Grafton's Sir Loin's Catering Inauguration Day Treat for Commuters

Happy Inauguration Day. Regardless of your political beliefs, I hope you are amazed that the United States has this wonderful tradition of peaceful transitions.

To many people, today feels very celebratory. Grafton Station commuters were greeted with free hot chocolate handed out by Sir Loin's Catering. Thanks Jeff for this wonderful morning treat.

Even better - the P508 was on time today. We were at South Station around 8:20 am.

I heard a lot of grumbling on the train this morning about the commute yesterday morning. At least for the Worcester-Framingham line, it sounds like switching / maintenance problems caused a lot of the morning trains to be late. This article from today's Boston Globe noted that yesterday all the commuter rail lines, except for the Greenbush and the Middleborough-Lakeville lines, experienced delays ranging from 10 minutes to 40 minutes. The delays were "weather related."

Today's Patriot Ledger ran an article about how AIM Parking Management has filed a lawsuit against the MBTA's parking lot increase. So why would a parking management company care if the T raised the parking rates? Because they have more work to do, but aren't being compensated for it. How can their be more work? Because commuters are paying the increased rate either with more dollar bills or more coins AIM contends that they need more employees to process the parking fees. Also, the MBTA didn't notify AIM that the parking increase was going to go into effect until October 16th. On October 29th, the T told AIM AIM told the T "that the fee increase would essentially cause customers to deposit twice as many dollar bills and coins at the lots."

Good planning, huh?

Finally, today's Hartford Courant contained an interview with the state of Connecticut's DOT Commissioner Joseph Marie. Originally from Boston, Marie is a proponent of commuter rail systems.