Emily Zilm didn’t know where to stand when she was waiting for an MBTA bus to arrive on Monday, after the blizzard.
With more than two-feet of snow piled high by the bus stop sign, she managed to trudge to the top of a snow pile and wait idly for her ride to arrive, hoping it wouldn’t pass by.
“It was kind of ridiculous,” said Zilm, adding that once the bus pulled up to the un-shoveled spot, she had to “jump off” a “straight drop.”
“Even just walking to the bus stop, for businesses that haven’t completely cleared out, I had to walk in the road a lot. I didn’t know where to stand when I got there so the bus would know I was waiting for it,” she said.
Zilm’s morning commute catastrophe was a common problem for a lot of riders trying to get on public transportation following the weekend’s historic storm.
But MBTA officials said Tuesday that they are working diligently to get all stops cleared out, and they aren’t responsible for the entire system.
“It isn’t just the MBTA,” said T spokeswoman Kelly Smith. “That being said, the MBTA has made snow removal from bus stops a top priority and we have crews working around the clock to get this done.”
Smith said complaints have not been too bad in regards to the snowy bus stops, and that the T had only received roughly 120 emails related to snow issues to the official snow and ice complaint email address.
“With 370,000 people riding the bus on a typical weekday, that’s a pretty low number,” she said.
According to the T’s website, with over 8,000 bus stops throughout the system, depending on the stop, it’s the responsibility of abutting property owners or a private contractor to shovel them out.
Smith recognized the issue riders face trying to grab the attention of bus operators while standing in snow mounds, piled even higher in some instances, due to plows pushing excess snow off the roads, but she assured customers the problem would be resolved soon enough.
“Sometimes an area near a bus stop hasn’t been cleared, and we understand peoples’ frustrations,” she said. “We have been working with our partners on a state and municipal level to fight the snow battle, and we can only control what we are responsible for.”
Smith said customer safety remains a top priority as snow continues to be cleared.
Commuters like Zilm, however, would have liked to see the areas cleared out, so people wouldn’t need to wander in the streets, or jump from massive mounds, before the T reinstated service.
The MBTA shut down all bus and trains for the entire weekend during the blizzard, and reopened operations late Sunday afternoon following an extensive snow clean-up effort.
“I think they should have cleared the stops first,” said Zilm. “It’s pretty dangerous.”
Smith told BostInno that the T would be posting a list of key bus routes and stops that the transportation agency is responsible for on Tuesday afternoon.
If passengers notice that one of these bus stops is obstructed by snow or ice, they are encouraged to notify the MBTA?s Customer Communications Department by calling 617-222-3200, or submitting an email to snowandice@mbta.com
