MBTA’s MOST WANTED

This is not another “ride a bike, save the environment” blog post.

Last Thursday, the weather was miserable, and I did not feel like riding my bike only to soak myself in the rain. I live near Packard’s Corner, so catching the T seemed to be my best option. I hopped on when all the doors opened.

I am a talented fare evader. My specific technique is (when all the doors open) jumping in through the back door, but not leaving the extended archway area. This renders me completely invisible to the driver. He never saw me enter, and will not see me exit. Metaphysically, you might say, I never existed at all, and therefore am not stealing from anyone. I am a tree, falling in the forest, with no one there to charge me $2 to be taken down the road.

Of course, sometimes only the front door of the T opens. Oft times money collectors are broken in some way, and conveniently, that’s the only way I can pay. If they don’t take dollar bills? Sorry! I just got off work at the strip club. If the coin machine is down? Whoops! It’s all I have left over from laundry day. The card sensor is broken? Well hot damn, I’m out of cash with only my Charlie card to get me home.

In the rarest of occasions, everything is working fine. In this case, I carry a demagnetized T pass which I swipe several times, feigning ignorance at why the reader doesn’t react. In my experience most T drivers don’t care. They are going down the line either way.

I guess that saved hundreds of dollars over the past couple of years, which I think is only fair considering the rate at which the T accidentally eats 20-dollar bills, in which case the driver makes the irate traveler, now $20 poorer, fill out a form, call the MBTA, and in 6 months, they might send you a T pass with $18.30 on it. If they remember.

I have been that person.

Anyway, back to last Thursday. All of the trolley doors opened and, while avoiding the rain and the fare, I skipped on. I leaned against the archway and clicked on my new iPod. The doors closed, and the T rolled.

Ninety seconds or so later a man in his 30s in blue pants and a vest, with an Aeropostale hat with a pre-frayed brim, sidled up to me. He pulls his ear buds out of his ears to ask me something.

“Excuse me,” he said, kindly. I pulled my ear buds out to hear him. I assumed he wanted directions or something. The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a badge.

“Do you have a T-pass?” I read the small print on the badge now dangling proudly around the man’s neck. It read “TRANSIT POLICE.” I’m dumbfounded, too shocked to speak.

The officer questioned me about how much money is on my T-pass, where I lived and where I was going. I was too confused at the scene to lie to him. I felt as though I was at the dentist’s office, and after being dowsed with laughing gas, could only tell the truth. He wrote my information down on a thin sheet of paper.

The cop waived his hand toward the rear of the car and a heavyset man in a Patriots sweatshirt waddled toward us. He too pulled his ear buds out of his ears before speaking. The two cops chatted with each other about citations, or group showers, or something, as officer No. 1 finished scribbling on the paper.

Eventually my brain started working again, and I choked out a protest.

“It’s raining. All the doors opened. Sometimes the drivers want to speed things along. Out of convenience.”

The fellow standing next to me, with a smarmy grin and blond spiked hair chimed in.

“They open all doors as a courtesy, and it’s your job to be courteous and to go up and pay your fare.”

I thought this fellow was simply a professional a-hole, but as it turned out, he was a cop, too. The three of them chatted in a group as I scanned the rest of the T-car looking for other people that could be undercover cops.

I wondered if there was a poster of me in the police statio: MBTA’s MOST WANTED. I thought everyone on the T was a cop. I was the victim of a sting operation.

Cop No. 1 returned his attention to me. “I’m going to give you a citation for fare evasion.” He handed me the slip of paper, a bill for $15.

The only thing I could say was, “Fine,” and I turned my iPod back on. The triad of police officers got off at the next stop… primed to ruin someone else’s day.

The MBTA is using a broken system to fix a broken system. It’s giving more people free rides on the T than sneak on, and I have supreme doubts that this tactic of citing fare evaders is cost effective. It’s a scare tactic. They want kids like me to stop sneaking on the T, and then tell our friends to do the same.

I won’t do that. They upped the ante, so now I must become a smarter criminal.

I lived in Boston when the Green Line was free above ground going outbound, and five quarters going inbound. OK, prices rise with the times, but, in 2007 the MBTA traded in-place, reusable coin currency for cumbersome paper tickets that litter every T-stop.

Furthermore, the stops are spaced so closely together, a relic from when ladies in petticoats couldn’t bring themselves to walk an extra block, that the Green Line must be one of the least efficient public transit systems in America. The B Line is by far the worst offender. At least half of the stops on the B are not needed. Blandford Street, BU Central, St. Paul Street, Pleasant Street and Brighton Ave. are the useless stops just on BU’s campus. If the T were more efficient, logically, more people would take it. Less upkeep is needed for fewer stations, and the MBTA would not have to pay police to give out $15 tickets.

If these officers get paid MINIMUM WAGE, and there are 3 of them on each T, they’d have to give out 1.5 tickets an hour to pay back their own salaries. My guess is that our good officer friends make at least double that. Which for us means 3 tickets an hour, or a ticket every 20 minutes. My ticket alone took 20 minutes to issue. The MBTA is fighting a losing battle at the expense of everyone and their happiness.

So I implore the good folk of Boston, those who ride the B Line especially, to boycott the T. Sneak on. Lie to the police. Write the MBTA and show that what it’s doing is not working.

Send the message loud and clear.