Tuesday, November 14, 2006

RANT: The MBTA route maps goes OLD style

Visitors to Boston quickly learn that our subway system, the MBTA...or just "The T"...is mighty damned confusing. What visitors don't know is that even us locals are usually pretty perplexed!

The system is inherently confusing to begin with; part of the legacy of being over 100 years old. But the MBTA is notoriously bad about signage. Last weekend my wife and I really got a taste of just how bad when we went to the Copley Square / Green Line station. On the outbound platform they're doing lots of construction, and it appears that a old subway system map was ripped off to reveal an even older map. How old, you ask? Well, it still shows the Red Line ending at Harvard, which it hasn't done since 1985. Yikes! There were also all the old Orange Line stops like City Square and the Washington Street Elevated that were all torn down in 1987. Sure hope nobody planned their trip based on that system map!

Still, I wish the MBTA would pull that map down, clean it up, and put it on display somewhere in a museum or something. It's at least 20 years old, probably more like 30+...that's pretty much "historical" at this point.

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