More than 100 Allston-Brighton residents voiced overwhelming opposition to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s upcoming six-month trial removal of four B-line T stops at a meeting to discuss the issue Tuesday night.
The trial is an attempt to ‘improve efficiency, decrease trip time and increase customer satisfaction,’ MBTA officials said. The ‘pilot program,’ as it was called by Green Line Chief Brian Dwyer, was the final of four programs created in response to customer complaints about the slow downtown commute. The pilot program would remove the Greycliff Road, Mount Hood Road, Summit Avenue and Washington Street T stops.
Many people at the meeting scoffed at the allowance of Boston University East and Central stops, despite their close proximity to one another, and said the commute slowdown was specifically due to the heavy traffic and excess in stops on the BU campus.
Dwyer said the stops chosen were targeted because of their ‘low ridership.’ The stop trial removals, which would begin in December, would theoretically benefit 90 percent of Green Line customers and cut the downtown commute by two and a half minutes.
But in response to that information, the crowd laughed and shouted. One elderly woman murmured to her friend, ‘It’s a joke,’ and another young woman shouted to the MBTA officials, ‘That’s two and a half minutes off a 45-minute commute!’
Although the audience agreed that travel time is too long into downtown Boston via the B-line, only three people voiced approval of the pilot program.
A decrease in halts would save time and, because of the alleged few riders at the stops MBTA is proposing to cut, Dwyer said, no extra time would be lost waiting for the combined groups waiting at intermediary stops. Dwyer said eliminating stops from highly trafficked areas, such as the BU campus, would only clump riders into enormous groups, making boarding time longer than before.
But residents still would not buy it.
‘Why are you looking toward the tax payers of Brighton and not the students?’ Brighton resident Michael Pier asked the MBTA officials.
Dwyer stressed the solution had nothing to do with demographics and socioeconomic circumstances, but with ‘ridership.’ He said the targeted stops had the fewest riders, and were therefore the most expendable. Despite their expendability, members of the audience argued, the program will be ineffectual if the areas responsible for the delays are not directly addressed.
Mary Chen said she had resigned herself to the hour-long commute into downtown Boston until late in December, when she realized the trip had shortened to 40 minutes. She said, ‘I realized that it was the day after finals.’ Her finger, pointed directly at the BU campus, echoed the sentiments of nearly all the audience members.
Rona Crystal and her mother, Sylvia, are both senior citizens who live off of the Washington Street stop and said they will be concerned for their safety when the stops, which are along the steep slope of a hill that is slick with snow and ice during the winter, are removed. Both women said the augmented distance between stops, the farthest being 0.53 miles, would be a serious safety hazard.
‘Absentee landlords who do not shovel sidewalks present a serious danger,’ Rona Crystal said.
Sylvia Crystal also said the Brighton population along the stops is largely comprised of the elderly and young parents.
‘You have not stopped to think of the type of people that live at these stops,’ she said.
Others added that the removal of the stops just prior to the winter season starts is an untimely decision.
Native Brighton resident, retired judge and former Allston-Brighton state representative Norman Weinberg, 84, gazed at the floor as he addressed Dwyer.
‘These people are trying to make a living,’ Weinberg said. ‘You don’t understand the hardships you will put on these people’s backs. Their complaints are legitimate you should not burden these people.’
He added that the MBTA program lacked creativity and innovation.
Brighton resident Sean Sullivan urged the MBTA to keep the stops open late at night for safety purposes. A young woman cited unsolved assaults by rapists and muggers in the Brighton and Brookline area as reasons for why the distance between homes and T stops should not be increased.
One woman, who introduced herself as ‘G. Joyce,’ blamed the slow commutes on the folding and inserting of dollar bills into the dated fare-collector.
An unidentified man closed the meeting with an accusation directed at the MBTA.
‘You’re asking us to be the guinea pigs for an experiment that makes no logical sense,’ he said.
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