MBTA and Blogger Complaints
Does it do any good to complain about mass transit in the blogosphere? According to Universal Hub, the answer seems to be “no”:
The reporter also, indirectly, gets an answer to Paul Levy’s question about what T officials do with complaints posted daily on Boston-area blogs: Not a hell of a lot (then again, that’s hardly a policy change at the T):
When asked to comment on the blog, T spokesman Joe Pesaturo responded: “While blogs come and go, people will always be able to present comments and concerns directly to the T’s Customer Support Services.”
Oh, really? Let’s rewrite that statement a bit:
“While MBTA flacks come and go, people will always be able to have their comments and concerns ignored by the T’s Customer Support Services.”
I’ve had two successive days of bad luck. Yesterday, I arrived early for the 8am train (from Needham Heights). The LED sign announced the train was about twenty minutes late. Half an hour later, still no train. Finally, what was apparently the 8:23am train arrived about ten minutes late. That train, crowded on an ordinary day, was of course at double capacity and thus resembled one of those 1980’s “Aren’t you glad you used Dial? Don’t you wish everybody did?” commercials. The train stood motionless for about five minutes at each stop with no announcements as to what was going on. Finally, I arrived at work about an hour later than I expected.
Today’s train was a bit late and had no lights in any of the cars. A conductor informed me that yesterday’s delay was due to a locomotive that failed over the weekend but that the T had neglected to fix or replace it. According to the conductor, “they don’t want to pay overtime.” (He also mentioned that all of these service improvements were courtesy of the recent fare hikes.)