What a surprise! Boston Commuter Rail running late again.

For the fourth day in a row, the Needham line is running more than 15 minutes late. Given the volume of human traffic passing through South Station during the evening rush, imagine having a significant percentage of them stuck in the station, waiting (yet again) for their train to grace us with its presence. Several hundred people are standing or milling around, clogging the platforms and the station, tripping over each other and blocking those passengers lucky enough to have a train they can board.

Back Bay Station fares even worse, given that the waiting passengers are stuck in a poorly ventilated sewer ditch of an underground station while the train takes its time coming in. After all of that, Back Bay passengers have little chance of good seats since all the double-decker cars seem to have gone on the endagered list.

Trains go in two directions (unless your even MORE incompetent than these guys and you roll sideways - they haven't done that for a while now). Forward or backward. How hard is it really to get from one end of a line to the other, following a schedule that has changed very little in decades?

The current high gasoline prices are an opportunity to promote the use mass transit by commuters, not to discourage it! Providing commuters with reasonably comfortable trains that are on time could build a new ridership that stays even if gasoline prices drop back to previous levels.