# Helping Fellow Passengers



## WhoozOn1st (May 3, 2008)

When riding the rails (and airlines), people often come up to me and ask questions about what they should do. Don't know why -- maybe I look like I know what I'm doing?

Naturally I'm always happy to help, and if I don't know the answers to their questions I'll guide them to someone who (hopefully) will. But since I try to be a well-prepared traveler, I usually know.

What I'm asking with this topic is for folks to share memorable experiences of assisting fellow travelers.

An example:

While attending college in New York I did a lot of joyriding on Metro North. One day a woman on the platform, clearly pregnant, asked about which train she should take to get to her doctor. Her car had broken down, so she was riding for the first time.

Directed her to the posted schedules. Turned out she didn't know how to read a timetable, so she came back and asked if I could explain it to her. Since I was in no hurry to get anywhere, I found out where she needed to go, accompanied her on the train to the right stop, and got her a cab to the doctor. Then I went back to joyriding.

Surely other folks on this forum have similar stories. SHARE!


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## Rail Freak (May 3, 2008)

WhoozOn1st999 said:


> When riding the rails (and airlines), people often come up to me and ask questions about what they should do. Don't know why -- maybe I look like I know what I'm doing?
> Naturally I'm always happy to help, and if I don't know the answers to their questions I'll guide them to someone who (hopefully) will. But since I try to be a well-prepared traveler, I usually know.
> 
> What I'm asking with this topic is for folks to share memorable experiences of assisting fellow travelers.
> ...


Man, I hope your traveling in Sept.!!!!! :lol:


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## Sealink (May 4, 2008)

If someone asks for assistance I gladly help, but there is one thing people do that really annoys me.

I board the train at London Victoria, and travel to my local station, Streatham Hill. There is a train every 15 minutes.

At Victoria, there are massive electronic display boards, which show each train and the stops.

At Victoria, there are announcements for EVERY train, which are generally repeated twice.

At Victoria, there are television screens / electronic boards on every platform.

At Victoria, there are staff everywhere.

At Victoria, the trains have electronic rolling displays, and on board announcements listing the stops.

You get the idea.

So when people get on the train and ask 'Excuse me, does this train go to...' it happens so often. Just how do people go through an entire station without knowing where to go? Why do they need the reassurance that they are on the right train? Why do they assume that everyone is going to the same place as they are, and will therefore know all the stops?

I know, I'm a bad person.


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## jackal (May 4, 2008)

Sealink said:


> If someone asks for assistance I gladly help, but there is one thing people do that really annoys me.
> I board the train at London Victoria, and travel to my local station, Streatham Hill. There is a train every 15 minutes.
> 
> At Victoria, there are massive electronic display boards, which show each train and the stops.
> ...


:lol:

I know exactly what you mean...

As for me, I'm a pretty helpful person, and I know I've helped people (I must look like one of those people who knows what he's doing, since people always seem to come up to me for questions), but I can't remember a specific instance that sticks out.

But when someone's ignorance or plain stupidity is so glaring, it's hard not to roll my eyes. (I encounter it every day in my work in the tourism industry...)


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## Green Maned Lion (May 4, 2008)

To be honest, I can understand it. Train stations are huge, busy, confusing places, and if you don't know where to look, and aren't familiar with trains in general, it makes you feel better to hear an actual person confirm your location.


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## p&sr (May 4, 2008)

Sealink said:


> Just how do people go through an entire station without knowing where to go? Why do they need the reassurance that they are on the right train? Why do they assume that everyone is going to the same place as they are, and will therefore know all the stops?


While travelling in Europe, I would ALWAYS ask, is this the train to so-and-so. Yes, I read my schedules and I watch the display boards and the platform signs and the notices on each train. When I step on board, I am usually very confident that I am on the correct train. But the big question remains, does anybody else think so? Or is there something that was lost in translation?

Reassurance is such an easy thing to ask for, and to share.

Sometimes, too, it does make a difference. Once in Milan, with a whole crowd on the platform waiting to board, they changed the platform number at the last minute and everybody ran over to a different platform. Then they changed it back again, and this time HALF of the crowd ran back to the first platform, while the rest milled around looking confused. Then trains pulled in simultaneously on BOTH platforms, neither carrying any notice of destination.

To the Visitor, I can only say, Good Luck! After a quick hint from someone who looked like a regular business traveller, I boarded the correct train and was on my way.

Again, a word to the wise from a Local is such an easy thing to share.


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## Joel N. Weber II (May 4, 2008)

Back when I was in high school, TheBus changed one particular route such that it stayed on the H-1 freeway well past my home. There may have been notices posted about the change, but they didn't clearly communicate the change to me, so one day the bus I happened to be on went well past my home. When it got off the freeway, I got off, crossed the street, and found that there was a bus I could board at that stop that did go past my home. (I think I'd been expecting I'd have to use more than one bus at that point to get home, but I lucked out.) After that, I got into the habit of confirming every time I boarded a bus that the bus was going to the right place (I think by asking whether it went to a mall near my home).

The MBTA Red Line has automated stop announcements in the newer subway cars, both on LED signs in the car and through the speaker system. The announcements are wrong about 40% of the time.

At Alewife Station on the MBTA Red Line, there's an island platform. The station is constructed such that it would work as a station in the middle of the route, but it happens to be the end of the line. As trains pull in, they generally alternate between the two tracks, and usually operate in a first in, first out fashion. Occasionally they will depart out of order (I think this happens especially if the train from Ashmont or Braintree was so delayed that there were two trains from Ashmont or two trains from Braintree in a row), and on very rare occasions a train with no passengers will head towards Arlington Center, the station that has not yet been built.

Anyway, if you arrive at the station and there are trains on both tracks, you'd generally like to take the next one unless you're planning to ride to the far end of the line where it actually matters whether you're on a Braintree or Ashmont train. There are signs that light up to tell you which train is next. Except that sometimes those signs are wrong, especially if the bell has rung to tell the next train to depart and that train has been slow in departing. I'm gradually learning that a train that has the majority of the visible riders is a better bet. But if I happen to be arriving via the west entrance to Alewife Station, a better approach tends to be looking in the window where the doorperson is, since that happens to be right by the end of the descending escalator, and I think I've even asked them on a few occasions if this is the next train out.


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## headingnorth (May 5, 2008)

Interesting point about MBTA at Alewife. Least helpful public transit station I've ever encountered: the St. George terminal for the Staten Island Railway (formerly known as the SIRT) in New York. The terminal has about fifteen tracks, and as the ferry comes in from Manhattan, you have at most a few minutes to run off the boat, through the ferry terminal, and downstairs through the turnstiles. At the turnstiles there's an information booth where I once asked which train would be next... and was told that the employee(s) there has no way of knowing. S/he told me that a green light goes on (you'll see this at other subway terminals in NYC now and again) next to the proper track, and sure enough, running back and forth, you eventually find a door with the elusive green light.

If any transit terminal needed a good Samaritan, this one would be near the top...


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## AlanB (May 5, 2008)

Actually there are only 12 tracks at the St. George terminal and two of them are never used for normal service on the railroad. The 2 far right tracks as you face the tracks from the terminal only serve the minor league baseball stadium.

So that leaves only 10 tracks on 5 platforms to pick from. They further make things easier, as many platforms either have no trains on them or the cars are dark, since the trains are not in service. Typically they only use the two centermost platforms, except during rush hour periods. And then finally there is a sign that tells you which track the next local, and during rush hour, which track the next express will leave from.

And the information booth isn't really an information booth, it's the token booth now turned Metrocard booth.


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