Following are pictures of Boston's transit system. For pictures of the city and its urbanism, see
Part 1.
Boston can lay a legitimate claim to having the most diverse transit system in America. They have commuter rail, third rail metro, light rail in both subway and streetcar form, trolley buses, bus subways, BRT, and of course regular old surface buses. The only cities that can come close to matching Boston's diversity are Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Naturally, I found it all very interesting.
Let's start with the Silver Line, Boston's BRT subway, and its newest major piece of transit infrastructure.
Here are the Silver Line platforms at South Station, where you can catch transfers to the Red Line subway, commuter rail, and Amtrak.
It's fairly obvious that the Silver Line was built on the cheap. Low-ceiling, industrial-looking stations, no electronic displays with arrival information, etc. They even rely on a temporary sandwich board sign to tell you where the airport bus comes, rather than incorporating more useful and better-looking permanent signage.
However for its faults, the subway portion of the Silver Line functions well enough. Buses move though it quickly without obstruction. Great. Unfortunately it is only a subway for a short portion of 3 or 4 stops. It's mostly a surface bus. Even the route to the airport, ostensibly an express, spends a few blocks running in mixed-traffic on regular surface streets. On the whole the Silver Line comes off as seeming inescapably half-assed. Like somebody told a bunch of planners who were uninterested in doing so that they had to build a rapid transit line, and the planners did so grudgingly, kicking and screaming the whole way. It's better than a surface bus, but it's not a good substitute for a real rail subway.
... Well that was a downer, so now let's see something cool.
Boston's Green Line holds the impressive dual distinctions of being both North America's first subway (opened 1897) and its most ridden light rail line (daily ridership: 237,700).
Haymarket station.
This is the Green Line platform at Park Street Station, where the Red Line intersects. Presumably the station was upgraded when the Red Line was built, since it obviously has components that don't date from the 19th Century.
I am a little freaked out by the platforms and tracks being the same level.
Speaking of the Red Line, here it is. It's a traditional third rail subway, like in New York and Washington.
This is still Park Street Station.
You may have noticed that Green Line trains were all had green paint schemes. Train livery matches the line name on every line, so this Red Line train is red.
... And Orange Line trains (also third-rail) are orange.
Blue Line trains are also blue, but I didn't get a picture.
This is the mezzanine level of Harvard Station on the Red Line.
Of course there's a Dunkin' Donuts, it's New England.
The main entrance to Harvard Station, with escalators and elevators.
A secondary entrance, with stairs only.
In Cambridge I discovered trolley buses. I love trolley buses, and wish more cities had them.
Once again, I love these things, but can I just say that Boston has the ugliest bus fleet in the world. Seriously. I don't know where they get these hulking things, but they certainly make me appreciate Washington's
more elegant-
looking fleet.
Ah, a bus subway. This would explain why they still run trolley buses.
I am not sure, but I think this subway is just a single station, a bus transfer point connecting to the Harvard Red Line station. However I could be wrong. Maybe another forumer knows?
Here is a wikipedia picture (
source) of the trolleybus station. It seems appropriate for the thread, even though it's not my photo.
Some normal buses.
Boston is not a city known for its cycling infrastructure, but this little intersection in Cambridge is interesting. It's a turn lane that allows bikes to cross over car traffic more safely.
We'll wrap up the thread with a couple pictures of South Station. The building itself and the main hall were shown in Part 1, but here are the intercity platforms. The train visible in this first picture is an Acela, the one featured in the second is slow-speed, but electric.
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I believe Boston overall has a better system with more thorough coverage of the city, but San Francisco has a more diverse collection of modes.
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