St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2018 will be better on Friday

Yeah! If you live out of Boston, and you don't want to struggle with traffic or parking on a Sunday, then they better move the parade to Friday because there will be no commuter rail service on weekends. That’s my friend T-Rider's proposal to the organizers of the parade. He lives stressed out about his commute, and because of that he always checks the MBTA’s website to keep up with the sudden changes. 

Out of the blue he jumped off his chair and said, “how caring is the MBTA to look out for its customers, concerned about their safety and their well-being?” From my desk I was quick to ask what he was talking about.

And without a break he continued, now reading from his computer screen, “The MBTA is encouraging riders traveling to the St. Patrick’s Day parade to board any Red Line train to South, Broadway, or Andrew Stations. They also added that due to public safety concerns, Red Line trains may bypass Broadway. The reason is the possibility of heavy crowds in that station which may make it not suitable to drop off riders. How amazing is that?” he asked.

I truly thought it was a good thing and I was not afraid to tell him so. I saw no reason for such a fuzz.

Heading Out!

But then he said, “Don’t you see? That’s the same level of consideration they’re showing to the rail road commuters by cancelling the weekend service for one year. It’s not that it’s going to be forever, duhh!. No, no, no! The MBTA is too considerate to do that. They will just keep riders safe in their homes for 52 weekends! They are really concerned about their customers, you know. And if you haven’t watched Hamilton yet, forget it. They just bypassed Broadway.”

I had to take a deep breath because it’s not easy to handle such level of creative sarcasm. Nonetheless, I gathered my thoughts again, and I argued that I had seen an ad on their website encouraging people to save time by buying tickets in advance for train, bus, and commuter rail, which confirmed that the commuter rail was up and running on St. Patrick’s Day.

But my friend is always sharp. “Maybe!” he promptly said. “What they purposely missed was to encourage people to take advantage of St. Patrick’s commuter rail ride this weekend because next year it ain’t gonna happen. There will be no commuter rail train coming to town! They better start planning to move St. Patrick’s Day Parade to a weekday, like Friday!”

At my desk, I started thinking how an agency like MBTA could interfere on a culture of a city like Boston. Then I though how fair it was to punish customers because someone mismanaged the agency. Then I thought … Just forget it! It became too weird.

Keep your cameras up and capture the weirdness on the MBTA and sent it to us at wierdmbta@gmail.com or through twitter @weirdmbta. We are not selfish. We will share it.