In April, demonstrators marched to the MBTA’s Boston headquarters with a single, carefully researched demand.
They demanded that some trains be equipped with moving eyes. Two months later, their demands were met – at least until the stickers came off.
The campaign was created by two recent college graduates as an attempt to make commuters feel better and spread compassion for the metal vehicles they travel to work.
“When the T train is delayed, people can at least look into the eyes of their train when it arrives and feel love and understanding in their hearts.” The organizers wrote before marching to Transportation Department headquarters.
“T doesn’t like being late,” they wrote. “When I’m late I feel bad.”
Organizers said the transit agency also has a “responsibility to improve the lives of Boston residents.”
Even if the city’s trains are unreliable, they write, they can at least bring a smile to passengers’ faces. The average number of passengers on weekdays is approximately 766,000..
To make things easier for the authorities, About 20 demonstrators Each person who took part in the march brought their own moving eyes.
The authority’s chief executive, Philip Eng, said in an interview that he agreed with the request but had safety concerns that the moving eyeballs could become dislodged during transport.
The solution? Stick-on decals.
On June 14, the authority’s operations chief, Ryan Coholan, picked up a set of moving eye stickers and headed to the nearest maintenance facility with a colleague to place the first set on the front of a Green Line train.
“We gave out a few more and said, ‘Let’s Google this train,'” Coholan said.
Workers spotted five trains, including four on the Green Line, and Boston residents quickly began noticing the googly-eyed trains and posting photos on social media.
Ariel Rock, a co-organizer of the march, Shared a photo of the trainAlso attached is a screenshot of an email from the Transportation Department announcing her victory.
“Today, the @MBTA and I agreed,” Locke wrote.
After graduating from college, Locke moved to the United States from Canada. He told Boston.com She was inspired by Public transportation in her hometown, Vancouver.
During the Christmas season, Vancouver buses are decorated with red noses to represent Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, which inspires enthusiasm among Vancouver passengers that she feels is missing in Boston.
Roque did not immediately respond to inquiries Saturday, and co-host John Sanchez could not be reached for comment.
Roque’s idea for the eyeball train is just one in a list of more than 100 “miscellaneous ideas to do,” she wrote. Lettuce head eating competition For example, in Canadian universities.
After Boston officials figured out how to keep the moving eyes from falling off moving trains, Eng and Coholan saw no drawbacks to the decals and saw them as an easy way to brighten commuters’ day.
The cost to print the 9-inch decals is “a few dollars a piece,” Coholan said.
“The nice thing about round decals is that you can point your eye in any direction you want,” he says, “and you don’t have to rely on the train rocking to move your eye.”
It’s unclear how long the eye will remain, and the agency said it has no clear plans for what will happen to it in the future.
But Coholan said he has six pairs of eyes waiting in an envelope in his office to one day greet Boston commuters.
