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Historic Boylston trolley spray painted again
By adamg on Tue, 11/21/2023 - 1:59pm
A roving UHub photographer reports somebody got past the fences at Boylston and tagged up the PCC trolley sitting there - just like somebody did back in 2014.
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Comments
Hmm
Over the week I on the Northern Strand path in Everett. It goes under a bridge next to some MBTA tracks. There was a pair of kids tagging a MBTA dumpster fright car. I considered calling the police but since it was already tagged and it wasn't a revenue vehicle, I didn't. I wish I had.
Almost certainly not the same taggers but still, it would have felt better in light of this story.
Security cameras
What would a set of security cameras there cost?
Often TPD has good images of people entering and leaving the station. Where are they coming from here? Getting in down at Pleasant St and walking the old tunnel?
Motion sensors too
Given the area where the historic cars are kept isn't used for anything else, it should just set off an alarm at TPD HQ whenever someone is near the trains.
Might be difficult
To separate that from the people in Boylston who are just T riders.
The real shame is that if this were in Chicago or New York these would be in working order and taken out on the mainline for special occasions. I guess those agencies are run marginally better than the T.
San Francisco has a line, the
San Francisco has a line, the F-Market, that runs historic cars on a daily basis, including I believe some old Green Line trolleys.
.
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It isn't the Park Service.
It isn't the Park Service. They don't own any land/property downtown and only own 30 acres in the yard and another 11 up at Bunker Hill plus however large Dorchester Heights is.
This would be under either DCR, Boston Parks, National Landmarks, or Boston Landmarks.
You’re wrong about the cameras.
There are many cameras in and around Boylston. Just look at the rear end accident a decade ago. And the historic agency is the National Register of Historic Places. They said Boylston wouldn’t be touched as a compromise to renovating Park St years ago to make it ADA compliant. Only so much can be done or they’ll lose their landmark status.
You mean, like, this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Lg7mCnrII
You’re wrong about the cameras.
There are many cameras in and around Boylston. Just look at the rear end accident a decade ago. And the historic agency is the National Register of Historic Places. They said Boylston wouldn’t be touched as a compromise to renovating Park St years ago to make it ADA compliant. Only so much can be done or they’ll lose their landmark status.
This is an aggressively incorrect post.
Your statement about cameras is easily disproven by footage of incidents that have been posted on local news stations. Cameras from 2004 are no longer functional for security, and have been replaced/uograded/expanded.
The national park service doesn’t own the area. The most obvious sign of this is that they don’t patrol it.
One P Key to rule them all.
I’m told that the P key is the most circulated key in the city, and it opens EVERY station and every secure area in the entire system.
Ten years ago vandalism was taken seriously
Today the Transit Police ignore quality of life issues like no smoking, fare evasion and graffiti. The Dorchester Reporter recently did a story about vandalism on the MBTA by community activist Bill Walczak who chastises the DOT for not addressing the vandalism problems in the city.
We once dealt with an
We once dealt with an (isolated) incident of a brick wall having "FUCK BITCHES" spray painted on a brick wall by our HOA swimming pool. What was most alarming was the reaction by HOA board members who instantly interpreted the graffiti as possible "gang signs" and saw the graffiti as a security threat, prompting the installation of large floodlights all around the pool. The graffiti itself wasn't a scribble but was in that bubble font with the letters filled with different colors and some other patterns in the background. You might call it art.
My point is I think a lot of graffiti is done by bored kids who see a bare wall and think it's "boring" and in good faith feel like their graffiti is public art which improves the area around it. Kids like that aren't attentive to ramifications which makes the crime harder to prevent.
I have no idea what the solution is. The state has tried to ban sales of spray paint to minors in the past, but those efforts die off without the bills coming to a vote.
Ah yes, the notorious FUCK
Ah yes, the notorious FUCK BITCHES Gang, a widespread social problem in the minds of people who don't get out very much.
Not Just Tagging
Tim Murphy reports that people having been sleeping in there too.
This trolley and the Type 4 behind it are the property of the Seashore Trolley Museum and not the T by the way.
We are one homeless person from lighting a fire in one of these before we have 3 days of Herald headlines about how the world in ending so we should elect Scott Brown to something.
Maybe this is common
Maybe this is common knowledge in which case I guess I was sick in school that day: why are these cars parked at a working T station instead of at the Seashore Trolley Museum?
Magoo sez
This makes Magoo a sad pineapple. :-( Magoo.
Time for a different solution.
A giant snare net. Punishment is 150 hours of cleaning T stations.
150 hours
Of cleaning MBTA elevators...
Oh
you mean the station urinals?
Pointless antisocial behavior
It's stuff like this that wears people down about the lack of fucks anyone else in the city gives. Theft, mugging, drug dealers shooting each other, all of those, while obviously illegal, and antisocial, and behavior that nobody wants to deal with.... is behavior with a logical motivation: money. So in theory, it's all behavior that possibly could be fixed. Could we pay drug dealers to stay home instead? Maybe! There's hope we can throw money at problems and increase everyone's quality of life.
Nobody is getting anything out of defacing a nice bit of history on display except the sheer joy of fucking it up and ruining it for others. How do we fix this? How do you solve behavior with no motivation except just being an asshole for assholism's sake?