BadTransit notes all the MBTA buses catching fire of late:

That's 4 buses in the past 5 weeks. We'd call that a bit terrifying.

At the same time, one of the companies that makes T buses might be about to go bankrupt.

Filmgirl99 is waiting at the Fenway commuter stop when the train comes barrelling through and doesn't stop - again:

... The MBTA service is getting worse and worse these past couple of months. Usually they just try to avoid picking up passengers, by having the same bitchy conductress yell impatiently through the loudspeakers that there's another train coming right behind this one. She knows it's a lie; we know it's a lie. And yet she does it just about every day anyway.

Newly arrived from California, Susan quickly gets lessons in how http://adam.rosi-kessel.org/weblog/boston/boston_v...">our fair state's insurance and mass-transit systems really work. First, she's forced to lie about where she got her car, because it was a gift from her aunt and the official form for insurance doesn't list "aunt" as a family member from whom gifts are acceptable:

So the T had to do some maintenance work on the Orange Line over the weekend (next weekend, too) that involved shutting down one track and stopping northbound service at Downtown Crossing. You'd think that since this was planned they could post signs at the entrances to the affected stations - and give T workers the right shuttle information to give riders, right? Hey, this is the T we're talking about. What do you think?

GottaBeVickey reports:

When I reached Downtown Crossing to take the Orange Line for Sulivan Square, the T Staff said the line was not working and there were shuttle buses at Park Street. I walked to Park Street but no signs of buses. Then I called up T. They said the same thing. Then I went to the station underground and the staff was directing everyone to take the Green Line to Haymarket station where the shuttle buses were. ...

Raymo discovers the problem after entering Haymarket:

... What bothers me is they couldn't even tell me upfront at Haymarket that the train was running oddly. They just told me to go to Park St. and pick up the train there. Also, they couldn't just put up a sign (even just a quickly scrawled one taped to the collector's booth) at the entrance to the station telling me that I couldn't take the orange line from there. ...

J.M. also ran into the Orange Line non-service:

... The worst part is that there's little to no signage at street level to tell you what's going on between Downtown Crossing and Haymarket, either. No T employees, either. And when you finally get to Downtown Crossing, you don't find out that they're using the inbound side to get people on the trains until you get down to the outbound side and see all the yellow tape. ...

It was all enough to make Pelican declare enough is enough:

... This debacle coupled with the generally shitty service, delays (I shouldn't have to allot one hour to take the T from Stony Brook to Chinatown or Downtown Crossing), messy cars, unintelligible loudspeakers, delays, busses that don't arrive and then when they do there are three one after another (nod to No. 39), poorly maintained stations, absolutely no coherent signs (why are there still those signs from the DNC still stuck to station walls?), and more delays have made me want to have a city-wide conversation about the T. I hear proposed lines are being cut (Silver), nothing is done about the mess in JP with the busses vs. Green Line extension, and no one seems happy. Is it time to talk about the elephant in the room?

Special bonus Orange Line photo bonanza: Please, be gentle.

Nervous Maverick wishes the T would take all the money it's spending on security-awareness pamphlets and use it for actual security: