If you decided to raise your blood pressure, what could you do? You could eat a lot salty food. You could ride a roller coaster. Or, you could write a petition addressed to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) demanding that quality of the commuter rail service be improved, and try to get people to sign it.
Clearly I have chosen the latter. (You can reference the previous post for the short version of the petition.) Let's just say that the service has never been as consistently bad in over 3 years that I have been riding the train as it has been in the last 3 months. So I got tired of standing on the platform for hours (literally) and wasting my energy on complaining about how terribly unreliable the trains have become.
I did reiterate over several versions, with several of my coworkers providing feedback on the document. Unfortunately, still not everyone agreed with all the points, causing more discussions, arguments, and long email threads after I have sent out the petition to the commuter mailing list at work.
After putting in the effort to write the petition, I did not want to give up just because some people disagreed. So tonight together with my friend and coworker, I started collecting signatures on our ride home.
Most of you know that I am not at all an extrovert, so approaching people and soliciting signatures was not exactly a breeze. Unexpectedly we got a very welcome reception from most train passengers. We did get into trouble with the conductors, who did not mind us approaching the passengers, but who claimed that it was inappropriate for us to start collecting signatures without alerting the conductors to what we were doing.
I am proud to say that we collected 51 signatures tonight. We plan to continue our solicitations for another 2 days. Then the signed petition will be sent off to Mr. Dan Grabauskas, the General Manager of the MBTA. We understand that the problems plaguing the system are very complex, but we hope that putting the pressure on MBTA will stir the monster and result in gradual improvements in our commute.
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3 comments:
Go the mattresses
Hello.
I would gladly sign your petition (and I can't believe people didn't want to sign it).
I'm a frustrated commuter who relies on the Worcester-Framingham line. I've launched a blog (http://trainstopping.blogspot.com) to voice my frustrations.
I'll be linking to our petition.
Looking forward to better commutes in 2008.
Train Rider
Train Rider,
Thank you for your support. We have actually collected signatures just for 3 evenings, and got over 150 signatures. We did not gather signatures electronically in fear that electronic signatures while easier to collect might not be taken as seriously as the "in-person" ones.
We're now in the process of making copies and packaging up the petition, signatures and letters to send out to MBTA, as well as members of the local government and media.
We do hope that putting the pressure on the MBTA will push them to improve the service.
Happy riding:)
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