The Boston Phoenix November 30 - December 7, 2000
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How to fix the MBTA
(continued)
by Robert David Sullivan
Being without a car has other odd drawbacks. Now that Woolworth's has 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 the 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 recently 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 MTA" 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 people seem to believe that the city is going to prosper with or without improved 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 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 branch, 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 even 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 is a frequent contributor to the Phoenix. He can be reached at Robt555@aol.com.
