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Plucky reporter joins nightly Running of the Commuters at Westwood station
By adamg on Fri, 01/19/2018 - 9:40am
WBZ's Ryan Kath runs alongside the sprinting commuters at the Westwood/128 station, as they try to get to their cars and to the furshlugginer exit gates that now routinely keep people trapped inside the garage for 20 minutes every evening.
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Comments
128
I've had the same issue, the gate wouldn't open for me and there's no attendant so you're stuck.. The gate does stay up long enough for two cars to pass through if you're quick with the gas pedal. Even before the garage was built it was the daily 100m dash to the cars, to get on Rt 128 the quickest.
I spent a few months
Working in the office park across the street. That exit looked like the ninth circle of hell.
Also, this
When I go to In-N-Out Burger on my California visits, they send an employee through the line to take my order instead of waiting until I get to the order box, because they can prepare burgers and fries faster than I can get my car to the box, and they recognize this.
EDIT: Free market rhetoric removed when I read on and found that a private contractor runs the garage.
lol
government owned process is shitty: PISH TOSH, TO BE EXPECTED, IF ONLY THE FREE MARKET WAS ALLOWED TO DO ITS MAGIC, AS ALL PRIVATE COMPANIES OPERATE AT ONLY THE MOST EFFICIENT, IN ORDER TO COMPETE, WHERE THEY ARE THE ONLY GARAGE AT THAT STATION AND HAVE NO MOTIVATION, BUT BUT FREE MARKET!!!!!!
private business is shitty: no comment.
I don't need to comment on private business
They don't rob me at gunpoint.
"The I-Team asked why the
"The I-Team asked why the garage doesn’t dedicate one lane to credit card payments and the remaining lanes to EZPass transactions, eliminating the need for every customer to show a ticket at the exit.
Pesaturo said the MBTA is reviewing that idea as an option."
Why are we being asked to give this agency more money again?
So they have people that aren
So they have people that aren't running around from crisis to crisis and actually have time to think and examine things and create real solutions. When you're understaffed, all you can do is try to keep the systems you have running, you don't have the person-hours to re-jigger anything
The Inverse Train Sprint
Even at stations without payment and gates there is a mad dash when the train doors open. People want to be the first home and the first out of the lot. No one wants to wait an extra 20 seconds to let people pull out of spots.
That's true in every state I've worked. It's pretty funny seeing these people in business attire running as if the train is about to explode.
The same thing happens as morning trains pull into North/South stations -- people race down the platform to get into the building first.
I *have* to do this if train is late
I sometimes have to do the sprint (in business attire) if the train is late. I often have a daycare pickup to get to - 1 second after the appointed time and the doors automatically lock and I'm hit with a monetary penalty. If I am not close to first out of this particular lot (the way it is configured - there are no gates), it can cost me enough time (on the order of 3-5 minutes - much more than 20s) to make me late for the pickup.
Believe me when I tell you that I'm not doing the sprint because I want to be first. I would much rather take a leisurely stroll off the train to my waiting bicycle (which I do when I don't have to drive to the station because of the daycare pick) than charge through a parking lot with ice, idiot drivers and other obstacles.