Orange Plus: Now with Added Homeland Security

Governor Romney was spotted this afternoon at the Park Street MBTA station. The Governor returned to Boston from a Washington DC fundraiser in order to show residents that things were perfectly safe. Bostonist usually rides on the Trolley with a couple of body guards too, perfectly safe Mitt. Channel 5 already has posted a report on Mitt’s return home just to ride the subway (similar to when he slept in his own bed in the face of terrorists?).

"(Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority General Manager) Dan Grabauskas reminded me that we are at Orange Alert, but that we have moved to what we are calling Orange Plus. It means we have additional personnel at the stations making sure that all of our facilities are closed at night and sealed off so that no one can get to the equipment. We are adding security. We are adding communications to riders," Romney said.

After already raising the threat level on public transit to Orange they really wanted a way to indicate the threat level is now a little higher, without actually raising it to red. Now, Bostonist isn’t an art student, but we consulted with a buddy hanging out and mixing pigment at MassArt, apparently if you’re already at Orange and you want to go to Red without hitting it you’re really in a state of Vermillion.

The “if you see something, say something” campaign has been stepped up again today. Scratchy PA announcements will be playing on constant repeat in all T stations, there’s a good chance the operators will be making in-train announcements to riders as well. It’s gone beyond newspaper they’ll remind you to take your bags today too. In his Park Street press conference Romney assured travelers that there was no credible threat to the transit system in Boston or anywhere in the US for that matter. With all this chatter about increased presence in all facets of the MBTA system Bostonist is still wondering how we can have extra security now at the drop of a hat when it took the T police 15 minutes to respond to an incident on Memorial Day Weekend.