Regarding Yesterday’s Adventure

I’m thinking it might work best as a series of posts on specific elements, observations, and so forth.  Like riding the commuter rail from Lakeville to South Station, and back.  Which was great, and I can see doing regularly, as well as taking the kids on sometime just because.

I confirmed you can indeed pay cash on the train, rather than going to an out of the way store and buying tickets from a bored clerk.  Apparently there is no surcharge, either.  There are bathrooms on the trains, though I didn’t check them out myself.

Parking seems to be adequate, at almost 900 spaces.

The trains are comfortable.  It was more so on the way in, and I am not sure how much of that was being on lower versus upper deck, versus any differences in the track or driving style.  It was less smooth farther north.

On the way in, they collected tickets and fares after each initial stop, and left a cardboard marker on the back of each seat for each person who’d paid.  Once they were north of a certain point, I think where it starts to double as part of the T, they took the markers and didn’t do any further collecting, etc.  On the way south, the only time they did any of that was at South Station, though I would presume in theory people could get on at, say, Montello and go south to, say, Lakeville or Bridgewater.  It struck me as relatively easy for someone to bypass paying a fare, at least selectively, but probably not worth the effort and schedule disruption it would take to avoid any free riders.

North ran precisely on time.  South rand a few minutes slow and you could tell it was happening, because it crawled what seemed painfully slow in places it shouldn’t have, apparently due to rail traffic flow.

I forgot to grab a book, but it worked out between the first timer looking out the window factor and the Blackberry, which had good reception every time I checked going in, and most of the way coming out.  I can see wanting a book or laptop or such if it were a regular thing.

The trains weren’t at all crowded.  It was one person to a seat except by choice, and many seats empty.

At South Station and especially Lakeville, there was plenty of time to board.  In the morning they seemed to go out of their way to wait for people to walk in from the parking.  At the other stops, if you weren’t by the track ready to step through a door, you might have been left behind.  Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

Being early for parking insurance is fine, but if I do it again, I’ll sit in the car until it’s almost time for the train to arrive.  It was cold.

The view was cool, because it’s a completely different perspective.  You see everything from the roads all the time.

I guess that about covers it.

Posted by on 04/01 at 11:18 AM

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