If somebody can explain why the MBTA likes to wait until a few seconds before a commuter rail train is scheduled to leave before announcing which track it is on, I would love to hear it.

Every day at North Station (and presumably at South Station) a little game is played, and it goes like this: Hundreds of people line up in front of the big board waiting for their train to be matched with a track. The minutes tick by and the crowd gathers, a steaming cloud of 8-hour old coffee-breath hanging over our tired bodies. We gather, clad in polyester-blend serfs’ uniforms soaked in sweat from hoofing across any of Boston’s brick-and-concrete wastelands, and wait, eyes strained, trying not to miss the nanosecond when the track number appears and the entire crowd moves to clog the doors from the hall to the narrow platform.

MBTA, why do this? You run trains all day, every day. And when you’re not busy running trains, you’re running trains. Like the rest of us, who manage a schedule, from the house, to the gym, to the workplace, to the lunch spot, to the doctor, to the client, to work again, to the school, to the restaurant, and home again. Most of us know where we’re going to be in 42 minutes, at 3 past noon, and at 6:18, and which car we’re going to take to get there. And it’s not even our job to manage this stuff.

Crazy idea, MBTA: If you know which train is sitting on the platform, and you certainly should, tell someone. Maybe put it up on the board. Then the sweaty crowd doesn’t have to line up under the board, clogging the room, and moving as one giant mass when the lights flicker. Maybe the train can fill up nice and leisurely-like, and North Station can be the open-floored market-palace it was designed to be.

Or if you’re just experimenting and playing games with our heads, tell me. I’d love to see your findings.

UPDATE: In a reply from MBTA GM Dan Grabauskas, the reasons the MBTA does this boil down to: Conductors need time to do a brake test and sweep of the trains when they come in, and the crew for one train may be coming in on another train and have not arrived.

So in other words, better operational management is needed, is that what the GM is saying?