Friday Madness

Well, I had a fun commute home today. Guess I was due for some T travail. You may have heard about the tunnel fire this afternoon (cranky grammarian note: I have no idea why Chinatown is spelled as two words in that story).

I left work early and was on my way home to tend to the dog because the Mrs. couldn't get away from work at her usual time. Everything was going smoothly, and I was on pace to make the 5:00 bus out of Wellington when my Orange Line train stopped at Back Bay and never left. The operator announced that the train was being held "by master control." That probably should have tipped me off that something was up. A few minutes later we learned that the delay was due to a fire in the tunnel.

Shortly after, the operator said that there was no Orange Line service in either direction between North Station and Back Bay, and started instructing people about alternate routes, like taking the 39 bus to get to Forest Hills. I had to laugh when she said to use the commuter rail to get to North Station, because the rail lines that go through Back Bay go into South Station, so there were kind of a few steps missing in that suggestion. I figured I would just stay put and wait for the trains to start moving again.

After about 20 minutes, I overheard a T police officer make a comment (to one person, not a general announcement) suggesting that it might be another 30 or 40 minutes before the trains were moving again. Had the operator announced that time frame earlier on, instead of just repeating the same instructions over and over in the same monotone, I might have changed my mind about waiting around.

I left Back Bay station and walked to Copley, where I joined approximately 75,000 other commuters trying to take the Green Line due to the Orange Line delay. Surprisingly, I was able to get onto maybe the third train to come through that was going to North Station. It was packed and overheated, but people seemed to be in good humor about the whole thing.

[Side note: wouldn't you think that after a century or so of the subway's existence, people would not have to be told to let passengers off the train before trying to board? Just saying.]

Eventually I made it to North Station, where I joined approximately 200,000 other commuters trying to get onto the now-restored Orange Line service. This scene was several orders of magnitude more chaotic; the northbound platform was so crowded that people were lined up on the steps waiting to get down onto it, and the line snaked all the way up to the mezzanine level.

I watched at least 25 people walk across from Green Line trains and try to head down the up escalator that comes up from the platform below. Maybe they thought the escalator would have been shut off to make getting down to the platform easier? (Come to think of it, that might have been a good idea.) I stayed off to one side and waited until a couple of trains had come through, and enough room had opened on the platform to allow people to move down onto it.

After that, there was a 10-minute wait for the next train, and of course I could not get on it. Another one followed shortly after, and there was enough room on that one. I made it to Wellington just in time to watch the 6:00 bus pull away. But hey, it's only 20 minutes between buses, as long as they're running on time and aren't delayed by traffic at Wellington Circle, or iffy winter road conditions.

Just another ordinary day on the T.

In case you're wondering, the next bus did show up when it was supposed to.