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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Boston - Transit Tour
Boston proves its rank as one of America's premier transit cities through our comprehensive exploration of its historic first subway, vintage trolleys, modern rail lines, and extensive bike infrastructure.
• Visit to the Mattapan Trolley line featuring 1940s streetcars in regular daily service
• Interview with Andrew Cassidy from MBTA about America's first subway, built in 1897
• Exploration of how Boston's transit-oriented development shapes neighborhoods like Back Bay
• Experience with Fenway Park as a model urban stadium without massive parking requirements
• Testing of Boston's outstanding Blue Bikes system
• Observation of how Boston's transit feels like traveling through different decades simultaneously
• Comparison with other cities revealing where Boston ranks on our top cities list
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting us on Patreon to get early access to our upcoming episodes in Philadelphia, Baltimore and beyond. Check out our merch store or use the "buy us a coffee" link to help keep Transit Tangents running.
Doors are closing Public transit. That's my way to roll.
Speaker 2:On a metro. I'm taking control.
Speaker 1:Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind. Public transit, it's the rhythm of my life.
Speaker 2:On this episode of Transit Tangents. We do Boston in a day using only public transit, from subways to light rail, a historic trolley, buses and a whole lot more. We put Boston's public transportation system to the test. All of that and more coming up on Transit Tangents. All right, we are in downtown Boston, doing Boston using only public transit. We are walking right now towards downtown crossing station where we're going to catch the red line towards Ashmont, and we're heading to a pretty unique piece of transit at the end of the red line there, which I'm excited to check out. If you're enjoying this video as you watch, please consider hitting the like button and leaving a comment. We made it to Ashmont on the red line, but before boarding our next mode of transit, we wanted to take a moment to talk about how we got into Boston from the airport. So yesterday we both flew into Boston separately, and ordinarily you would take the blue line from Logan into downtown. That's the rail connection.
Speaker 3:Or, if you're really adventurous, you can take the ferry from the airport across to the wharves in downtown.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think those are pretty infrequent, unfortunately, but yesterday, though, the blue line was down for construction. They had shuttles running, so we decided to try something different, which was taking the silver line, which is a pretty interesting system. It's like a kind of a BRT kind of not. Some of it runs in mixed traffic, but other parts run in their own dedicated right away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say a lot of. It did have a lot of BRT-like qualities because it did go underground and went through a tunnel that was dedicated to just buses. You ended up in a very subway-like station that was designed specifically for the Silver Line Yep.
Speaker 2:That was also really nice and it was free from the airport to downtown, yeah, and drops you right at South Station, which you can basically get anywhere in the city with one ride, except for North Station.
Speaker 2:So we just rode the Red Line out to Ashmont and we're now about to get on the Mattapan Trolley, which is a fun little historical piece of transit here that essentially extends the Red Line a little bit further out through some more suburban territory.
Speaker 2:So excited to check it out, yeah, all right. So we just got off the Mattapan I-Speed line and we got off here at Central Avenue, and this was actually originally a steam-powered commuter service in the mid-1800s and then in 1929, it was upgraded into what we see today and there have been obviously some upgrades to it, but the streetcars are actually the originals from that time period. These streetcars were actually introduced in the early 1940s, not right when the line opened. There are not many like this left in the United States anywhere, especially none that are running in daily service like this as definitely a really real mode of transit. We saw lots of people getting on and off from Ashmont on their way down to Mattapan, so definitely a cool little piece of transit history to come check out. I'd never been to this before, so pretty cool to see it in person.
Speaker 3:So one of the reasons that we chose this stop in particular to get off is you can see there's actually a lot of development that looks fairly new and it's all right next to the stop. So it's a really good example of that sort of transit oriented development and a really cute sort of town center area that's very walkable and has multiple modes, including the streetcar bike share, and we've seen buses come through as well.
Speaker 2:We jumped back on the trolley to Ashmont and took the red line all the way to Park Street right at Boston Common. Andrew Cassidy, the Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Engagement for the MBTA, met us there to share a bit about the history of the station we were standing at. He also hosts a podcast called Spilling the Tea with the MBTA.
Speaker 1:Boston is no stranger to history. You know, shot heard around the world American Revolution. But also what people might not know is also that it's America's home to America's first subway system, Originally our green line going between Boylston and Tremont. This is back in 1897. There was such I mean it's hard to imagine, but there was such trolley car congestion from all the different private companies running trolley cars at the end of the 1800s that, in order to alleviate some of that traffic, they decided to put some underground. And this was a massive undertaking because, you know, digging holes in 2025 is a little bit easier. 1897, not so much Right, you know this is using horse-drawn tools and mostly manual labor.
Speaker 1:The Boston Common is where it's going underneath. It actually had to go underneath a graveyard, so they had to relocate individuals who were interred there. So it was a massive thing. A lot of people didn't believe in it. A lot of people thought it was opening a portal to the underworld. It was opening a portal to the underworld. Lo and behold, it became, you know, a step forward for transportation across the country which is massive.
Speaker 3:Some of those arguments today, I don't know. Yeah, maybe on a hot day.
Speaker 1:Yes, but it was, it allowed for us to kind of grow that system and again, originally just going from one corner of the common to the other, that has branched out to now. We have four different subway lines, we have all these different commuter rail it's really blossomed into this full service. But none of that would have happened without these two and these are the original head houses that were constructed for when it opened back in 1897. Wow, awesome.
Speaker 2:After talking with Andrew, we went for a short walk through Boston Commons and got back on the Green Line at Boylston to head further into the Back Bay neighborhood. We had a much longer conversation with Andrew that will be released early for those on Patreon so we just took the Green Line train from Boylston to Copley, just a couple of stops down the line. We're now kind of in the middle of the Back Bay area and, if you're interested in this, the Back Bay actually used to be underwater. It was a bay and the city essentially filled all of the land in. There's a really good video on YouTube about this by Daniel Steiner that I'll link below if you're interested in the history of that.
Speaker 2:But the area is home to what's right behind us here the library. We've also got the Trinity Church right here and the neighborhood in general is a lot of beautiful old kind of row homes, a medium density housing all throughout this area. That's kind of characteristic of Boston at that era. It's also famously like the one part of the city that is a perfect grid if you were to look at it on Google Maps, and that's mostly because it was filled in and built in afterwards from when the original city was settled All right. After a quick walk around the Back Bay area, we're gonna hop back on the Green Line and head a few more stops up to Kenmore Square where we will check out Fenway Park.
Speaker 3:So we jumped on the green line at Copley, took that all the way to Kenmore Square, to historic Fenway Park.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for folks who don't know, fenway is the second oldest baseball stadium in the United States, only behind Wrigley Field in Chicago, and there's something a little different about this stadium compared to the others we've seen on the show. Where's all the Fenway parking? That's a very good question. Yeah, this is like an actual urban ballpark, which is nice to see. Go figure, it's pretty easy to get here. You can take the green line, like we just did.
Speaker 3:There's also a commuter line stop right here so folks can get to the game multiple different ways, all sorts of buses it's nice to be able to go to a sports stadium like this and not have to just go through a massive sea of parking like we have seen so many times before. Like in san antonio, we went to the stadiums, the convention center and uh arlington and dallas, like it's always a sea of parking.
Speaker 2:Kansas city we didn't even make it to the stadiums because they were so far out and they're just surrounded by parking lots.
Speaker 3:Yeah but we were able to get off the subway, make it here within a few minutes, and then there's still a ton of like street activation and other things that are happening, so just a really good spot.
Speaker 2:Restaurants, bars, places to live. It makes for a much more like fun atmosphere, both pregame and postgame, and you don't have to worry about driving home afterwards. Yeah, exactly One thing worth mentioning is that Kenmore Square Station also had a great direct bus connection right at the top of the stairs, leaving the Green Line. All right, we just stopped. We got some lunch near Fenway Park that famous Boston-style pizza. I think we just had some pretty mid-pizza, but we were in a bit of a rush, so that's okay. But we're now just taking a walk over.
Speaker 2:Okay, but we're now just taking a walk over and we're going to catch our first bus of today. We both took the Silver Line yesterday, but we're going to get on the number one bus here on Massachusetts Ave over to Harvard. So interested to see how our first bus is and if it shows up on time. It should be here in just a few minutes, so fingers crossed. We're presently getting a little bit let down by the bus. We're at least five or six minutes delayed now and the bus is like crawling on the transit app and on Google Maps, so Not sure if it's a ghost bus.
Speaker 2:We'll see Fingers crossed that it's not a ghost bus. What if it's not? We'll see. We've seen several university buses go by that have faked this out, but we'll see that kind of sucked. Yeah, that was a very slow bus, probably one of the slowest buses we've been on. Like on the show before, I feel like yeah, yeah, it was crowded when we got on it.
Speaker 2:There's no dedicated bus lane, there's no signal priority and it had clearly been sitting in traffic for a while before it got to us, and then the bus was like standing remotely because there's so many people on it. People were getting off at every stop and then every stop had a whole bunch of people waiting for it. So yeah, not ideal.
Speaker 3:What we think we've determined is that the buses here might be designed to funnel people to the trains, because the trains all kind of converge on Boston where everybody's trying to go yeah.
Speaker 2:So especially in the areas like we're obviously like for folks who live here, you're probably going to be in parts of town maybe that are not right served on the trains, but in the areas we've been going to have been pretty well served by the trains. So we kind of forced that bus a little bit and now I know why. People probably yeah, although there were a ton of people on it, so I don't know.
Speaker 3:Um but'll see if our look improves there. We're gonna go explore Harvard, we're gonna get some coffee, yes, and then we're gonna finish out the day here in Boston.
Speaker 2:All right, let's get some coffee. After coffee, we decided to give the city's bike share system a try, with a quick ride north to a commuter rail station. In general though obviously we're not really getting a huge taste of it here, but Boston's done a ton with bike infrastructure in the last few years. We've seen a lot of bike lanes all over the city. Yep, I know the mayor has been very pro bike lane, pro transit in general Also.
Speaker 3:I should mention, we're not in Boston.
Speaker 2:We're in Cambridge that's true, yes, in general. The Greater Boston area has been good, though, with that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3:Cambridge is a beautiful area lots of walkability, tons of nice green spaces, parks, bike lanes, crosswalks, hybrid pedestrian beacons.
Speaker 2:And right now. So we had just walked around Harvard for a bit and now we're riding the bikes up. Just one more stop up on the red line.
Speaker 3:And we're actually going to catch the commuter line yeah from.
Speaker 2:Porter Square, so get a glimpse of what the commuter trains look like. Well, that was pretty easy, short ride.
Speaker 3:Short, sweet, simple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I wanted to point out we weren't recording when we unlocked these. I didn't have the app downloaded yet and I walked up to it, scanned the qr code and I had the bike unlocked literally in 60 seconds, which, as far as those sorts of bike share apps, gone in 60 seconds, gone in 60 seconds. So, um, yeah, I think I would count that as a as a win for the app being easy to use and also the network of the bike share here is absolutely incredible yes, yes, covers like basically the entire city goes out quite a ways.
Speaker 2:We'll put a map up for folks, but all right, we're going to walk over now. The Porter Square Red Line and Commuter Line station is right up here and we're going to go hop on the commuter rail and take it back towards downtown.
Speaker 3:North Station. All right. So after the e-bikes, we ended up at Porter Square Station. Here you can generally catch the red line. You have the commuter line here or there's also buses coming out of this area. Today we're going to take the commuter line. The one thing to note here we mentioned on an interview that we did and I've mentioned sort of throughout the podcast you can use the same fare method across the system.
Speaker 2:That is not the case for the commuter line, right? Uh, even though the commuter line is still operated by the mbta, it right now is on its own app and system, so, uh, and it also has variable pricing and that probably has something to do with it. That is something similar to what we saw in washington dc their, their actual, just like subway metro, is based on variable pricing. You, you tap your card when you get in and you tap your card when you get out, and it keeps track of the price. Based on that, the commuter rail works the same way. So the further you travel, the more you pay for the service.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're going to hop on this train in about five minutes and then we're going to head over to North Station.
Speaker 2:All right, so we made it from the commuter line, got into North Station. Commuter line was moving a little slow, but it was still a nice ride.
Speaker 3:We were reaching the terminus of the line, so yes, yeah, makes some sense.
Speaker 2:Seems like there was like a lot of. It was like going through an industrial area. Seems like there was a lot of. It was like going through an industrial area. There might have been a lot of stuff going on around, but from North Station we hopped on the Orange Line just one stop up here, to the Haymarket Station, which brings us to Faneuil Hall, which is where we're standing right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so vibrant part of the city, a lot going on. Last time I was here, some Bostonian guy yelled at me because I didn't choose like a lobster claw suit enough.
Speaker 2:I don't know Chris was taking his time. Still scarred All sorts of really historical things to go do in Senior here. The site of the Boston Massacre was right up the road. We're really close to the North End, which is famously where Paul Revere lived and the Old North Church and all sorts of things Also like two blocks from the Big Dig, the Big Dig.
Speaker 2:So if you were ever a modern Marvels fan like I was as a child, you learned all about that Totally and we would take you to a lot of these sites but they are all very walking distance and we're running a little short on time. But you can access so many of these sites in Boston Literally obviously by public transit, but on foot in a lot of cases Once you're in the core part of downtown. Here there's so much historical things to go, do and see Once you're here. Also, the I have to mention the aquarium. The aquarium in Boston is amazing. I I remember love going as a kid, but I got to go with my two-year-old niece six months or so ago and she loved it as well.
Speaker 2:I'm just imagining like nothing but oysters and lobsters.
Speaker 2:No, there's a massive tank in the middle that, like the staircase, wraps around or like a ramp, and so you're seeing like sharks and all sorts of different fish all in this one giant tank in the middle. It's very cool. Next visit. So if you're in Boston, hit the Aquarium for sure, and there's a very deep station on the Blue Line there. The Blue Line was under construction all day today. That's the reason we haven't been on it. They were having signal issues, is what I read online, so we didn't ride it. But a very deep station at the Aquarium station right after it passes under the water, but it's also next to the Aquarium. All right, we're going to start to wrap things up a little bit. We're going to head from here to South Station, where we'll be catching a train down to Philadelphia actually. So we'll see you at South Station.
Speaker 3:So we are finishing up our day here in Boston, where we've traveled all over the city using buses. Well, bus, we used a bus yesterday too. Two buses, so two buses, trains, bikes and a lot of walking.
Speaker 2:Yes, before we get into some of the highlights, lowlights, all that sort of stuff, we are here at South Station. We're going to be getting on the Amtrak Northeast Regional headed to Philly tonight, so we've got a bit of a train ride ahead of us and we will be doing Nice. Five hours of train ride ahead of us, yes, and then we'll be doing the same thing in Philly tomorrow. That episode will not be done yet, but it will be out early. If you are able to support the show on Patreon, that's the best way you can help us out.
Speaker 3:Also continue to watch, because from Philly we're going to Baltimore. Hopefully those release in that order, but we'll be in Baltimore as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so lots of cool stuff coming soon, but overall I mean we had a pretty smooth day. The bus was the only real thing that slowed us down, um, but every train we got on. For the most part I think this morning we waited five minutes for our train going out to, uh, the matapan trolley, yep, um, but otherwise I think all of our train waits were like minutes or like appearing as we were walking out.
Speaker 3:Agreed yeah, boston is very easy to get around by public transit. We knew that going into this. We just really wanted to take this opportunity to highlight all of the different levels of transit that exists here and kind of give our impression of it. As you said, super easy transfers. We saw some really cool old infrastructure. I love the fact that they still use the old streetcars and, like the Mattapan, yep, uh, that streetcar, just it felt like you're in another era. I mentioned to lewis off camera what I loved about. Um, boston's transit is like everything we did felt like you're in a different decade yes, even like the, the red line trains versus.
Speaker 2:We didn't get to use the orange line too much, but the orange line trains are newer than the red line trains, which feel like you know 90s. And then some of the old green line trains are newer than the red line trains, which feel like you know 90s, and then some of the old green line trains are older than that. Then you had the Mattapan trolley, which was older than that.
Speaker 3:We get on a commuter line with wood paneled walls. It feels like you're in a 1970s conference room. It's almost like you're living in an active museum of transit history in the US, yeah, and it's interesting too, the different modes.
Speaker 2:So us, yeah, and it's interesting to the different modes. So, like, despite you know, the green line, blue, orange and red all being on the map there, uh, the the green line being a light rail being different, um, and also the benefits of having the kind of trunk line where all the different lines of the green line run together is at those main stations in downtown there's basically just always another train coming, like a minute or less right afterwards, so it makes the frequencies really good. And then as you get further out and the riders get more sparse, so does the the green line, especially as it gets above ground.
Speaker 3:So I'd say my major call-outs a ton of train coverage, also a lot of bus coverage, but it does seem like the buses funnel to the trains. I we think of our theory is that Boston is kind of a hard city to navigate and prevent congestion, just the way the city grid is laid out, or lack thereof. Yeah, so you funnel people into trains and trains have a direct route in, right?
Speaker 2:And I'm sure as you go further out the bus has probably become a little bit better. But yeah, in the city center it's so chaotic and the bus that we did ride the number one bus. It just took forever because it was like it had been sitting in traffic in downtown and then by, like you know, closer into downtown back bay area and then as it got to us it was packed and then we were just stuck stopping everywhere we were going all the way through.
Speaker 3:So, uh, it's a bit of an ordeal, but just doing my good deed, yeah other call outs uh, if you want to take a bike like this week has been uh, today has been beautiful weather uh, perfect for biking. If you want to take a bike, there is a massive bike network here the Blue Bikes. You can go pretty much anywhere in the Boston metro area and connect via all these little stations, so it is absolutely perfect for that.
Speaker 2:And it's also just highly walkable, right, and we didn't get into the bike infrastructure really, but there's major improvements in bike infrastructure all across the city, so definitely, definitely a lot of fun. Now something if you haven't seen this episode yet we did an episode where we have ranked all of the cities in a day. That we have done using only public transit so far, and we're now, at the end of each episode, going to slot in the new city where it may go. So are we going to add a drum roll? Okay, yeah, all right. So, after a lot of deliberations, uh, and it's still to be totally fair, I mean, this is subjective, but it's fun to rank these out yeah, let's first.
Speaker 3:Let's first go back a second and make sure that everybody understands. We are basing this on our experiences and knowing that we don't live in these cities. Obviously we don't have the full picture, so people will absolutely disagree with us on some of these and throughout this.
Speaker 2:If you were watching this episode, you noticed things that you were like, oh, you got lucky on that or no. That's always really good. Definitely, let us know too, because obviously, yes to your point, in a day you can't figure it out.
Speaker 3:But so where does d not cc? So where does boston rank? I think we're putting boston in the number one slot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think I think we're putting Boston in the number one slot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we both agree. Boston is number one on the list so far of the cities that we have been to during the show, just eking out Washington DC, and kind of for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2:Number one the coverage of the trains in the downtown and like immediately adjacent area, like the more you know, urban core and slightly beyond, is just so much more. There's a lot more lines, a lot more stops, a lot more just density around all these areas and whatnot. You've got the subway, the light rail, the commuter rails, the buses, even though, again, we didn't have the most positive experience, but you still have the silver line as well, the bike coverage, the bike coverage.
Speaker 3:The ferry service. I mean, you have so many different modes of transportation to get around and connect throughout the city. And also we look at this from a perspective, again not living in these cities of okay, you have now traveled across the country via flight or via train to get to these city centers, and then what do you do at that point? How do you get around? And I think what you're saying the density of the stations and the coverage puts Boston slightly above DC.
Speaker 2:It's very close though and I will say so like Boston has the tap to pay with credit cards. Now that was a win. Since we've been in DC, that is now the case there too, but when we were there that wasn't the case, so that, I guess, has some bearing on it as well. And you know, I would say, probably two or three years ago Boston would not be in the number one or two slot, mostly because they were having all sorts of issues, as we talked about with Andrew from the MBTA today. So but but they've really put in the work, put in the effort. The state governor is is pushing forward, the mayor is pushing forward. The MBTA their new CEO has really gone hard on trying to make sure all this stuff works again.
Speaker 3:Also one more point to emphasize this is almost a tie, and we're barely barely putting Boston above DC. Yeah, DC's metro does move a lot more people in a regional sense, Like you have a lot more people in that region that are being supported by the transit itself, and so you have so many commuters from all of those towns coming in, right, yeah, and they also have like automated trains.
Speaker 2:I'm even doubting it in my head now. I don't know.
Speaker 3:But it's close.
Speaker 1:You guys. Let us know where you think it should have slotted in.
Speaker 2:But with all that being said, though, maybe they're in first place A, first place B. We'll see, we'll see. Okay. With all that being said, thank you all so much for watching. If you have not liked this video already, please consider doing so. If you haven't left a comment, do that. You can support the show directly via Patreon by checking out our merch store or using the buy us a coffee link. But with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit.
Speaker 3:Tangents.
Speaker 2:Tuesday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm saving that dough. Public transit's where it's at, watch me go.