Bus Stop Musings

When you ride the T regularly, at some point you will be faced with the dilemma of having to choose between two different routes to the same destination, and woe is you if you make the wrong choice. T riders live in dread of making the wrong choice.

Today I went to do a couple of errands in the Prudential Center at lunch, and when I was ready to head back to work, I realized I could either take the 39 bus or the E line down Huntington Avenue to Brigham Circle. I tend to prefer taking the bus along this corridor, mostly because I find the stops to be situated more conveniently for my purposes; because it seems like the bus moves faster (even if it's only an illusion); and also because of my long-standing hatred of all things Green Line, going back to my BU days in the 80's, when I rode and loathed the B line.

So I opted to wait for the bus, which today was the wrong choice. As I stood watching for a 39 bus coming west down Huntington, three buses came from the other direction and made the turn onto Dalton Street within about two minutes of each other. This was a clear warning that I should go down into Prudential station and wait for an E train, because it was going to take at least 15 minutes for the first of those buses to make its way to Back Bay station, discharge its passengers, pick up new passengers, and make its way back around to where I was standing.

For some reason, this warning did not register in my brain. Perhaps I was addled by the heat, but I can't say for sure. (You'd think the heat would have been enough reason for me to opt not to stand around outside waiting for a bus.) I naively hoped that another bus was already on its way from Back Bay, but of course it wasn't.

When you're waiting around for 20 minutes or so, you have time to think about ways the T could do better. Like GPS. The buses are already equipped with it, but it's only used for the stop announcements. How idiotic is that? How hard could it be to come up with some sort of a readout on the bus stop sign posts that indicates how long until the next bus comes? Because, you know, that's information that might actually be useful to someone.

I went to London 20 years ago, and even back then the Tube stations had signs indicating how many minutes until the next train arrived, so I know it's technologically possible, but it would imply a level of accountability that the T is too gutless to undertake. Or they would say, "Oh, that would cost too much." And how much did the new fare collection system cost? The one that allows more fare evasion than before?