I don’t live at Washington St in Brighton.

I don’t have any friends living at Washington St.

I don’t work at Washington St.

I don’t happen to have any reason to be at Washington St. on most days.

Yet, I find myself there almost every day. Standing out in the sun, the wind, the rain, the snow, the sleet, the cold and the heat. The reason for this is that I happen to live beyond the threshold of the MBTA’s concern. The void on the B Line between Washington St. and Boston College. The area where your stop is not likely to be announced or even marked with a sign.

It’s a strange place. The median is crumbling, stations are minute strips of pavement, lacking even traffic barriers, much less the niceties of signage and shelters that other stretches of the line enjoy.

It’s obvious that the T doesn’t really concern itself with the welfare of the riders who utilize this part of the branch, but until the beginning of the year it was reasonable to assume that you could at least get there if you waited for an outbound B train and kept an eye open for your stop. Not so much anymore.

As discussed many times before, the Boston University stretch of seven (soon to be eight) stops in a 1.5 mile length of track slows the line down to a painful crawl. The train arrives at one stop, then moves forward to reach the next station barely a train-length or two away – unless it is forced to halt and wait for a light as is almost always the case. “Ring the bell if you want to stop” comes over the PA system, but there is always that one person who needs to get off at Pleasant St. as opposed to St. Paul. Each time you cross your fingers and say a silent prayer to force the train will through three or four stops, but your hopes end up dashed.

The result of this is that by the time an outbound train makes it through BU, the headways (space between trains) are hopelessly out of whack, and trains must be rearranged to ensure that there are enough cars going both inbound and outbound, which gives rise to the express runs.

“This train will be going express to Boston College” – This sentence is enough to ruin almost anyone’s day. It used to be a rare thing to hear over the speakers, but shortly after the New Year it became much more frequent, to the point where it’s almost assured that I won’t make it past Washington St. without being dumped onto the platform to wait for another trolley.

It doesn’t matter if the weather is terrible or if it’s the middle of the night. The train is going on, and there is little choice but to wait for the next one which is always “right behind us”. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Beyond Packard’s Corner there is no parallel service. No 57 bus, no BU Shuttle…nothing. You would think that the T might push the trains through the part of the line where stops are painfully close together (they already closed our closely-spaced stations) and there are alternative means to get where you need to go.

Then you remember this past winter the T cut back on sending inbound morning rush hour trains express through BU, in favor of skipping stops in Allston and Brighton. All of this despite the fact the latter stops tended to be overflowing with commuters waiting to get downtown, while the BU stations sat deserted and saw very few passengers disembarking at that time of the day.

Or you consider why the T would work to eliminate stops in Allston and Brighton to speed up the line, only to blindly support BU’s request to add another one along the most plodding part of the route.

It’s obvious who MBTA officials care about pleasing, and people like me are not part of that group. One would hope though that they might take pity on the significant number of elderly passengers living in the area who have to climb in and out of two trains to get home. Even the low-floor cars aren’t much help when the tiny platforms still aren’t high enough to be remotely level with the train. It can be excruciating to watch.

For me, the MBTA’s actions are a profound annoyance. For them, it’s something far worse.