Thursday, January 10, 2008

Commuter Rail Delays = Not Just Because of the Weather

"Springtime in January" is how best to describe today's weather.

What does the weather have to do with the commuter rail trains? Well, usually most of the delays are because of the weather . . . too hot, too cold, too rainy, too windy, too snowy.

Well, for some riders on the Middleborough/Lakeville inbound train this morning, the weather had nothing to do with the delay (just to prove that crappy train delays aren't always caused by the weather).

My manager's train caught on fire this morning and they had to be moved to another train, which then broke down and then had to be pushed into Boston. Talk about a commute from hell.

Fortunately, I have yet to experience a fire on the Worcester-Framingham line. But the Middelborough/Lakeville peeps had a pretty lousy way to start their day.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This morning the 6:35 train out of Forge Park was canceled.

Then the 7:00 am train from Forge Park was delayed until 7:20 at which point it left Franklin pushing the 6:35 train ahead of it until it reached Franklin. At that point the train reversed and went back to Forge Park and it was announced to riders that this train was now canceled and the next train from Forge Park would be the 7:45 train.

So now we have 3 full train loads of people trying to get into Boston. Some have started their commute before 6:30 and will not reach Boston until after 9am, that’s 2:30 hours (one way). We have families, children, obligations., quality of living time away from work is severely impacted.

I don’t know how or if the trains finally ran because I ended up driving in and parking. My drive time was just under an hour at peak time (beats the train!)
Lucy - Norfolk MA (Franklin Line)

Train Rider said...

Lucy on the Franklin Line,

Ugh. That is a hellish commute. Believe me, I've been there and more times than I care to count. Most of the trains are completely dilapidated and need to be replaced. If I recall correctly, there's no big scale plan in place to do this until 2011? So, lucky us, we all get to suffer for 3 more years.

Isn't it awful that driving usually gets yet to Boston quicker, when it used to be the other way around? If it didn't cost around $35 daily to park near my office, I would do it more often.