Notes from Howard's Sabbatical from Working. The name comes from a 1998 lunch conversation. Someone asked if everything man knew was on the web. I answered "no" and off the top of my head said "Fidel Castro's favorite color". About every 6-12 months I've searched for this. It doesn't show up in the first 50 Google results (this blog is finally first for that search), AskJeeves says it's: red.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Boston T-Time
Stonebrown Design in Boston T-Time tries to reimagine the T Map to show travel times and discusses the limitations.
Okay, so as you know my family and I visited Boston last week. We took the T into town from Brookline (Green Line from Coolidge Corner area) and overall I'd say it was successful and much better than driving. I've been on the T before and enjoy using it, but my family was not sold on it, for one specific reason. there is a glaring omission on the MTSA's in-car subway maps that caused us to have to change trains three times to get home.
Here's the story. We were at the Science Center. We picked up the green line at Science Park. After the first stop it dawned on me that we needed to know which of the four outbound green line branches we were on in order to get back to Coolidge corner. The problem was that a)there is no "route letter" posted inside any of the cars, and b)the recorded announcements kept saying "this train's destination is Heath Street". Well, the map on this blog posting clearly shows Heath street as the end of Route E (the wrong route). However the in-car maps don't show anything past (if I recall correctly) Longwood Circle.
So, as soon as the train left Copley station and the announcer said the next stop was Prudential, I knew we were on the wrong one. So I got my family off, and we reversed direction back to Copely. When we got back there, I saw a sign on the platform that said "for outbound B,C, or D green line, head to Arlington and grab the correct train. So we had to go further back inbound, then to Arlington, where we waited for the next 5 trains until a C line came by. Needless to say my wife and kids were cranky after that.
Yeah, not checking the letter of the Green Line train you get on before you get on it, is a mistake you make exactly once.
I'm not sure about the in car map not showing the end of the route as Heath, but I agree it would be better if the announcer said "This is a green line E train ending at Heath".
Now the MBTA is talking about getting sponsorships for the stations. So conceivably instead of getting off at Ruggles, you could want to get off at Pringles.
2 comments:
Okay, so as you know my family and I visited Boston last week. We took the T into town from Brookline (Green Line from Coolidge Corner area) and overall I'd say it was successful and much better than driving. I've been on the T before and enjoy using it, but my family was not sold on it, for one specific reason. there is a glaring omission on the MTSA's in-car subway maps that caused us to have to change trains three times to get home.
Here's the story. We were at the Science Center. We picked up the green line at Science Park. After the first stop it dawned on me that we needed to know which of the four outbound green line branches we were on in order to get back to Coolidge corner. The problem was that a)there is no "route letter" posted inside any of the cars, and b)the recorded announcements kept saying "this train's destination is Heath Street". Well, the map on this blog posting clearly shows Heath street as the end of Route E (the wrong route). However the in-car maps don't show anything past (if I recall correctly) Longwood Circle.
So, as soon as the train left Copley station and the announcer said the next stop was Prudential, I knew we were on the wrong one. So I got my family off, and we reversed direction back to Copely. When we got back there, I saw a sign on the platform that said "for outbound B,C, or D green line, head to Arlington and grab the correct train. So we had to go further back inbound, then to Arlington, where we waited for the next 5 trains until a C line came by. Needless to say my wife and kids were cranky after that.
Yeah, not checking the letter of the Green Line train you get on before you get on it, is a mistake you make exactly once.
I'm not sure about the in car map not showing the end of the route as Heath, but I agree it would be better if the announcer said "This is a green line E train ending at Heath".
Now the MBTA is talking about getting sponsorships for the stations. So conceivably instead of getting off at Ruggles, you could want to get off at Pringles.
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