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MBTA employees are getting their surly on, perhaps because a handful of them got busted for having affairs and running side businesses on company time. It's fine if they're in a crabby mood, but it's not fine if their negligence causes someone to get hurt.
Via Universal Hub, Jenny reports a disturbing incident on the Red Line that could have had a terrible ending were it not for some quick-thinking riders. She describes what happened after the doors closed on a kid who was following his family onto a train:
The doors shut on one of her children, catching him in the door between the train and the platform. AND THE TRAIN TOOK OFF ANYWAY.... A group of about five launched at the Emergency Button and Emergency Brake located at the end of each car. After about five pushes of the button it was clear that it was either a) broken or b) being ignored ... The train never stopped.
The passengers got the kid out, which probably would have happened no matter what the T employee did, but don't most T employees look back at the car to make sure everyone's in? And whoever was driving the train didn't bother to answer the emergency button until another incident happened in which the door flew open and someone almost fell out. Here's how a shining example of the T's public service responded to the second potential injury on the same train:
The MBTA employee was neither impressed nor concerned. He fiddled with the door and a set of keys for a whole sixty seconds and then told us just not to stand near it.
So, let's see, in the span of an hour at least four unacceptable incidents happened on that Red Line train: 1. A T employee didn't check the doors. 2. A T employee didn't bother to answer the emergency intercom (really makes you feel safe in terms of national security, doesn't it?) 3. The doors malfunctioned, and someone could have fallen out and 4. The T employee assigned to fix the problem obviously didn't know how to fix the problem, nor did he know who to call to fix the problem.
Thing is, it isn't that hard to mind your passengers. Passengers can be stupid, they can wait until the last minute, they can dawdle, whatever, but it's still the T's job to make sure that the doors work and that everyone is on the train.
Oh, and while we're at it, walking past a T employee yesterday and we could swear it looked like he was trying to cough up a hairball on the guy in front of him. Riding the T is full of so many surprises that they may as well make a Sims expansion pack out of it.
Image of AC/DC's Highway to Hell cover taken from Amazon. They look friendlier than your average T employee, don't you think?
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I'd want to stop short of condemning all T employees based on a few observations, but curiously I can recount a first-person story so similar to this one it is frightening.
I'm on an inbound Green Line train pulling out of Copley, and at the door right in front of me an elderly woman trying to board gets herself caught exactly halfway between the doors as they close -- and the f*cking car *starts to pull away*.
I grab her (one) arm inside the car and try to pull her in. Doesn't work.
Picking up speed.
I grab the edge of one of the doors and give it a MAJOR full-body shove to the right. Doesn't open wider even a bit.
Moving probably 15 MPH at this point and I'm thinking we can't be far from the end of the station now. If we leave the station, and enter the tunnel, this woman is DEAD once she bounces off a signal post or some other obstruction. Can't get her in, can't get the door open, can't see an emergency brake cord quickly enough so I start yelling "STOP THE TRAIN! STOP THE TRAIN! SOMEONE'S STUCK IN THE DOOR!" repeatedly while I sprint up towards the motorman/somnambulist. And when I say "yelling", I mean LOUDLY.
Yet not until I am ON TOP OF HIM does he bring the train to a slow, gradual halt. Not an emergency halt, mind you -- a slow, controlled halt, as if entering a station. Did he think someone would be kidding around about that?
Says nothing at first; looks in his inside mirror, looks at his outside mirror, finally says to me, "Where?", then pushes a button to open that door so the woman can get all the way in.
And that's it. Checks on nothing, doesn't check on the woman, doesn't even get out of his seat. Continues on as if nothing had happened.
Except that something almost *did* happen, because he didn't do the single most important thing he's supposed to do before pulling away. Remember wondering how that was possible. Wondering that again now.