Rider rage [Wednesday 28]

My commute yesterday took an hour and fourty minutes (which while actually is a gazillion minutes, is mathematically closer to like, 105 minutes) when on a normal day it takes 35-40 minutes. I brag around once in a while how my commute is 35 mins at best and 55 at the worst. Yesterday was... quite something. It was on the way back. It was raining, so I already knew things were gonna be all fucked up. The maps apps told me the previous bus had been like 10 minutes late, which in MBTA parlance is the bus actually coming BEFORE it's due, so I didn't get too hot and bothered by that. Then the counting began, We skipped pass three scheduled buss arrivals, and there still was no sign of a bus. Finally, on the 35-ish minute waiting mark [it was raining outside, I didn't have an umbrella, and the rain protection at the stop was pretty bad, so I was wet as a smelly dog from waist downwards] a steamy icky bus finally rolls in. There's a rush to get in, and somehow I make in, though at that time I was convinced that I'd have to spend the rest of my life there in the Sullivan Station parking lot getting ready for retirement etcetera. We get in, and then the bus barely moves after, because it's raining and the traffic is so bad. We push through, and make halfway through our way, and then the bus stops. For, like a really long time. Like...long time even by Somerville traffic-stop standards. Then people start leaving the bus from the front, and everyone starts wondering loudly what's up so the driver finally tells us the bus is broken af. And it's still raining and hot and humid outside. So we...get out of the bus, and walk in the rain for like ten minutes until the next bus stop. And wait for another fifteen whatever minutes for yet another bus, that was also overflowing with people. On the way home, I see three fking buses of the same route in the other direction driving behind one another, and I was seething like a pot of boiling...bus...material...aluminum. And of course there was still the four minute walk home in the rain after I got off the bus, which was pleasant as ever. Goood times. Goood goood times.

It's just RAAAIIN people, we've had it for years! Like hundreds of years even! WE have the tEcHnOLoGy to deal with a bit of humidity and rain you know? And it's bOsToN where it rains regularly --- often, I might say -- so we should have a better way of dealing with traffic issues when it's raining and not just pretend it's like a natural disaster the likes of which we've never seen before. Yeaa the roads are slipperier, but that doesn't mean the entire public transport infrastructure has to shut down for that!

In semi-related news, Somerville is actively working towards creating bus lanes (bus-exclusive lanes) on busy streets, so I'm excited about how that's going to make the commute a lot more predictable and likely a bit shorter. It's not going to end all of everyone's public-transport woes, but it's a great start and they should just get on it, right now, right here, chop chop!