Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Lack of Public Transport in U.S. Cities: Marlboro City

Marlboro (or Marlborough) is a beautiful and peaceful city. I currently live in this city and I like it. But, problem is that there is lack of public transport. 



I am a student of Clark University, Worcester. I don't find any public transport to come from Marlboro to Worcester. There is one possibility to come from Marlboro to Worcester. That is bus service provided by MetroWest Regional Transit Authority (MWRTA), Framingham from Marlboro to Framingham and there is train service to come from Framingham to Worcester. But, MWRTA provides transport service only at morning and day time but not at evening time. 



Recently, MWRTA provides bus service from Framingham to Marlboro and inbound to Framingham on hourly basis and this has been beneficial for residents of Marlboro city to take train from Framingham to Worcester or Boston. Otherwise, there is not any public transport provided by Marlboro city except Marlboro city taxi services. There is bus services provided by Peterpan bus or Greyhound bus to different cities of U.S. but they don't have access to Marlboro city. The possibility for Marlboro residents to get access to Peterpan bus or Greyhound bus is to come to Framingham by MWRTA bus and in Framingham, there is access to these bus services. 

It is appreciable that MWRTA from Framingham  is providing public transport in Marlboro. But, sometimes, these buses make late like 10 min, 20 min, 30 min and even 1 hour than the scheduled time. It makes me to miss my train to Worcester and miss my classes in Clark University many times. It was written in MWRTA brochure "wait for bus 10 min in advance to be sure not to miss bus". But, it seems that it should be like "wait for bus 10 min after the scheduled time so that you don't need to wait longer". 

There was one significant irresponsibility of MWRTA when I was waiting for last MWRTA bus to Marlboro at Framingham Downtown. I was waiting for bus from 6:15 pm. The last bus was supposed to come at 6:32 pm, but it didn't come till 7:30 pm. There were 6 passengers waiting there and one of them called MWRTA office and they sent another bus, route 1 (but route 7 for Marlboro) finally. It means that if we didn't call the office, they wouldn't provide the last bus service to Marlboro on that day. What more was that the bus ran with the screen notice"OUT OF SERVICE" and the driver just asked passengers if there was anyone to get down at certain places. One old lady at one of the MWRTA route 7 stops was waving hands with touch night in her hand to stop the bus for a ride. She was angry because of the screen notice. It was not sure how many passengers on the way were waiting for that last bus and missed that bus because of the screen notice. It seems to be one of the big irresponsibilities of MWRTA. 

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