Standing up for courtesy

One woman described her elderly mother, gripping a pole on the Green Line train, riding home from chemotherapy treatments, all the other passengers impassively watching her without offering their seats.

Another relayed the story of how she was riding the T, eight months pregnant, and no one stood for several stops, even though, as she described it, ''my belly was quite literally in their faces as they sat in front of me."

The one person to finally offer her a seat was another woman with child, who said: ''No, you sit. I think you're more pregnant than I am."

The calls and notes have come pouring in since I wrote last week about taking a seven-months-pregnant woman named Michelle on an afternoon of Green Line rides to see who would -- and, as likely, wouldn't -- offer her their seats. Everyone, it seems, has a tale of T woe.

Allison from Dedham wrote to say that she nearly passed out riding a commuter train in 2004 while pregnant, and it was only then that a young man offered her a seat in a panic. Still, no one else asked if she needed any help.

Patrick from Brookline wrote to say he is amazed to see runners in metallic thermo blankets standing on the Green Line trains after the Boston Marathon, as other passengers decline to budge from their seats.

Happily, help may be arriving. One of the callers this past week was John Cogliano, the state secretary of transportation and a regular commuter rail rider. He said he immediately directed MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas to put together a plan to launch a courtesy campaign, one of the suggestions in my column.

''I've seen this problem myself," he said yesterday. ''When the governor appointed me, part of the directive was to improve customer service."

Cogliano said he foresees posters on buses and trains and in stations, as well as regular announcements on trains, for people to give up seats to the elderly, the frail, the handicapped, the pregnant, and those otherwise impaired.

Some readers have already offered me their ideas. A guy named Matt suggested that the T send an occasional undercover observer onto trains to watch for passengers offering up their seats and reward them with free T passes.

''When you cannot appeal to the civility of people, you have to tug at their greed," he wrote.

None of this can happen soon enough, at least according to my e-mail. I did get several notes from elderly riders who said that passengers always offered them seats.

But for every one of those, I got a dozen stories of shame. Lynn described how she rode the T three times a week to physical therapy last year, trying to balance on one leg, grip her crutches, and hold a pole.

''It was pretty pathetic the number of times I was offered a seat on crowded trains," she wrote.

A pregnant woman named Jennifer said that on one commute, the only person to engage her was in a wheelchair, and he told her, ''I'd give you my seat if I could stand on my own."

Most riders said that the elderly are the quickest to offer seats, something I saw during my travels with Michelle. Many of those same people pointed out that middle-age guys in shirts and ties were the most flagrantly discourteous.

Maureen from Malden summed it up best: ''My experience was that the harder the work, the more willing the person was to give up their seat. Guys who had labored on the Big Dig and were dusty, dirty, sweaty, and tired were pushing each other out of the way for me."

She added: ''The desk jockeys would shove me out of the way so they could get to the seat first."

Finally, to the many people who wrote in from Paducah, I am now fully aware that you have the country's largest quilt museum and a vibrant artist relocation program.

So, I'll start the civility campaign right here with the following words: I'm sorry.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.