The Emperor of the North

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 04:22:13 -0500

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.

Bostonist: Is the Red Line the Highway to Hell?

The Emperor of the North