by Robert David Sullivan
One good thing about the recent hike in subway fares is that it's helping to erase the myth that Boston has a great public transportation system. The next time a friend visits me from out of town, and we try to board a Green Line car with a bunch of BU undergrads planted near the doors (it helps to pretend that you're wielding a machete), I'll no longer be tempted to ask, "Not bad for 85 cents, huh?" Things are so much simpler now that I can say, "Yes, the T is slow and the stations are smelly, and don't forget that it's expensive, too, and it only goes to places that are overrun with students and tourists. Now where did you say that you're parked?"
By contrast, I recently visited Washington, DC, where the basic fare is only a dime above the MBTA's $1 rate. Washington, which is slightly smaller than Boston, has a clean, efficient subway system with service to almost every neighborhood in the city. True, the stations are ugly and impossible to tell apart (all of them arched with the same waffled walls), but otherwise the DC Metro has it all over the T. It even runs until 2 a.m. on weekends, which is more than an hour after the last trains are tucked in for the night in Boston. Residents in poor neighborhoods have been complaining for years about the T, and they're finally getting some moral support from our more affluent citizens--who, coincidentally, are trying to avoid downtown real-estate prices by moving to these same poor neighborhoods. It can be a nasty surprise to give up a South End apartment for a fixer-upper in Dorchester, only to realize that your budget has to include a car and a commuter-rail pass (assuming your workplace doesn't provide parking).
There's something odd about the fact that Chelsea, Roslindale, and Uphams Corner, not exactly the kinds of places associated with John Updike novels, have commuter-rail service, with nonrush-hour trains to North or South Station at best a long 50 minutes apart. Meanwhile, tony Newton Highlands, which is further from downtown than any of the neighborhoods mentioned above, gets Green Line trains that depart every 10 minutes until after midnight, bringing people straight to Boston Common. And there are other disparities. If you live in Roslindale, it costs $5 for a round-trip commuter-rail ticket, and the last train home on weekdays is 10:30 p.m. (afterward, you could try your luck with a bus from Forest Hills). If you're a resident of Newton Highlands, it costs $3.50 for a round-trip commute, and the last train home is at 12:45 a.m.
Yet we've become resigned to an inadequate public-transit system, even as we talk about building a new baseball park for the Red Sox, a massive convention center, and entire new neighborhoods, all in areas without train service (such as the South Boston Waterfront) or with subway lines that are already overburdened (such as the Fenway). To be fair, the T is fine for certain groups of people. If you're a tourist who doesn't want to stray far from downtown, you'll never need a cab. You may end up thinking the city is a lot bigger than it actually is--especially if you follow the official MBTA map too literally and take the Green Line to the Orange Line to travel the two blocks from Copley Square to Back Bay Station. And if you live in the suburbs and work downtown, the commuter rail can work out nicely, as long as you never want to hang around the city after work.
But unfortunately, the T comes up short for people who want to ditch their cars and return to urban life. Part of the trouble is that many neighborhoods within three miles of Boston Common--Chelsea and Everett to the north, Union Square and central Somerville to the west, and a large chunk of Dorchester to the south--have no subway or trolley service at all. Still mostly working-class, these areas have bus lines so that people can get to their jobs downtown, but the trip is enough of a hassle to discourage them from coming in on nights and weekends.
The Red Line stop in Somerville's Davis Square has proven how a fast-rail link to downtown Boston can revitalize a neighborhood and connect it to the city's cultural scene. A drawback to this transformation, as Davis Square residents and businesses can attest, is higher property values and the unwanted attention of chain stores. Still, these effects have been exaggerated by the scarcity of T stops elsewhere. If neighborhoods with efficient public transportation became more common, the T's effect on property values would continue to be significant, but not quite as dramatic.
The truth is, I yearn for wheels almost on a daily basis. This isn't because I'd like to drive to Vermont for the weekend, or fill my trunk with toilet tissue from BJ's Wholesale Club. I want a car because I'd like to get a club sandwich for less than $10. You see, I live in the South End, which has a restaurant with $25 entrées on just about every block. But except for a couple of lunchtime places, there are no diners or coffee shops within walking distance, presumably because the high rents for properties so close to the Orange Line make such businesses impossible. I could try to make my way over to the Victoria Diner, a mere 14 blocks away, but it's not accessible by subway or bus, and being surrounded by highways, a huge shopping center, and a dangerously deserted stretch of Mass Ave, it's not easily reached by foot, either.
Actually, almost all of the good diners in the Boston area--including Kelly's in Somerville, Henry's in North Brighton, and the Pig 'n' Whistle in Brighton--are nowhere near a subway stop or frequent bus line. Even the International House of Pancakes has lost its carless clientele: its Kenmore Square site was recently closed as part of a plan to spruce up the neighborhood with luxury condos. Now, anyone with a yen for chocolate-chip pancakes has to drive out to the Soldiers Field Road location.
There are other odd drawbacks to being without a car. Since Woolworth's closed all its stores, there are few places to find reasonably priced housewares near downtown. Early this year, Target put up billboard ads in subway stations announcing that the discount chain was finally coming to Boston. But as it turns out, none of its new stores is actually near a subway stop. While riding the Orange Line at night, you can see the illuminated Target sign on the other side of the Malden River in Everett--where the Orange Line ran as late as the mid '70s.
Carlessness is felt most acutely after the sun goes down. College students quickly learn that they'd better befriend a car owner if they want to take full advantage of Boston's nightlife. For example, one of the city's top jazz clubs, Scullers, is completely surrounded by highways in North Allston. The best movie theater in the area, the Kendall Square Cinema, isn't a great distance from the T, but pedestrians must make their way across an uninhabited stretch of office buildings and lawns that can get mighty spooky after 6 p.m. Cambridge's Inman Square, home to another jazz club and one of the city's few comedy clubs, is a long hike from Central Square, and anyone who depends on the T is taking a big risk staying in the area past midnight. Spend a couple of weekends in the Hub, and it becomes apparent that our unofficial transportation anthem is not "Charlie on the M.T.A." but Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner," which is all about driving around Boston with the car radio blasting.
Naturally, it's impossible to provide subway service to every corner of the city, but it doesn't make sense to keep cutting back on rapid transit (mainly by replacing trains with buses) when Boston is expected to grow substantially in the next decade. Many seem to believe that the city is going to prosper with or without improvements to public transportation--ergo, such improvements would be a waste of money. This attitude is risky and short-sighted, given that our high housing costs would make anybody think twice about moving here. Cramming new apartment buildings along the waterfront is one solution to the housing shortage, but extending the T to existing neighborhoods seems cheaper and friendlier to the environment in the long run.
It's no easy feat to upgrade public transportation in an old city with little undeveloped land--though it doesn't seem so far-fetched to build a new subway line through Dorchester alongside, or in place of, the commuter-rail line that's already there. The T also has a financial disadvantage in that its budget is determined by state legislators, most of whom care nothing about inner-city transportation problems. (Washington's Metro, in contrast, is funded by the federal government.) But I can't remember the last time public transportation was even mentioned during a governor's race in Massachusetts. It certainly isn't given as much attention as the question of where the Patriots and the Red Sox are going to play.
Earlier this fall, for about 12 minutes, there was talk of building a monorail to connect North and South stations, which would allow commuters to get from the North Shore to the Financial District without meeting the requirements for a Boy Scout merit badge in orienteering. The idea was dismissed as impractical, of course, but it was appropriate to the fantasy world of the MBTA to want to add this Disney-like mode of transportation to its system. I always associate mass transit in Boston with those comic books and science-fiction novels from the '40s and '50s that tried to show what our cities would look like in the 21st century. The lavish drawings featured monorails, high-speed elevators whooshing up and down the sides of buildings, and single-passenger airplanes taking off from skyscraper roofs. All of those things now seem about as likely as the new Silver Line buses making it all the way downtown. So why should we limit our imaginations? As we try to remain upright while our bus driver swerves across three lanes of traffic, we can emulate Jonathan Pryce in the movie Brazil, who lived in a decaying, totalitarian society but daydreamed of Buenos Aires (which, I hear, has a more-than-adequate subway system).
In fact, the MBTA, so closely identified with pipe dreams, could come up with something like the Enchanted Village exhibit that graces City Hall Plaza during the Christmas season--only better. I can just picture it: wide-eyed commuters, clutching T passes and subway tokens in their grubby little paws, would enter the Magical World of 1960, where they could get on a Green Line "A" trolley and pretend to travel from Park Street Station to affordable triple-deckers in Brighton Center. Next, they would pause to stare in wonderment at a rare display: an accurate map of the present-day MBTA system, showing where each branch of the Green Line, including the incredible shrinking "E" line, begins and ends. Amazed, the commuters would then board a shuttle bus taking them to the other side of City Hall via Kenmore Square. There they would find the MBTA's Land of the Impossible, where North and South stations are linked by both monorail and subway, where the Blue Line travels an extra hundred yards to connect with the Red Line at Charles, and where Green Line service is restored to Jamaica Plain. A fare collector would tell them all about the Blue Line extension to Lynn, a city full of apartments with three-digit rents. But the best moment would come at the end of the tour: commuters would be invited to ride the fabled Urban Ring, a rail-and-bus line that allows people to travel from Cambridge to Roxbury without taking an hour-long detour through downtown Boston.
It does take a child-like faith in Santa Claus to believe that public transportation in Boston is going to remain at a barely acceptable level, never mind get better. This fall, lots of Bostonians have had their simple faith tested by the increase in fares. Another 15 cents per subway ride isn't much, but if it shakes T riders out of their complacency and prompts them to look at the big picture, the fare hike will be well worth it.
Robert David Sullivan
This article originally appeared in the Boston Phoenix.
