And two months later, they got what they wanted. On Wednesday, the agency emailed campaign organizers to inform them that Boston’s public transit network, the T, had accepted their only request.
The MBTA, in the face of public pressure, stuck big, cartoon eyes on the front of some of its trains.
“We just wanted one little thing, and we came together for it, and we got it,” Arielle Lok, one of the organizers behind the March for Googly Eyes on the T, told the Washington Post.
Phillip Eng, the MBTA’s general manager and chief executive officer, said the march request was unexpected and unique – but easy to accommodate.
“When something like this comes along and it’s just a little opportunity to add a little levity to the day, people embraced it,” Eng said. “I think we’re a little surprised by the amount of attention it’s gotten.”
Lok and co-organizer John Sanchez, both 22, said the campaign began as nothing more than a light-hearted plot to bring a weird point to Boston commuters. Lok said she was inspired by reindeer-themed decorations on buses at Christmas in Vancouver, where she used to live. Could she and Sanchez convince the MBTA to do something similar?
“It was just like, ‘How funny would it be to do that?'” Lok said.
“We want to have a march and we want to rally the people of Boston for this noble cause,” Sanchez said.
Lok and Sanchez, partners at an environmental start-up, created a March website for Googly Eyes on the T in April and laid out their case for testing wide, cartoonish eyes on Boston trains — “Your day instantly becomes 10 times better. T is your friend. She cares about you.”
The joke could have ended there. But about a week before the march was scheduled — when Lok and Sanchez were the only two to RSVP — the pair enlisted friends to put up posters advertising the event around Boston and in dorms, ran the story in local newspapers and posted links to subreddits and forums. community. Interest arose.
“I had two wonderful people who reached out to me and just [donate] several hundred dollars to buy poster equipment … because they had grown up in Boston and wanted to see it happen,” Lok said. “It was just a great moment of people really coming together to see something stupid.”
At noon on April 29, about 30 people came to take up the cause of Lok and Sanchez. The duo distributed placards with slogans including “Give the T vision,” “Eye believe in the MBTA,” and “T that sees you … you at home.” The crowd jumped up and down, startling the students into staring eyes glued to their posters. Sanchez directed calls over a loudspeaker: “Dot your I’s and cross your T’s, weird eyes on T trains, please!”
Lok and Sanchez said they were overwhelmed by the turnout, which included strangers who learned about the event after it was shared by social media accounts run by transit enthusiasts. Some brought their signs and googly eyes.
“There was so much energy,” said Francisco Turrubiate, a computer science student at Boston University who learned about the march from a group chat. “Everyone seemed so excited to get this started. And there were lots of laughs.”
The march ended a few blocks south at MBTA headquarters. Some amused employees returning from their lunch breaks stopped to talk to the demonstrators, Lok and Sanchez said.
“We gave them a firm handshake and a giant googly eye,” Sanchez said.
This caught the attention of Eng, the chief executive. An employee, who was given an eyeful by the crowd, told Eng about the demonstration later that day, he said.
“I called my COO and said, ‘Hey, we can have some fun with this,'” Eng said.
Eng and Ryan Coholan, the MBTA’s chief operating officer, decided they couldn’t decorate the entire MBTA fleet, but they put stickers with large plastic eyes on the front of five trains — four on the Green Line trains and one on the MBTA commuter rail. On June 14. Images of trains with empty eyes, which beam passengers like cartoon characters, began to circulate on social networks.
Googly-eyed trains are still a rare surprise on a network that operates hundreds of trains a day. Lok and Sanchez said they didn’t know their march had worked until last week, when MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo emailed photos of newly decorated trains.
“John and I were in the same office, and I just ran up all the stairs and I was screaming,” Lok laughed. “I was like, ‘John, we did it! Has eyes on T.’ “
Lok and Sanchez are still looking for googly-eyed trains in Boston — they both ride the T, they said — and are riding the success of their tongue-in-cheek campaign. They will have time to continue the search. The MBTA has no timeline or immediate plans to remove the decorations, Eng said.
“I think every agency is looking to do just a few things that make people’s lives easier and more enjoyable,” Eng said. “This was easy to do and we’re happy to be able to be a part of it.”
Lok and Sanchez said the campaign felt like a college prank — if a college prank could be so successful as to compel the leadership of a public agency to spread. They are thinking about what to do next.
“There’s nothing better than committing to something like this,” Sanchez said. “And bringing people together for her, and everyone doing something about her stupidity.”