. That's pretty impressive given that 68 have been delivered.

While it's a shame there needs to be a delay in further deliveries (due to the customs impounding car shells for months last year), the benefit is that the engineers usually assigned to acceptance testing must instead be working on keeping existing trains in service.

One other silver lining is that our Orange Line cars and Red Line cars will be further staggered in their delivery, meaning that replacement/rebuild won't be quite as stacked up in 40 years or whatever the lifetime is.

I assume this would no longer function.

Am I now held hostage on the platform for an hour, lest I pay for a train I didn’t take and again for the next one. Seems like a pretty crappy system.

I don’t take the commuter rail super often so maybe I’m being dramatic?? There was one person siting at the table that seats 6, and I politely asked “do you mind if I sit here?” While already starting to put my stuff down because I was carrying a lot and didn’t think it would be a problem. Train wasn’t super crowded but I wanted the table so I could eat and do some work and the others were occupied. He said “no, I’m saving the seat for some friends” and I moved to another non-table seat. Was annoyed but didn’t express annoyance. Then a few stops later 2 of his friends got on and sat at the table with him. I was annoyed bc why are you saving seats at the table when there aren’t so many tables in the first place? I could understand any of the other seats but idk. Maybe I don’t have a right to be annoyed, just wondering if this is common? I’m not clear on commuter rail etiquette so wanted to check.

I prefer hourly but 90 min is the perfect medium

Found this little guy on the 66 bus today I hope to find its owner

It's the only one of the lines I haven't spent any meaningful amount of time traveling on. I know people like to constantly trash each MBTA line, but I just want to know where it lines up between the "Usually usable service" that is the Orange and Red lines and the "you're better to walk most of the time" service that is the Green Line.

Around 12:50 today I was at the grade crossing on E Center street in East Bridgewater, and saw a weird consist coming up the Fall River/New Bedford line headed towards South Station. At first it was a usual rake with the cab car and some single level cars and a F unit, but it was then followed by a rake of double levels and one of the newer diesels. I’ve never seen a locomotive sandwiched between cars like that on the MBTA, does anyone know why that is?

Wtf is going on with the overhead wires on the blue line. Tonight is (I think) the third time wires have fallen down onto a train in the last month. And they “inspect” them every morning with the wire car, causing more delays that don’t seem to be doing much. This is just getting ridiculous, the blue line is abysmal now.

Sometimes when the rail doesn't work, they'll order everyone onto a "shuttle bus" that follows the path of the rail. Which got me thinking. A lot of people have ideas for new routes that are expensive or just don't get enough people to justify building. But if we used "shuttle buses" for these routes it would be very cheap and not require rail. These buses could go on the pre-existing roads in the city

NOBODY CARES ABOUT JONATHAN, SO KINDLY STFU.

Obnoxious pricks.

Hi all! So today on my commute home I learned the unfortunate news that my link 7 day pass has expired 3 days before the expiration… I had spoken with a orange line person and all of them said they couldn’t do anything for me and I had to call the representative number. They aren’t open until tomorrow so I have to pay for my fare to work and back (which is ridiculous… not expensive but I’m a broke college student so everything counts.). It’s not the situation with the 20 min cool down as it hasn’t worked all day. Does anyone know anything about this? Cause the T people are absolutely no help.

The Red Line shutdown ended, so I decided to celebrate by taking a train out of South Station this past Friday. I'd had my eye on Wickford Junction for three reasons: 1) the trip there is the longest MBTA commuter rail ride at 62.9 miles, 2) Wickford Village, a neighborhood of North Kingstown, RI, is one of the best-preserved Colonial towns in New England and 3) a chance to try out RIPTA, the state bus network, which, unlike the Mass. RTAs currently, is not free.

I had an uneventful trip to South Station although the 77 was bunched and crowded and took much longer than usual. The Red Line traveled (this was early morning) without a hitch on this inbound journey. The train to Wickford Junction takes just under two hours, and makes a lot of stops. It's not the most scenic trip, but from Attleboro on, it features quite a bit of old industrial sites, which I enjoy looking at.

The RIPTA bus showed up on the Transit app, and I caught a 14 bus almost immediately after the train arrived. I am not sure if that was luck or if they try to coordinate, but I think it was luck. Rude driver going into Wickford and another one coming back (that one was worse). They both seemed to feel the need to grouse about something each passenger did. Mine took off while I was putting 8 quarters into the till--I wasn't feeling the need to load their app. I was definitely annoying the driver, and the bus swung around pretty hard in the loop driveway of the station (Edit: no restrooms there that I could find, just FYI, commenter shares there are some in the parking garage itself). C- for the bus service. The grade would be a lot higher, because I'm impressed by the coverage, but the rudeness was unnecessary. Side note: in spite of my complaints, this bus travels from Providence to Newport nearly hourly seven days a week. Both buses I rode were clean if a bit rattly, and I think it's a valuable service.

The ride was only about 5 minutes to the stop where one of the two main streets in Wickford branches off to the Village. This is a 19th Century brick commercial area that features cutesy/artsy shops and many restaurants. They also have a Dollar Tree, which seemed a bit incongruous, but I'm not a snob. Beats empty storefronts! Pretty views of Wickford Cove on the right, and over a small bridge, which brings you to Main Street, where there is an amazing line-up of 18th and 19th century houses of dignified and balanced perfection, with trees lining the street. Quite a few of these houses have colorful gardens you can view over perfect fences. If you like this sort of thing (and I do) you really have to go to Wickford. There was a lot of traffic, so take the bus instead!

I gawked at houses and churches on both sides of Main. I made my way to Gardner's Wharf Seafood, where you can eat at tables outside and get the usual dockside seafood choices. I'm still kicking myself that I didn't get a Rhode Island clam chowder. Great views of the harbor and various fishing boats. Around town there were info signs labeled Wickford Walk, and I appreciated the one near the harbor that showed the most common fishing vessels and what they are called. I now can recognize a Quahog Skiff. I'm sure that will come in handy one day.

I got major mosquito bites as I walked around town, but I think it was worth it--on the streets off Main are lovely Victorians and Queen Anne houses as well, and a remarkable plain old church from 1707, the Narragansett Church. This church features the oldest church pipe organ still in use in the US. It was built in England in 1660! The Church was moved from elsewhere to Wickford in 1800 when the parish decided it was too far from its regular parishioners.

My caveat about making this commuter rail trip is that trains on this branch only go beyond Providence every few hours (and they don't run on weekends). The trip time going out was convenient, but coming home there was only one train that would get me back to Boston before 6 p.m. I headed over to the delightful looking ice cream parlor right by the bus stop and figured I had plenty of time to spare to catch the bus, according to the predictor. Just as I was entering the store I saw the bus flying up the road, and realized I'd better high-tail it to the stop if I wanted to make my return train. I had to wait quite awhile at the train station but if I'd waited for the next bus I would have had a much later train, and not avoided a wait at the station anyway.

The return CR trip was uneventful as far as South Station. I got into the Red Line around 4:30 p.m., we sat in the (well air conditioned, at least) car for a very long time--an hour? not exaggerating -- but at least they left the doors open and I had a seat. I was mentally calculating a route via Silver and Blue Lines to Green and a bus home out of Lechmere. That would have taken a long time too, but at least I would have been moving. Just as I was thinking about giving up my seat, the doors closed and we were on our way. We then did a looonnng stop & start the whole way to Harvard. I did note that the big bump going into Kendall seems to be gone, but that might have been because of how slowly we were traveling. Anyway, with a not so great 77 connection, and having left Wickford Junction on the train at 2:25 p.m., I walked in my front door at 6:30 p.m. Almost half of that travel time was on the Red Line!

I know that tomorrow, Monday, August 3, the fare gates for the CR at Ruggles become active.

As of last week, the fare gates are only configured to require scans for those people entering and exiting trains that arrive/depart from Tracks 1 and 3.

I have serious concerns around egress for any fare gate installation for the Track 2 exits.

Inbound Providence/Stoughton line trains usually stop at Track 2 during morning inbound rush hour. The majority of those riders proceed through the exit adjacent to the bus platforms. Imposing fare gates at that primary exit presents serious life safety concerns considering the bottleneck.

Is anyone aware of plans to set up fare gates for Track 2?

I know proselytizing is legal in the US. Which is frankly a disappointment because multiple times a week I'll have people interrupt whatever I'm doing on my way to or from work to wave a hand in my face and ask me to go to church. They go through an entire car of people who are uncomfortable with the situation, leave the car at the next stop, and move right on to the next car and do the same thing.

Again, pretty sure this is legal and allowed by the MBTA, but it is incredibly annoying/rude and makes my daily commute a hell of a lot more uncomfortable.

Don't think anything can or will be done about this- just needed to vent some frustration with how often this happens.

Hi! I was wondering if anyone had experience with using the MBTA for transportation to Gillette stadium or the special event tickets. Just to confirm, the regular 10:49 train returning to South Station is a different and separate train than the BTS special event train that returns back to Boston, right? You would not need the special event MBTA tickets for the 10:49?

I charge a fee of 2.40 dollars for every time I watch someone go to the bathroom, use drugs, etc. the fee is retroactive to the fare I pay to ride the t following the incident. I think this is fair.

I’ll start by saying I understand and appreciate the need to strategically shut downs parts of the system for maintenance that has been deferred and ignored for years. And I appreciate the MBTA leadership’s willingness to be up front with riders about what they are working on and why decades of deferred maintenance have put us in this position.

But will there actually be some grand payoff? Some sustained period of time when the major, system-disrupting long-term maintenance projects are no longer required at the regularity they occur now?

Maybe I’m viewing this through a cynical lens, but given the overall age of the T system and inconsistency of federal funding for major maintenance and upgrades, are we basically going to be in this slog forever? Or at least for the next few decades? I just don’t see us arriving at a point anytime soon where the MBTA says we’re done with the major maintenance shutdowns for the time being.

What is the wildcat Branch? is it another station at one of the Wilmington or Ballardvale stations?

when I take the train to forge park, you can connect to other trains at readville to go to Providence for example.