OUR VISION FOR MBTA

GOOGLY EYES ON THE T.

April 29, 2024. 12:00PM to 1:00PM.March begins at Park Street Station and ends at the MBTA building (10 Park Plaza, Boston, MA 02116)

Green line T train with googly eyes

Picture this – it’s a Thursday morning, you’re late for work, and have a stressful day coming up. You’re standing at the T station waiting for the red line. Maybe you’re growing impatient and frustrated as you wait, when finally you hear the sound of the train approaching. And then, as the train comes into view, you see them: two, giant, glorious, Googly Eyes glued onto the front of the train.

Your day immediately becomes 10 times better. The T train is your friend. It has PERSONALITY. It cares about you. It sees you.Yes, our vision for the T, is to give the T vision.We call on the MBTA to attach Googly Eyes to the front of 10% of T trains.There is precedent for this. Every December in Vancouver, public transit buses are dressed up like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. They’re given Googly eyes and red nose, and there’s an active Twitter community of people celebrating the joy it brings into their lives.

Look: the MBTA has a responsibility to improve the lives of Bostonians. If the trains can’t be reliable, at least they can be fun and bring a smile to the faces of over a million people per day. Compared to the $24 BILLION dollars it will take to fix the T, simply adding Googly eyes to trains could represent a budget of merely a few hundred dollars. Think of all of the new T riders who will come from around the globe to revel in the glory of Boston’s trains.Humans are an empathetic species—we want to relate to the world around us, to feel a connection to our surroundings and our public transit system. When T trains are delayed, people can at least look into the eyes of the train when it finally arrives, and feel some love and understanding in their hearts. The T doesn’t want to be late. It feels bad being late.MBTA, we call on you to try an experiment: just for a few weeks, on a small percentage of T trains, see what Googly Eyes will do for the city of Boston. And when the ridership and public satisfaction of the T are through the roof—you’ll know why.
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