You Call This RAPID Transit?

I used to be a regular MBTA Commuter Rail and subway rider, so I am very accustomed to Boston's dysfunctional system- especially the Green Line and North Station. Both are jokes.

I've mentioned here before the absurdity of building an all new transportation hub (North Station) that is used by thousands of commuters a day (in addition to serving as the entry area to a 20,000 seat stadium) that has a 15 foot wide waiting area, and one two-stall bathroom located at the furthest possible point from the train platforms. The place is an absolute joke.

And when I worked in the city, I generally would walk from the Back Bay to North Station because the chances were 50/50 that you would beat the Green Line by walking. At least you knew how long it would take if you walked.

So yesterday I took the train in to the Red Sox game. The commuter rail ride from my home on the North Shore is only about a half hour, half of which is spent negotiating the track switching area along the final mile. It used to be that the biggest bottleneck of the trip, and the reason I usually avoided taking the train to such events was having to use the decrepit elevated Green Line station, and having to wait in line at the single booth for a token.

But hey, I figured, I know there is a spiffy new subway station, there is the much hyped Charlie Card. And it's 2006. Boston must finally have caught up with the times, and there must be token machines galore.

Well that was giving much too much credit to this stupid annoying city.

Came out of the train station, and entered the gleaming new combined Green and Orange Line station, and sure enough, a line stretched nearly out the door to the SINGLE token booth manned by the same slow lazy, government union worker type that was always manning the single token booth in the old elevated station. Not a token machine or Charlie Card machine in sight.

That's Boston. They can build new multi-million dollars stations, increase prices regularly, but they can't figure out that at one of the busiest subways stations in the system on the day of a Red Sox game, they could probably use more options for selling tokens than one slow fat man.

Then, of course, once through the token line, it was 15 minutes till a train came, when one came it was an E train that didn't go to Fenway, and the thing creaked along at 2 miles an hour the whole way. Finally just got out and walked.