No, it’s not, even if the T wants to pretend that it is because it makes their lives easier.

Granted, the MBTA is (or at least was, until recently — see below) a “quasi-public agency,” which makes the status of its property somewhat murky. But if it were completely private property, then the case Greg mentioned above would never have made it to court.

The MBTA is heavily subsidized by the state and federal government, which means that the MBTA can’t infringe on people’s free-speech rights regardless of whether its property is “private.”

Having said all of that, now that the MBTA is going to be merged into the DOT, which is fully under the control of the government and not a quasi-public agency, there is no longer any ambiguity in the status of T property — it is fully public property, and the government is fully prohibited from preventing people from exercising reasonable free speech there.

As for the Why wouldn’t the guy just stand out front of the station? No one would have bothered him there.

You’re a pretty dim bulb, aren’t you? Either that, or you don’t bother to read things before you comment on them. But hey, I suppose that’s not too surprising, considering that you’re an MBTA employee (here’s a bit of advice for you: if you’re going to post a comment defending your employer without mentioning who you work for, it’s not a good idea to do it from an IP address owned by your employer).

As I explained quite clearly, I was handing out flyers to the journalists covering the press conference. They were assembled at the press conference, not “out front of the station,” and there’s no way I would have been able to identify which people entering or leaving the station before or after the press conference were journalists. Most of them weren’t carrying cameras and had no badges or other identifying materials. Not to mention that there are at least four different ways to enter and leave the station.

Rather than wasting your time defending your employer’s offensive policies, maybe you ought to spend it trying to get someone to fix the Trip Planner data.

It’s actually a larger error than that. As far as I can tell, it is wrong for all the 55x buses, and it is more likely that there are other errors like this than that these few are the only ones. Clearly, if these errors have persisted for over six years, no one has made any serious effort to ensure that the data is correct.

is it really a big enough deal to deserve the attention of all the reporters at a press conference?

It is a big deal that the T, while claiming to be on the cutting edge (which is itself a ludicrous claim, given that they’re the last major transit system in the US to make it into Google Maps), has errors in its data which prevent people from getting where they’re trying to go, which have been in the data for many years, which the T knows about, and which the T has made no effort to fix.

Why don’t you instead focus your efforts on getting in touch with the T’s planning department, who are the people who can actually fix the mistake?

If you had bothered to read the relevant blog postings before ignorantly commenting, you would know that I have been trying to get the T to fix these errors for over six years; my stunt at South Station was a last-ditch effort to shake loose an appropriate response from the T.

In all of the time I’ve tried to get this problem fixed, I have never had the privilege of being allowed to speak to someone who might actually be able to fix the problem, and none of the people to whom I have spoken at the T have stepped up and taken responsibility for ensuring that it gets fixed.

By the way, what did the sign at the bus stop say?

If I recall correctly (I’ll try to check the next time I’m there to make sure), the signs at the bus stop also claim that the bus stops there when it doesn’t. In any case, one way or the other, these signs can’t be relied upon, because there are unfortunately many stops throughout the system with either missing or incorrect signage.

And did you also take a look at the pdf/paper schedule?

Did you, before (again) commenting ignorantly?

Neither the published map nor the published schedule are sufficiently detailed to answer the question one way or the other whether the outbound bus stops at 400 Centre St. The only data published by the T which actually shows every single stop is the Trip Planner / Google Maps data.

That’s certainly a problem for people who try to use that stop, but is it really a big enough deal to deserve the attention of all the reporters at a press conference?

Why don’t you instead focus your efforts on getting in touch with the T’s planning department, who are the people who can actually fix the mistake?

By the way, what did the sign at the bus stop say? And did you also take a look at the pdf/paper schedule?

That’s a good question, one which I’d wondered myself.

It is not obvious to me how one could write a policy that distinguishes between handing out political literature to a bunch of people one has just met at a T station and handing out business cards to a bunch of people one has just met and struck up a conversation with.

I suspect that under the existing policy, both are technically prohibited. I also suspect that the Transit Police would not enforce the policy on the latter case, and that means selective enforcement, and that means unconstitutionality.

But I say all this without having read the policy, so for all I know they’ve figured out how to get around that.

http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/984/984.F2d.1319.92-1277.html