Close to the Edge: Near Death on the Orange Line
Sports Redux: C's Shot Down
Max Goes to Longwood: Wild Things on the Subway
Saturday Happenings
Sunday Happenings
The MBTA has teamed up with Dunkin Donuts today to launch part of their Courtesy Counts campaign, which will reward nice transit users with a $2 Dunkin Donuts gift certificate on the T, buses, and commuter rails. If you give up your seat to an expectant mother or help a clueless tourist figure out the Red Line, you might be a lucky winner. Unfortunately, only 25 MBTA employees are closely watching for niceness, with a total of 500 certificates being handed out today.
This is the third stage in the Courtesy Counts campaign led by John Cogliano, State Secretary of Transportation. Earlier this year, he handed out 10,000 brochures to T employees reminding them to be nice to the riders. He then followed this up by placing 1,000 signs throughout the transit system giving a gentle nudge not to smoke, leave trash on the trains, and shut up while on your cell phones (put in much nicer prose of course).
The sad thing is that Bostonians should be helpful and courteous all the time; a $2 gift certificate for coffee shouldn't have to be the prompter for more polite transportation.
Did any of you witness anyone being commended for their courtesy today?
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Invest the money and time and effort into service and infrastructure and alleviate people's stress so they can lighten up and be nicer. STOP THE GIMMICKS.
Along the same lines as Mark, above: if the MBTA did the job right, thereby not inspiring rage among riders, they wouldn't have to exort riders to remember to be nice. If they'd tell customers of the orange line *in advance* which station will be the last station this day, or which weekends the northern line won't run at all, we wouldn't all be starting from a place of deep anger and we'd be more likely to be our usual sweet selves.
I'm amazed at the complete lack of information. I've lived here for three weeks and I'm already telling people how to ride the orange line during the switch maintenance. The MBTA website doesn't mention anything about this work, which I've gathered has been going on for years now, to varying degrees. I mean really, is this a real city where people live and work and get things done, or is this a theme park? Chicago would eat Boston for breakfast.
Yes, them's fighting words.