MBTA – Ashmont Station

The station is now all finished. they completed it last year? Seems modern and space aged. One of the cleaner and brighter stations in Boston. There’s usually a train waiting there.

Update: signs have been posted banning skateboarding. That didn’t seem to stop the grip of kids out there doing ollies and such daily. Kinda hilarious.
AND I noticed two bike racks. Still… I think people are leery, as I’ve yet to see a bike parked there.
Okay, Ashmont!

Only in Massachusetts could you take a big barn with a leaking flat roof, spend $ 50M, wait 4 years and end up with a big barn with a leaking slanted roof, and call it a T station.
The project is years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget and there’s no end in sight. The north entrance has a nice new plaza which is really just a glorified skate park and you still have to travel to the south entrance to get in. Along the way you get no shelter from the elements except a flimsy piece of plastic tarp overhead for part of the walkway. But you do get to pass by a T worker in his heated office ‘monitoring’ the buses. Glad to see he’s warm.
Once you do make it to the south entrance you’ll see the Charlie Card machines have a new makeshift shelter built over them after they were thoroughly soaked during a recent storm. Great ingenuity, but wouldn’t it be better to fix the hole in the roof instead? Crazy talk I know.
Favorite part of any trip to Ashmont Station though has to be the ‘customer service’ staff. If they do decide to leave their little booth and brave the same elements they subject us riders to, they are usually found being rude and unhelpful or standing by while people fare-​hop at will.
I’m a big fan of public transportation, but the MBTA needs to get their act together and finish Ashmont Station already. The neighborhood has put up with it long enough and deserves better.