And that’s spelled with “T” and that stands for “transit” and that’s all you need to know right now, and if you’re not thinking of the Music Man, do yourself a favor and do a search until you get the song. You don’t even have to be a fan of Broadway musicals; the “we got trouble” number is easily worth four minutes of your time. And if you happen to be waiting at this moment for a seat on a bus on a line that was a subway just last week, chances are you’ve got four free minutes or maybe a few more than that, as it takes a whole lot of buses to make up for a whole train of subway cars. Or maybe you’re currently sitting behind a long chain of vehicles while drivers marvel over the awesome number of streets that are suddenly one-way (or not available at all to the public). Hey, at least it’s even odds that the next one-way will allow you to move in your intended direction, not bad when you think about it. The odds are way better that you’ll be late, no matter what.
If you live anywhere near Boston aka “the hub of the universe” – a moniker attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes and meant sarcastically, shortened to the “the Hub City” by politicians swelling with civic pride and no wit at all, more than likely – this story is already somewhat familiar, even though it’s but a few weeks old. It all started with an emergency federal review of safety issues on the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority even though that story is hardly a new one. There have been some notable collisions on the Green Line over the years, trolley drivers coping with an outdated and unreliable signal system, or in at least one case an operator looking at a cell phone after the modern fashion of so many users of heavy machinery nowadays. Distraction probably causes a whole lot of everyday tragedies, even though the culture works hard to obfuscate or deny this possibility altogether, preferring to blame inebriation or recklessness or poor judgement.
Then there was the guy that fell to his death on a decrepit stairway that was supposedly securely closed off, and the escalator full of people that suddenly reversed direction unexpectedly that led to some severe injuries, and then the one that topped even that for horror, the guy on the Red Line whose arm got stuck in the door as the train left the station, who died when his arm was severed at the end of the platform. The last straw was evidently the fire on the Orange Line train as it crossed the Mystic River, which led to folks breaking windows to escape and one who became a news media star by jumping in the river. With this extra dose of black humor, that story probably made the national news. She was evidently a good swimmer, so no tragedy there, folks!
The story that is kind of tragic in a larger sense is that the MBTA has given us stories about being antiquated and underfunded and under-maintained for all the 40 years we’ve lived here, and you can bet some of what is in use today has not changed since that day in 1897 the Green Line opened. Hey! It’s the oldest citywide transit system in America, okay? And revenues and taxes can’t begin to adequately keep it going! Or so we’ve heard, more than a few times. I first rode it in the summer of 1970, everyday to work no less, and thought it was a miracle. Which, for a callow youth from Los Angeles, it most definitely was. And it smelled bad then and still does on really hot days (it’s the creosote in the track ties). Of course, the wooden escalators still in use then were straight out of a museum and kind of scary looking, and would you believe they only got rid of the last of those in the ‘80s? Of course, the modern ones have their own dangers evidently, and perhaps it’s an unintentional safety measure that on a given day a number aren’t working at all, same with the elevators.
So the whirlwind avalanche of changes now cascading through the city and our JP neighborhood in particular is a result of difficult decisions made by powers-that-be in what is a painfully sober response to the fed’s evaluation and demand for fixes, namely the unprecedented decision to shut down rail service completely right now. This way “five years of repairs” (as evidently figured by somebody) can now get done in about a month, or such is the hope. Talk about a drastic solution! But hey, the times demand things like this sometimes. The full agenda of how it will be done is currently beyond comprehension, but what is obvious is that 200 giant-economy-size “shuttle buses” (“every bus available east of the Mississippi”, according to one poetic official), many of them somewhat larger than the garden variety city bus, are now operating in the Boston area’s very narrow streets, and the trick is to create some kind of operating space. On many streets around here that means what some of the pictures show: an immediate change of some two-way streets to one way, or reversing the direction of some existing one-ways here and there, and in some cases forbidding private car use entirely.
Appropriately, most of the attention has been given to T ridership: the buses will be free, as will Blue Bike-share passes for a month for those who apply, and the city has provided heaps of helpful advice and information for those in need. This includes 6000 students who attend eight public schools served by the line, and the timing coincides perfectly with the influx of students who attend Northeastern U and Roxbury and Bunker Hill Community Colleges. Is this some kind of perfect storm, or what? And did I mention that the Orange provides 100000 rides on a typical day? A blessing and a miracle, for sure!
All of which doesn’t change the fact that any large regional urban transit system in today’s America is a kind of miracle. There are other major “legacy” systems in NYC, Chicago, and Philadelphia, along with well developed rail transit in San Francisco and DC that came along in the ‘70s. And let us repress our American exceptionalism for a moment to acknowledge that Toronto and Mexico City and Montreal, as well as Vancouver move lots of people over great distances, that last one being totally automated and maybe the nicest one to ride (I’ve only witnessed the trains coming and going from the Vancouver airport, where the station is thoroughly modern and spiffy). But to get to another truth regarding American enthusiasm for transit: in 2016 the NYC system alone served 4.3 billion riders per month, more than the next ten metro systems combined, while auto congestion in the cities with the largest systems also finds them in the top ten of the worst. There’s more: transit use in NYC has been falling steadily, first due to covid but also because of a steady decline in quality of service. And more and more remote workers don’t need transit at all, adding to a decline in ridership.
So in many ways the future of transit in America does not look exactly rosy, and even though the current story in Boston for those immediately affected will have stunning immediacy over the next month or longer, the vast majority of Americans in their transit averse rural boonies and sprawling urban/suburban megalopolises probably find it all more curious and amusing than anything else. The more sympathetic among them might admit to a morsel of pity for the victims foolish enough to live in our cramped beloved Hub City (aka beantown) or any eastern big city, for that matter. And what kind of a name is beantown, anyway?
For they all know that in America, as in most of the civilized world, the Car is King, even though urban people like this writer and a few others passionately believe in travel modes like mass transit and the bicycle, at least in densely populated places. Boston’s newly elected mayor has brought herself much publicity by touting the notion of making transit free to the economically disadvantaged (the bikeshare program already offers subsidies). The mayor and her progressive supporters call it a form of economic justice, part of a strategy to enable low income people to live in an increasingly very expensive city, and of course this all seems proper and right, provided it’s feasible in all the necessary ways. Of course “feasibility” is precisely what has stopped the whole thing thus far, as so-called “practical matters” tend to trump ideals, and values such as justice. But on the face of it, doesn’t free transit for those who can’t afford a car seem like a brilliant and appealing notion, suggesting that in the city if you can’t afford a car you might not even need one anyway? Especially as car-dependence in the face of a warming planet is not the supreme achievement we once thought it was? Given all that you’ve been reading up to now, is transit in its current state the kind of blessing that disenfranchised people truly deserve? What is the meaning of such a gesture?
There is no doubt that an awful lot of folks in metro Boston use transit as a way of life, and cope as they must with the occasional shortcomings and in the end love it anyway. Right now the shortcomings appear extraordinary but haven’t you heard that those shuttle buses are way more comfortable than an Orange Line car? Sometimes ya just gotta roll with the punches. But I was taken aback recently by an article in the Baffler titled “Universal Basic Automobility – give poor people cars, not bus passes”. In the country where the Car is King, does that make transit the Queen? Or some other noble title like Duke or Princess or High Poobah? How about stable boy or kitchen maid, as seems to be all too often the case, like right now in Boston. In fact, a check of the recent track record for all the big American systems suggests frustration for transit users everywhere, with the same problems of aging equipment and minimal maintenance and a government very reluctant to provide the money needed to fix things (crime stats on NYC transit are currently chilling, among other things). Better you should try places like Europe where it’s mostly more transit-friendly (but far from always – transit workers are striking in London) or better yet places in Asia, especially China where autocracy has wrought great things at tremendous expense, both for a burgeoning market for private automobiles as well as the populace who’ve been coaxed or pressured away from their bicycles to new and fabulous transit options.
The idea of government providing cars, something first proposed back in the ‘70s – think decent used ones – may seem outrageous on the face of it, but as a social worker of many years, I had to admit that the families that suffered with all the insecurity of keeping their minimalist automobiles running made whatever sacrifices were necessary so as to not lose the advantages of automobility. No way were they going back to being carless! Dan Albert’s piece in the Baffler points out the obvious: in America a car provides access to better jobs and schools, better neighborhoods and grocery stores and medical options, no chance of suffering the indignities of waiting a half-hour for the bus on a frigid winter’s day or missing that bus by 30 seconds and waiting a half hour for the next one and maybe losing your job. In America the Car is King and we’ve set everything up to ensure that.
You might say it would add to already horrible congestion, but that never stops anybody with the money who wants one, does it? You might assume prohibitive costs but have you checked out the numbers when it comes to transit funding? It would be fab publicity for a car dealer (are you listening Herb Chambers or Ernie Boch Jr?) and how about a vocational school doing the maintenance? A mere 30 cars would be a Godsend for 30 families. And as for congestion: we know that’s just something with which motorists learn to cope – it’s what phones are for, after all – just like urban bikers learn to cope with potential danger. So why not subsidize cars for those who would really benefit?
Of course I also know many single people and a few families who manage quite fine using transit, despite the occasional penalties and frustrations (hell, there are families all over JP raising kids while depending on their family-friendly electric transport bikes), but just as many more work out rides with people, or walk to places that provide what they need, another great advantage to living in a dense city. And of course most American cities are not at all like Boston, especially as one travels south or west. Cities in those places are also the fastest growing, like Vegas and Orlando and Phoenix. So maybe in many places the Car is God?
There is more food for thought here than any conclusions, and no doubt you’ve drawn many of your own about all this, maybe a long time ago. I’d like to finish with an interesting story that that offers one last morsel to this smorgasbord. SO the two of us have lived here right along the Orange Line for decades, with a station 10 minutes down the hill and a 15 minute ride to downtown, at least on a good day (of which there were once many more). One of us biked everywhere all the time for the most part (and yes he drove for work sometimes because this is America and that’s what you sometimes gotta do), while the other biked to a job downtown but also relied on transit whenever the weather was crummy or a hardship, mostly in winter. As the years passed, the joys of being outside, experiencing the joys of weather and the fascination of the Boston streetscape (urban scenery and street life can be as glorious as Yellowstone just totally different) and getting some exercise while traveling door-to-door on your own schedule (talk about freedom!) led to not using transit all that much, and I admit our circumstances were peculiar to us and we were quite blessed. But maybe a few of the current “victims” feeling coerced to get onto those Blue bikes will find the tradeoff is a much better deal than they expected and some of them might never get back on that train. Did I mention how for some of us the Bicycle is God? but of course ya gotta believe and if biking in the city seems like a bad idea (despite your eyes telling you that lots of people do it) the dominant culture will raise your skepticism every step of the way because that’s how dominant cultures work. Did you know there are more daily cyclists in Copenhagen than in the entire United States of America? Different dominant culture.
But of course the Car is King here in America for many excellent reasons, and long live the King. As wonderful and necessary as transit is, in some ways using it can involve more compromises than people (including many politicians) realize, especially those folks that don’t ride it much or not at all. It is no blessing to gift it to people for whom it might be of limited benefit or none whatsoever, same as giving some of them free bicycles. The match needs to be a good one and if that means a car why can’t we provide that to people instead of expecting them to thank us for a blessing that exists only in our own assumptions?
