This evening as I headed to catch the T at the Arlington stop (green line), I was met with a surprising sight: fire trucks, police cars, and an ambulance, oh my! I took a look at my watch: 5:05pm. Then I opened my eyes, my ears, and my camera phone, and here’s the scoop.

The first thing I heard was a fireman telling someone there was a small fire and it was under control. When I asked someone if there had actually been a fire I was told, “I can’t talk about it.” Alas, nobody wanted to blab. I was told that above ground service was still running, but that there was nothing coming from Kenmore to us. The police expected things to be running again in ten to fifteen minutes.

True to their word, the police let folks in at 5:15pm. I sniffed the air and looked around trying to detect some sign of fire but saw none as I headed down the tunnel. I did feel an unusual breeze, though, and I soon found out why. When I went down to the outbound platform I found the fans blowing, and the door to the construction site was open with police hanging out nearby. Then I spotted the fire extinguisher. If I had to guess, and again this is just a guess, there was some kind of small fire in the construction site. Nothing in the public area looked at all damaged, and even as one of the first people in I didn’t see or smell any smoke.

How was your ride home?

MBTA Musicians

There I am, wondering if I am Outbound or Inbound on the Red Line, lost and annoyed.

Before I could pop a fuse and miss my chance to chat with Fouad Siniora, through the air came a calming influence.

It was a old time band, picking and playing with fun and love - perfect to forget my anger and tap my feet with joy. While they weren’t Jimi Hendrix level like the title of this post, they did suit the place and my new mood perfectly.

Thank you random musicians. Yeah, sing on brother, play on drummer.

While some folks are thinking of boycotting the T, I’m just trying to figure the damn thing out, especially the whole Inbound/Outbound thing. Exactly where on this MBTA Red Line map do I magically switch from being “Inbound” to “Outbound”?

When I got on at South Street Station, headed to Harvard, I thought I was “Outbound”, headed out of Boston to Cambridge.

Yeah, at U Mass, I noticed that I was the wrong “bound.”

When I was in high school, after I got my driver’s license, my parents starting allowing me to go into Boston without adult supervision. I would drive to Riverside or Woodland and take the Green Line in, or the commuter rail from Walpole and get on the Red Line to go to Harvard Square. Mostly I went with friends, and with our combined powers, we were mostly able to figure out where we were and how to get to where we wanted (usually either Quincy Market or Harvard Sq.).
However, there were a few times that I went in completely by myself, and I would get so confused. Generally what screwed me up was the inbound/outbound dilemma. Sometimes you need to go inbound to go outbound, if you know what I mean. Once on the Red Line I screwed up royally and ended up in Kendall. No idea what I did, except I knew that it was wrong, and had to ask the lady behind the bullet-proof glass what to do.
I think the T is confusing, and I’ve helped many a tourist with a blank look on their face as they tried to figure out what to do and where to go. I found the subway systems in New York, Washington, London, Paris, Madrid and Berlin to be easy-peasy in comparision to navigating the T. It’s hard because the T is the oldest subway system in the country, but I would love to see it cleaned up and look like the D.C. Metro, which is gorgeous. I find the T to be dirty and rather depressing.
On a different note, did you all know there used to be an A line of the Green Line? It ran down Brighton Ave. - there’s concrete islands there right now. I looked it up, and I can’t remember why they stopped using it. I think it wasn’t generating enough money, or something, I’m not entirely sure why. I wish they would bring it back, though - then I would probably live a lot closer to the T than I do now. The B-line at Packard’s Corner is probably the closest to where I live, but it’s still a lengthy walk.