Stamford Talk fessed up to the catalyst for her blogging career this morning, so I figured I would share mine…
When I first moved to Fairfield County and started taking Metro-North (my first adult foray into regular public transportation), I was surprised at how bad Metro-North was (New Haven Line).
The cars are gross.
The A/C doesnt work.
The toilets stink.
There aren’t enough cars and seats.
There are no (few) electronic signs to tell you when the next train is.
There wasn’t even a f***ing schedule posted at the train station (about a year later, I found it).
Their website looks like it was designed in 1994.
And was completely unusable on a cell phone.
Weather protection and amenities at stops range from lavish to savage (most the latter).
MTA enforces their copyright on maps stringently, so distribution sucks.
People who take pictures of anything owned by Metro-North are endlessly and needlessly harassed.
Money is misspent.
Money is overspent.
Fare hike improvements evaporate as soon as the hikes are approved.
MTA is the radioactive spider which bit my hand a year ago and gave me my blogging super-powers.
However, I don’t know for how much longer.
Its clear to me that MTA is an immovable object.
Writing about it just depresses me.
Rather than being the world-leading transportation system it should be, it struggles to stay 15 years behind beautiful, efficient, clean, fast, and expertly managed systems in Europe and Asia.
3 responses so far ↓
1 bobby // Jul 29, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Unlike Europe, America treats its rail system like a red headed step child. Our leaders would much rather dump tax dollars into subsidizing airlines and highways. I’m not saying that millions aren’t spent… and wasted, I’m just saying “you get what you pay for.”
In defense of Metro North, there has been a dramatic improvement in the railroad’s infrastructure over the past 25 years. Just ask anyone who commuted 20 years ago. Is there room for improvement? Certainly.
2 Chris (Admin) // Jul 29, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Well, the thing is bad money chases bad money.
You rebuild MTA into an organization that actually has vision beyond a decent on-time schedule and debt pile, and the financing will follow.
I guess its a chicken and egg problem.
3 Stamford Talk // Jul 29, 2008 at 4:32 pm
It really is interesting to see the different reasons we blog and/or started to blog. Sounds like you and I were both dissatisfied with something and decided to learn more about it. And, I think we both wanted to share info with others.
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