Kenmore Square T-Stop – Where trolleys go to die
I ambled down to the Kenmore Square T-stop at 9.30 this morning. I noticed an unusually large gathering of commuters on the inbound platform, not really a large number of commuters, per se, just more than you would expect at that time of the day. The thing with the Green Line is that you never really know when a trolley is going to show up. The beauty of the Kenmore Square stop is that you get to pick from three merging lines (B, C, and D), so there’s always a good chance you’ll get a ride without having to wait more than ten minutes. When a trolley broke down and was taken out of service at KSTS earlier this week, it wasn’t that big of a deal, because another trolley was right behind it. This morning, however, thing played out a little bit differently.
Minutes ticked by and no trolley showed up. Then, at about 9.47 a two-car trolley packed with people rolled in. The number of people on the platform had grown and I resigned myself to the fact that I probably would not be able to get on the trolley. But then the doors opened and people streamed out as if they were going to a Red Sox game. Unfortunately, almost nobody was actually leaving the platform and I realized that the trolley had been taken out of service. A german (my guess) standing next to me confirmed my suspicion.
A brusque T-guy yelled at people to get out of the car – almost as if they were at Park Street, in a car marked Government Center – but that there’s another trolley right behind the broken down one. Well, yes, there was, only it, too, was chockful with passengers. To top it off, it had only one car. You do the math: One car load plus two car loads plus one quarter car-load equals…more than one car can hold.
So I left to flag down a cab instead. On my way out I asked the guy in the both where my refund was. He gave me a complaint form to fill out and mail, no postage required. It’s a nice little form and I am confident I sahll recover my one dollar and twenty-five cents. I do wish, however, that they had made room on it for profane comments.
