Tag Archives: subway

My people

Karen is taking a break so she can manage the busy holiday season. Here is a column that attracted many comments. It is from 2016.

 It’s when I ride the crowded subway that I feel most Bostonian. “These are my people,” I think.

         Not that they are much like me. They are younger than I am for the most part. Sometimes one will get up from his seat and motion to me that I should take it. I know I can still stand on the subway, but it’s hard to resist their courtesy. Sometimes I accept. Sometimes I don’t. I think to myself, “My people are so kind and polite.”

         My people don’t look much like me. I’m pretty much white bread. They are whole wheat, oatmeal, pumpernickel, even seven-grain—some are so mixed in origin that they are unidentifiable as anything but my people.

         In that way, though, we are alike—alike in our differences. My people were born everywhere but Massachusetts. In 2014, about 56 percent of those living in Boston came from foreign countries or other states, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The Boston accents—the rest of the country doesn’t realize there are several Boston accents—are vanishing on the subway. The drivers, all born and bred here, used to announce the stops in wonderful local inflections so deep I had to listen carefully.

         Now the recorded announcement sounds like me, with “newscaster English,” a way of speech said to have arisen in Illinois and Iowa and also spoken in California, places I’ve lived. It’s an accent that doesn’t identify the speaker as coming from a specific place as a Michigan accent does or as voices from southern states or Brooklyn do. (Though it is not as if Brooklynites talk like Bernie Sanders anymore either.)

         My people engage in all the activities normal people do. Some go to college. Some are in high school or even younger, well equipped with backpacks. Depending on the time of day, many are going to work or coming home. Some have been shopping. Some are babies asleep in strollers. Some young men look as if they are going home after playing soccer. Some look scruffy. Others are nicely dressed. But few wear suits on the subway. Except for the State House, most offices don’t require suits anymore. Whatever they are doing, my people are busy.

         Most of my people spend their journey looking at their mobile phones. Some read newspapers or books. Once in awhile two people are chatting. Others look lost in thought.

         However they spend their time, they are lucky. They can get around by subway. When I first moved to the Boston area—Cambridge, it was—I met my first cockroach, but I also met my first underground train. The sign in Harvard Square read, “Eight minutes to Park Street.” The subway is still the fastest way to get between downtown Boston and Cambridge’s subway stations. It’s hard to imagine what our streets would be like without the T.

         I never feel as if I’m with my people when I’m driving. My people don’t cut other drivers off, they don’t blare their horns if a taxi or an Uber is letting out its passengers, they don’t drive as if all they can think of is, “Me first.”

         The people on the subway have much better manners than do drivers on the roads. Instead of “Me first” it is usually, “We’re all in this together.”

         Whenever I hear that the T has no money, that fares must rise, that we shouldn’t extend the system, I get sad. It’s partly because I know that a thriving public transit system, better than it is now and mostly underground, is essential to Boston’s prosperity and livability. We can’t grow an economy unless we grow the T and, as the fifth richest city  in America, we have the means to pay for it.

         But my sadness is more personal. We’ve got many ways to meet our fellow citizens. We see friends, we go to neighborhood meetings, we meet one another on the sidewalks, the shops, the library, the parks.

         But our neighborhoods, with their defined boundaries, can isolate us. Those trains on the MBTA’s colorful lines are places where we all come together. We’re jammed in. By and large, we are safe. We are all Bostonians, diverse, riding the rails together, treating one another with dignity, one people all getting along. Imagine that.

More stupid stuff

Sometimes as a community we don’t think before we act even though we spend lots of time in the thinking stage.

Casinos are one example. This is not a column opposing casinos. Their benefits are probably over-rated, and so are their drawbacks. Everett was chosen over Revere for the casino in the Boston area. The decision ultimately seemed arbitrary, but so what? And if Everett wants the building Wynn Resorts has proposed—possibly the ugliest thing in the world—who are we to quibble?

It is easy, however, to identify the big problem when it is so obvious. The Wynn proposal is a disaster because it has no real public transportation.

Buses don’t count here. They are stuck in traffic along with all the cars. Moreover, Wynn’s transportation presentation doesn’t expect public buses to be used much at all. What Wynn needs is a subway stop, or streetcars with dedicated lanes—or anything else that is real “rapid” transit for thousands of people.

Wynn’s presentation pointed out that its clientele typically do not arrive or leave during commuting hours. It also showed patrons coming from every direction, not just through Charlestown. Wynn touted its plan to keep employee parking (and driving) off site. They intend to bring in water taxis, but they estimate such taxis will convey only about 3 percent of the casino’s patrons. All this sounds modestly okay.

Wynn has proposed several solutions including money for upgrades to surrounding roads and a shuttle bus from the Orange Line. But its final environmental impact report showed that 63 percent of its clientele will arrive by car and park on site, while only 10 percent will take public transportation.

Wynn’s proposed roadway upgrades involve widening streets, creating a flyover, and upgrading the signals. The latter might make a small difference, but widening streets and installing flyovers are 1950s’ ideas that have proven to be poor solutions in recent years. The recent trend is to narrow streets and demolish overhead roads.

Wynn’s transportation proposals seem more suited to a sprawling western city (Las Vegas, perhaps?) than for a dense, urban area that is already choked with traffic and has found time and again that fast public transportation is the way to go. Wellington Station is close enough as the crow flies to the casino site, but, according to Google maps, it would take a pedestrian 31 minutes to walk to the intersection of Everett’s Broadway and Dexter Streets near the casino entrance. The walk could be shorter if the designers created a path to a door on the north side of the casino. But most of the walk would still be too far, and it is unpleasant.

The map shows a contrast between Wynn’s bad planning and good development. Assembly Row, just across the Mystic from the casino site, designed an Orange Line rapid transit stop within its borders. Of course, this was in trendy Somerville, which has had excellent civic leadership for the past decade from Mayor Joseph Curtatone.

The bad planning is not all Wynn’s fault. The gaming commission should have signaled that imaginative and effective transportation planning would be a major part of their decision-making. So far the commissioners seem ignorant of the traffic problems they are creating if things go forward as planned.

It is possible that all this is moot. Revere, Somerville and Boston have each filed a lawsuit against Wynn. It’s doubtful that Steve Wynn will tire of dealing with surly local leaders and citizens, but it could happen.

Meanwhile, Wynn could rework his plans with urbanity in mind. Maybe he could build a fabulous, fanciful pedestrian bridge over the Mystic, connecting his resort with Curtatone’s Assembly Row MBTA station just across the river. Maybe he could finance a spur of the Orange Line leading straight to his door.

Whatever happens, Massachusetts leaders should become part of the 21st century: Whenever big development of any kind happens, effective and fast public transportation must be a major part of it. (Olympics, anyone?) Otherwise we’re all going to be sitting on the roads in our cars most of every day.