[Cotuit]

Rush-hour commuters entered the MBTA Green Line boarding area at Boston’s Park Street Station yesterday afternoon. (Globe Staff Photo / John Bohn)

Too often, T's messages are going nowhere
By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff  |  August 10, 2004

On the Red Line platform at Park Street station, an announcement crackles over the public address system urging riders to report suspicious packages, prompting blank stares from riders as a train pulls in and drowns out the message.

At Back Bay station, an electronic message board flashes the word ''Rebooting," replaced a few moments later with meaningless red dashes. At the commuter rail station in Natick, an electronic sign displays the incorrect time so often, passengers simply ignore it.

In an enduring problem for the one million people who daily use the MBTA, the transit system is still struggling to communicate with its customers. State transportation officials say the situation will improve in about a year, when a new fiber-optics network is in place that will allow better communication among stations and, in turn, to riders.

They also say that in 2006, when an automated fare card system is installed, fare collectors will be redeployed in the stations to give people information on delays or schedule changes, much as the yellow-shirted ''ambassadors" did during the Democratic National Convention last month.

In the meantime, riders are mostly left with an outdated public address system bleating announcements that are notoriously difficult -- or impossible -- to understand.

''People don't understand what's being said," said Khalida Smalls, coordinator of the T Riders Union, a passenger advocacy group, who hears complaints about communications as often as any other aspect of service. ''People just kind of tune out."

Other transit systems, notably those in San Francisco and Washington, use electronic message boards in stations to tell passengers when the next train is going to arrive at stations, and how many cars the train has.

In 2001, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority installed electronic message boards at 83 commuter rail stations at a cost of $6 million, but the signs only display a general advisory saying whether trains are running on or close to schedule, or urge passengers to buy monthly passes in advance. The electronic signs at Silver Line bus kiosks on Washington Street, which were supposed to tell riders how many minutes until the next bus arrives, are also not working because of a problem with the link to global positioning satellite systems on the buses. T officials say they are working with the vendor on that system and hope to have it repaired soon.

Jon Carlisle, spokesman for state Transportation Secretary Daniel A. Grabauskas, said the T is more than 100 years old and has a patchwork public address system that he concedes can sometimes sound like ''Charlie Brown's teacher," the unintelligible droning voice in the cartoon character's classroom.

But all new subway cars and buses are equipped with electronic message signs and automated station announcements, and the T will soon have a $12 million ''wide area network" system, based on fiber optics, that will speed communication among stations for announcements, Carlisle said. If a train has been delayed because of a track fire or malfunctioning door, riders will be told over the system how long they should expect to have to wait, he said.

The T realizes that ''a little information can go a long way," Carlisle said, making riders more patient and understanding.

There are no plans to install electronic message boards like those at subway stations and bus stops in Washington or San Francisco, he said. But when automated fare collection is in place by 2006, T workers now employed selling tokens will emerge from behind their glass booths and patrol the platforms, passing along information verbally.

After the Democratic National Convention last month, MBTA General Manager Michael H. Mulhern said the T received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the 200 ambassadors and other T employees who gave riders directions to trains that week.

But the T is not moving fast enough on the communications front for disabled passengers, said Dan Manning, litigation director at Greater Boston Legal Services, the civil legal aid organization. The shortcomings in signage are one component of a class-action lawsuit the group filed two years ago, alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

''For people with disabilities, the problem is compounded. People with limited vision need clear, readable signs, and people with hearing impairments need them to know where they are going," Manning said. ''We've had a steady stream of complaints about the whole system of signs and the information the T provides. Unless you know the system, it's very hard to navigate."

The T has made progress communicating to its riders, said Christopher Hart, a transit specialist at Adaptive Environments, a design firm in Boston. But there hasn't been a concerted effort to model the T's communications system after ones in Washington, San Francisco, Tokyo, or Paris, he said.

''Nothing is impossible. You need the will and the resources to get the technology," he said. ''If they could get the right design folks involved and bring in people from other agencies, from Paris or D.C. or Tokyo, they could all sit down and say, 'These are the steps you want to take.' "

Installing an ''intelligent" system that follows trains and their progress and continuously feeds the information to electronic signs at stations would cost several million dollars -- not an excessive amount given that the technology is well-established, Hart and other transit observers say.

At Park Street station at 5 p.m. yesterday, families headed to Fenway Park and lost-looking tourists listened indifferently to the most common prerecorded announcement heard at T stations these days: urging riders to be on the lookout for breaches in security.

''Ladies and gentleman, please report any unattended packages," said a woman's voice, accompanied by the sound of whirring fans and occasionally drowned out by the noise of moving trains.

Nan Wetherhorn, 51, a fund-raiser for a nonprofit organization who lived in France and Switzerland and traveled to Israel, was not impressed by the effort to communicate.

''It makes me laugh," she said.

From The Boston Globe