MTA vs. Boston

[mindstalk]

Obvious: many more lines, more frequently.

Lots of schedule complexity; supposedly people actually are addressing the "MTA falling apart" problem, but in the short term the solution for that (closures, rerouting, and delays) looks much like the problem (closures, rerouting, and delays.)

No phone signal in the tunnels. OTOH, wifi. It wasn't that solid the one time I tried and I didn't need it, plenty of reading material on my phone. Though it'd be good when you need to re-check your navigation, or communicated with people (via something other than SMS.)

Lots of different car types, none with a simple printed line map as are universal in Boston cars. Some did have an electronic line map that shows where you are and where you're going -- very nice, if you're in the right place to see it.

I never noticed the announcers announcing the wrong station, as is ubiquitous on the Boston red line.

Fares: in Boston, it takes 5 round trips for a 7 day pass to pay for itself, or 4 if you're comparing to using CharlieTickets instead of CharlieCards. For a monthly pass, 19 or 16 round trips. In NY a 7 day pass needs 6 round trips, and a 30 day pass 22. Also, the 7 day pass expires at midnight, whereas Boston passes are timed so you get a full 24x7 hours from first use.

Comments

[mtbc]

I never noticed the announcers announcing the wrong station, as is ubiquitous on the Boston red line.

— Ha, they still do that? I thought they might have fixed it in the several years since I much used it, especially given the impact on those with poor sight!

[mindstalk]

Ayep. You'd think someone would want to fix it in the 7 years that I've been here, but nope.

Poor sight: the actual human does tend to follow up with the correct stop, though often less intelligibly.

[brainwane]

Lots of different car types, none with a simple printed line map as are universal in Boston cars.

I don't know whether you saw that, on some lines, the cars have an older-style pre-printed line map with bulbs that light up to indicate stations still to come.

What are the effective hours on the T? In NYC there are several subway lines that simply never stop running, 24/7, although frequency slows in the very late night/early morning.

[mindstalk]

The bulb thing is what I called an electronic line map.

Last T trains are before 1am. Yeah, having some 24-hour service is a rare feature of NYC; the only other one I know of is some lines in Chicago (Red, Blue, maybe Green, certainly not Brown when I lived there.) The usual explanation is that only NYC has enough spare track to shunt running trains around while doing maintenance (I dunno Chicago's explanation, though much of the Red Line has extra track due to parallel lines.)

Of course, the L line I was staying along was shut down at 11:30pm for a week for work. I avoided seeing how long the replacement shuttle buses could take.