December 30, 2025 • 40 mins
Bradley Jay Fills In On NightSide with Dan Rea:
The year 1630 marks the first time public transportation was formed in Boston. It was a ferry service initiated by the Massachusetts Bay Company that took riders across the Charles River, between what is now the North End and Charlestown. This spared the English colonists a two-day walk around Boston Harbor! Learn more about the history of Boston transit with Steven Beaucher, Cofounder and Proprietor of WardMaps LLC.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on z WBC, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Boy's cold out there, much colder than I remember winter being.
And I used to like cold. I was proud, I
was strong bringing on the winter. But now I'm all set.
I don't like summer and I don't like winter. There's
not much left for me. Now we're going to talk
about talk about Boston. I love talking about Boston stuff,
and I love talking about Boston transit. And we have
(00:29):
an expert, a fanatic a Boston transit. I won't say
geek in a bad way, but you know what I mean,
Stephen Buche had the right Stephen. Stephen is many things.
One of them is the owner or the operator of
the well known MBTA store on mass Ave between Harvard
(00:51):
and Porter. I walked by it all the time. I
went in only one time because it's across the street
from my route, and I had no idea until today
you were the proprietor of that store becoming up closing
that microphone there talk about the store. There are a
lot of MBTA people out there. I don't even know
if they know about the store.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
So yeah, besides being an unabashed transit geek been a
long time rail fan. H Since inception, we've run MBTA Gifts,
which is the tea's merchandise program, essentially their gift shop.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Did you grow up wanting to open an MBTA store?
When did that spark hit you?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I always grew up wanted to do to do anything
with trains and transit.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I grew up out in the suburbs.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Which your first train memory.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
My first train memory is sitting in the car seat
at the back of the seat. I don't know what
two three years old train goes by and just making
noises at the train. I think my first words or
vocalizations where we're just talking to the train as it
was going by Soma.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It was something like chow chow.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Yeah, I think it was nut nut, something like nut nut.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Is that a train sound?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
When you're too it sounds good?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Okay? And then how did that manifested stuff? Were you
that way through grammar school and high school? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yeah, I mean I used to write down when what
do you want to be train engineer? And then as
I got older by the time I grew up out
in Chelmsford down the suburbs, as soon as I could
get on the commuter rail come into Boston. That that
just clinched it for me that the networks were here.
I could go play on them. I could what is
this train? Where does it go to? What's the Orange Line?
What's this neighborhood? And I've been exploring and learning every since.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
What happened to your your train conductor train operator dreams?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, that evolved into train engineer, and then some something
clicked and they became a licensed architect.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
So I went into architecture.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I actually became for about three years a long range
train Amtrak fanatic, and I've been on eight across country
Amtrak trips and those you know, those are like forty
eight hours. So you start talking to everybody, including there
were a couple of engineers or a couple of people
high up in the company who were just riding along.
(03:01):
So I struck up a conversation and asked him, so,
what does it take to become an engineer? And it
was surprisingly not that hard. I thought, I how quit
my radio job and do that?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
No?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Wait, no, I won't. But had that presented itself as
a when I was a young kid, who knows I
might have become an engineer?
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You no, absolutely I mean I have friends who are
engineers or who are trained engineers worked for MTA down
in New York and people I know a lot of
people work for the MBTA and Kiolus up here, and
that skill set which is phenomenal and so needed, Like
we need more people going into that industry so that
our transit systems can grow.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
What do I suppose it is about trains that attracts
so many people and a few of them so strongly.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
I mean, there's there's a bunch of freedom.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Is it? The freedom?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I mean that's one layer, right, there's also a nostalgia layer. Oh,
this this thing is more associated with history than let's
say modern highway, but like on a contemporary on a
contemporary basis, it's a literal connection that is open to all,
and that is, it is something that we can all
(04:16):
access and it can get us places that we do
it as a shared experience, and I think that's part
of it is you're not in a cocoon of your
individual automobile. You're making a commitment to be social and
to be part of the community when you go on
a train.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
So what is it about America that doesn't like trains?
We don't like America overall, despise us trains love cars.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Why I think that we have in America as we
have always had so many different segments of people like this,
don't like this, like this, don't We're not a homogeneous culture.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
We've never been.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
So there are people who will never get on a train,
But there are also people who like myself, I'll probably
never buy a Ford f one fifty.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Good to know, I see, Oh, we still have a
little bit of time. Now. You also have a book
that you have brought in. Tell me the book weighs
six pounds. It is a beautiful book. I wish Christmas
were not over because this would be a tremendous tremendous gifts.
Six hundred I mean six hundred pages, six pounds, six
(05:21):
six years.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Get six years to write six hundred pages, six pounds,
four hundred years of history. I, as a transit historian,
wanted to tell the whole story in one book, from
sixteen thirty to I wrapped up the manuscript right before COVID.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So before we actually get into the history and go
step by step, which we will. I mentioned that America
was not a train country, but Boston was into public
transit pretty heavily up till the fifties, right and then
the highways. It became a car country and the highway
system they wanted cars. They wanted to make it car friendly.
(05:59):
At the spen some public transportation isn't that correct, So.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I think Boston is. We are very lucky. We never
lost one hundred percent completely lost our networks. There are
cities in the country that are transit deserts. They used
to have vast street.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Car networks or bus networks or even railed transit networks.
We've had our ups.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And downs in terms of ebbs and flows of how
many people use it, how reliant we are on it.
Of course, in the middle of the twentieth century, railroads
are going bankrupt, the federal government spending billions on highway
infra infrastructure that didn't exist. So there was there was
There was a natural move away from transit, but we
never got rid of it, and we're one of the
(06:41):
lucky states that invested in it and made sure we
didn't lose it. Though it may have gotten you know,
underfunded and became poorly reliable. We're now, I hope, coming
out of decades of ups and downs.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Okay, and you know Phil.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Ang Phil is fabulous supporter, which is title.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Oh my god, Phil Angery. He's a general manager of
the general manager.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
If anybody's listening to me that now that knows Phil,
please have him call us at call call us. He
can call six one seven two five, because Phil, I
have a couple of suggestions for you, and I want
you to know. I am a tea lover. I love
the MBTA so much, and I'm not. I'm not a
super trained geek. I mean, I guess compared to most
(07:27):
time I did go on eight of those crazy cross
country trips, I guess maybe I am a train geek now.
But I love the MBTA for reasons other than being
a train gig. When I got to Boston, the fact
that I didn't need a car and you know, a
handful of change would take me away from it all.
I love the common experience. You're underground, everybody's going the
(07:50):
same speed, everybody's going the same direction. It's one of
the very It's a very unifying experience.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Extremely democratizing, and that's why I think that's what bothers
some people.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
It's not a me, it's not a me me me thing.
It's a wee thing. And Americas are very much a
me country.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
That is definitely there's a lot of people who they
would prefer to put themselves over their neighbor at all costs.
And unfortunately, you know, in Boston and Massachusetts, the Commonwealth,
we've had a pretty solid mix of of cultures of
you know, left and right in this and and I
think we've done a pretty good job of keeping things
(08:27):
like we have good roads, we have a reasonable transit network.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
We're not a city that one.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Of them is, you know, like let's say like Greater Miami,
where you just have spaghetti and spaghetti of of highways
that are like the size of let's say downtown Boston
and they have you know, very lean transit system or
you know, but then you look at another place like
New York, massive transit network, you know, largest, one of
(08:54):
the largest in the world, largest in the country, but
you can still you know, get around by car.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
So like balances is important.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
So Philang, even if you don't want to call. And
the reason I said I love the tea is because
I'm not going to ask you the hard questions or anything.
I'd love to speak with you. I have a couple
of suggestions and even if you don't call Phil, tune in.
I'll give the suggestions and you can listen. I need
I need to communicate with Phil. Or are we going
(09:21):
to get into the history of transit in Boston. We're
gonna go way back into the sixteen hundred, right, Yes,
the very first public transit. We had nothing to do
with trains, and I think you're gonna love it if
you like Boston history. W BZ.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
We're with Stephen Bouchet, who is the author of Boston
and Transit, a magnificent heavy I guess you'd call it
a coffee table book mapping the history of public transportation
in the Hub. And we're going to go directly to
the very first paint the picture of you know this Boston,
sixteen thirty and the first public transportation was what and when?
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Okay, So sixteen thirty, we've got Winthrop's group coming over
from England and as they made down their way down
the coast from Salem and then stopping in Charlestown by
that fall, they're like they couldn't get good water in Charlestown.
They thought that France or somebody was going to invade,
so they hopped over to the Shamat Peninsula. If you
(10:28):
don't know what the Shamat Peninsula is, that's essentially the
North end and the Financial district, government center part of Boston.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And you have maps of all this in your books.
Oh yeah, many, You have a thousand men over as.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Nine hundred images in the book. So sixteen thirty they
arrive in the sham At Peninsula. They being the Massachusetts
Bay Company. Remember this is a private company that came
over here to sort of take some land.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I wasn't listening with you. Tell me exactly where the
peninsula is.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I want to So the Shamat Peninsula is essentially from
the north end to the South end and from Beacon
Hill to where South Station.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Is, so the beginning of the South end or to
mass Ave to us.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
It got very narrowed down by like Dover Street, which
was Boston Neck. Okay, but yeah, essentially half of the
northern the eastern half of the South End.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
To get off, I had to go through Boston Neck.
The turnstyle, you had to pay and everything.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I don't know about the turnstyle, but it got wet
at high tide. That's what the gallows were.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
And so.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Do you know exactly where that So the spot was
in the south end where Boston Neck where.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
It was long, and it sort of stretched from Dover
Street down to where like sort of mass Ave is
today but Dover Street or I keep calling it Dover Street.
This is West East Berkeley Street today, essentially where JJ
Foleys is and everything.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And now name all the Boston that did not exist
that was.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Just marsh.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Be specific.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
I mean back from the foot of Charles Street all
the way out to parts of Brookline.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
So at Boston Common was basically the beach. Yeah, the
foot you could put up, you'd pull your boat up
to Boston Common. Yep.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
The only land based way to get on was the neck.
So as what the colonists when they arrived the Massachusetts
Bay Company, they looked to the people who are already
living here the Massachusetts, the indigenous people, and they were
using canoes to get everywhere because it was much easier
to go on the walls.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
If you didn't go on the water, it took you
like mostly almost two days.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Right, because you had Salem to the north of us,
and you had Plymouth Colony to the south of US
and they set up Massachusetts Bay Colony. They named it
Boston in the middle and land travel to those was
much more excruciating than just getting in a boat. But
after the Massachusetts Bay Colony moved over from Charlestown over
(12:56):
to the Shamat Peninsula, they sixteen thirty November, they aim Boston.
They say, we're gonna call the sham At Peninsula Boston.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So first the natives called it shaman right, Yeah, it.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Was sort of a name that was used by not
only them, but the traders that had been here for
years before.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And then before Boston it was also called Tremonte.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well, on the sham At Peninsula was the Trimount, the Trimonte,
Free Mounts.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
The Trimonte, and that was what bought before Boston was Boston.
It was called Tremonte.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yes, you could use all of those names.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
And then and then it became officially Boston because some
official names. One or two people named it after their
hometown in England.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, so that's the Massachusetts Bay Company. At that same
meeting or the one after it, depending on how you
read the colonial documents, they also said, hey, we need
a piece of public transportation. We need somebody to set
up a ferry between Charlestown that we just left and
the new settlement of Boston. By the next year, sixteen
thirty one, mister Convert is running a ferry. And my
(14:02):
definition of public transportation is something that is sanctioned, overseen, permitted,
not necessarily funded by the governing body. So at the
time that was Massachusetts Bay Company and everyone could ride it,
you just but the fares were set. They were set
by the colony and the person who wrote who operated it.
He's basically the first contractor who took a public public
(14:25):
contract to run public transportation.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
So we made a bid to have that franchise and
he made the money.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, and he had it for three or four years.
What was his name, I forget the first name, but
his last name was.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Converse, Converse, and there was just the one.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
There was just the one. And then later as more
and more ferries get developed, like the next one goes
to win a summit, which is now Chelsea, the next
one ends up going to East Boston. There's these great colonne.
They will have meetings and they'll say, okay, you need
to have so many boats on the water during the day,
it's just like we would assign so many buses to
a bus route today. And some of the great colonial
(15:01):
rules were you need to have two able bodied sober
men running the boats at night. You can charge a
little bit more because it's probably a little harder for
you go if you took a pig the surge pricing.
Oh yeah, the swine cost more. But interesting, if you
took two people in the winter, simmeit ferry, you actually
got a little bit of a discount as opposed to
(15:22):
traveling independently.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
And then what came after the fairies was that the
horse dron coaches next.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, I mean, so that's sixteen thirty. We really don't
get like good coaches for like another we're talking another
two hundred years. But during that time, you basically walked.
You could ride. If you were rich, you may have
had a ride a horse, you mean, yeah, or you
would get carried around.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So pub this is public transportation.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
This is more private transportation.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So they had only the fairies for the longest time. Yeah,
and then the next were there public transportation. Horse drown carriages.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
That's what evolves, so that by the time you get
to the late eighteenth into the early right at the
beginning of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
You can do a coach for hire.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
You can pay anyone can board as long as you
have fare, and they'll take you around town. But most
of these were actually starting to evolve to go, you know,
let's say, to go to newbury Port or to go
down to Plymouth.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
So was it like a bus system and they were
just circling around you half off?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
No, they were highly scheduled. It was more like a
commuter rail train today.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Okay, coaches. How come it took so long to get
good coaches.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
It's interesting because we the way you look at all
this transit history, Like in France in the sixteen twenties
they had really good coaches and omnibuses, but we don't
get those until the eighteen twenties eighteen thirties, so.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
They had terrible suspension and bad wheels.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
The stories of riding in the coaches. Sometimes if there
wasn't a bridge, everyone riding in the coach had to
go out help the driver take the wheels off. They
would float it over on a primitive ferry. Then they'd
all put it back together. But there's stories of people
riding around Greater Boston, and your knees would get bloody
as you bounced around.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And people complain about the MBTA today for five minute delay,
and back in the day you had to get out
and help take the wheels off.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yeah, you were, and you were physically drained and dirty.
And you know, I mean this. There was no air conditioning.
There was no windows, you know, no glass, no.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Pain so everything is muddy, either frozen or muddy. Yep.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
And then in the winter there were put sleighs on,
I mean, I'm sorry, put skis on.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And the odor was a thing in the city, right
because they were all horses.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Oh my.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
By the time you get to the nineteenth century, all
the modes of public land based travel are pulled by horses.
So many horses, so much stink, and then we also
have to deal with the horses.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
So in the nineteenth century Boston, the coach companies, which
evolve into the omnibus companies, they're bringing in so many
horses from New York State, from Western mass They used
them for up to like five years and then they're
worn out. So it's like a piece of a vehicle
that you no longer can have a lot of them
keep going East and they end out on Spectacle Island.
(18:07):
They're turned rendered into more other usable products.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Oh now, we didn't really talk about the omnibus.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Yet, right, Yes, that's next.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Okay, so I'll talk about it now. I could this
a little early for a break, so we have time
to do that. Okay, cool.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I mean omnibus.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
It's a great word, all carrying vehicle, omnibus. Yeah, we
still use the word bus today. Basically, someone had the
bright idea to take a coach and when you were
wroteing a coach, just think of you know, Cinderella, You've.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Got indoors on the sides. Omnibus.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
They put the door in the back and put two
long benches, so basically it's like getting in the back
of a school bus. For the first time it was
it was more like a modern transit vehicle when you
went in on a door at the end, and then
you sat along the sides on benches and you would
put a little coin in or pay your fare as
you got in and out, and there was a little
bell sometimes it would go to the top and let
(18:58):
the driver know you're paid. So that you could fit
twice as many people in the same sized vehicle in
an omnibus than you couldn't.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Have coached how many people.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
I mean, you could easily get twelve.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
But in the summer the barges came out, so the
companies would bring out these they were called barges, but
they were huge omnibuses.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
You got in on the back. They could hold thirty
forty fifty people.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
And imagine them all sitting on this open benches on
this big thing going through and they would take them
up to Revere Beach or go down to Nantasket, and
there were more.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Those were brought out in the summer.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So once again MBTA complainers, it's pretty easy to get
to Revere Beach now. Before you had to get on
this omnibus of wooden with wooden benches and wooden wheels
and bumpy roads and probably take you two hours to
get to Revere Beach and you'd be all dirty and sweating.
And I can imagine how bumpy the roads were because
it'd be wagon ruts. People. I don't think they have
(19:55):
any idea how run it out these were yet. So
that's anymore on the omnibus. That's that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Interesting because but that's the bridge right into the railroad
is coming.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Next any omnibus is left to see.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
There's some in some museums, like up at the Sherborne
Museum up in Vermont.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yeah, a great little collection there.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
But yeah, some good transportation museums always have a couple
omnibuses floating around.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And there's something that was used all throughout the country. Yes,
on the omnibus and it was still wooden wheels with
like iron.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah, rims, yep, yep. So those what did they use for?
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Would they use leaf springs? Do they have any?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Early ones were wood and then later yeah, then later
they got to be metal. But right at the same
time as the omnibuses are coming over at eighteen twenties,
over in England, they're really refining the idea of a
steam powered vehicle that became the iron horse, which becomes
the train, the locomotive and coaches, and the first trains
(20:59):
arrive here in austin eighteen thirties and basically all they
did was take a coach, put it on some wheels
that could then go on steel tracks, pull it by
a we'll call it basically a really really high pressure
hot water heater that was your locomotive. So imagine there's
an engineer with a high pressure water tank that's producing
(21:22):
steam to propel the locomotive. You have some coaches that
they put on wheels with metal rims, and then they
put rails down. And the first rails were just like wood.
Some were wooden, but and then they even put them
on granite, like up to low they put them on granite,
and then they realized this is way too hard and
they went to wood.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
So before that didn't they have vehicles that were on
tracks butt pulled by horses.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
So those are going to come a little later. Eighteen
fifty They come after the steam Yes, because the steam
train proved to everyone whoa, it's a lot smoother to
ride on these steel rails in this coach pulled by
this thing. So all the omnibuses company, all the omnibus
companies said hey, we're going to put tracks in the streets,
and they went to the Commonwealth and they all got charters.
(22:09):
All of a sudden we had street railways. But street
railways come after the steam railroads. Steam railroads arrived in
the eighteen thirties eighteen fifties. First route for the street
cars from Harvard Square and Central Square over to Boden
Square over the West Boston Bridge, and yeah, and then
(22:30):
that just proliferates.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So you think about how important horses were to the
culture and the commerce, the support system for the blacksmiths,
the places that kept the horses fed the horses. Farmers
were going hey for the horses and feed for the horses.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It was a massive, massive amounts of real estate too.
When all of those horse car companies become consolidated into
one company called the West End Street Railway Company in
the eighteen nineties, So we're getting now towards the end
of the nineteenth century. The number one biggest thing they
could do was then figure out how to get rid
of all the horses, all the stables, the car houses,
(23:07):
and all of the infrastructure involved with that.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
And they were able to electrify.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Right around the eighteen nineties. You get electricity and as
an assign related aside over by the Union Oyster House.
I believe there's and there may be others around, but
an actual Thomas Edison era light pole like made of
I don't know what much. I think it's made of metal.
All right, we'll get to the electric street car next
(23:33):
on w.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
B Z Night Side with Dan ray On WBZ, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
It is Nightside Bradley J for Dan Tonight with Stephen Bouchet,
and we're talking about public transports transit in Boston. And
the anchor of this is Steven's book Boston in Transit,
a massive success, mapping the history of public transportation in
Boston in the During the break, Stephen and I were
(24:07):
kind of discussing, kind of debating where the actual checkpoint
in Boston Neck was. The Boston Neck is the how
you got off the peninsula and onto the mainland, and
there was a checkpoint you had to get through. And
maybe not all the time, but at some points when.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
They were early on, they definitely wanted to They being
the Massachusetts Bate Company, wanted to secure it because they
were in what they perceived as hostile country. But also later,
by the time you get to the American Revolution, that
is fortified.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
It needs to be.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
So no one seems to know where that is. I mean,
where exactly it is the two or three square yards
where the checkpoint was. I want to know, and you
can call me at six one seven and it's unlikely
and if you know, but if you do six one seven,
two five, ten, thirty. Somebody must know and when when
(25:03):
it's found out, I want a stone marker there that
said this is where the turnstyle was, because to me,
that's everything pivots around that spot.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
I'm going to look into it for you.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
All right. Now we've gotten through the ferries and the omnibus,
it's time to talk about the electric the first electric
street cars.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Yeah, first electric street cars eighteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
They really it's you know, a lot of time goes
by now and not too much changes. You look back.
The iPhone was evented in two thousand and seven. That's
twenty years ago. Yeah, that was a big deal, But
twenty years has passed. Back then, in the eighteen nineties,
things were happening a lot more quickly than that. Electricity
was made available right around that and within no time
(25:49):
everything's electrified, including these street cars.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Yeah, and it's it was. It was scary to a
lot of people.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
There's a poem written called the broomstick Train and the
very first street cars that went around Remember that they
were initially pulled by horses. Now all of a sudden,
you have a stick going to a wire in the
air and with sparks, with sparks and the street cars
moving through the street, and there's no horses, and you
had seen the horses for fifty years. So there's a
great poem called the Broomstick Train and the author describes
(26:20):
and that the car is channeling the witches and the supernatural,
and that must be what's you know, what is?
Speaker 4 (26:28):
What is?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
They couldn't figure out what was powering it.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
That it was if you didn't know electricity existed. Remember
this is before there's no power stations yet, there's no
electrical grid yet. So the streetcar companies were among the
first in the nation to build power plants. The first
one was built in Allston and that powered our first streetcars.
Where in Austin, Oh my god, it's right over by
essentially where Regina's the that big steak restaurant. Essentially where
(26:57):
the stockyard.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yees, stockyard.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
It's you mean right by the mass Pike. Yeah, okay,
essentially back up reg Is and now it's something else.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, it backs up to the backed up to the pike,
which I meant them was the railroad.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, And what do these can
you do? You describe the omnibus very well? How about
the appearance on the inside and outside of the electric
street car.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
I think the street cars were fabulous because they evolved
so quickly. They started as twenty foot cars and there
were thirty foot so they got longer and longer. But
we also started doing interesting things, just like we did
with the coaches, where we would have a winter one
where the windows would close, but then there were summer versions.
Those were called open cars, and again you could ride
(27:40):
down the South Shore.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
On benches with no sides on the car.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
And it was great in the winter because I'm sorry,
great in the summer when when there's no air conditioning,
no electrical air conditioning. And by the time the subway
opens in Boston eighteen ninety seven, you could literally ride
on an open bench street car in the subway. And
there's great pictures of these overloaded street cars with people
hanging off the side. Today, imagine the cable cars in
(28:07):
San Francisco that are pulled by a cable. We had
those propelled by electricity, so they had open benches. I
would have loved to ride one of those.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So you had your power plant and somehow these these
wires over the building. The infrastructure must have been a
big deal.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Oh yeah, I mean they're they're figuring this out as
they go. They'd put a motor in a street car
six months it was like it was like tech now where.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Like six weeks yeh, bom bone.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah, six weeks later someone's got a better motor. Oh,
we better put use that motor. Six months later, ten
times better motors. And we had interesting things in Boston
where we didn't know if the wire was going to
be above our heads or in the street. For a
while down the back bay, the wire was in a
trough in the middle of the street and the street
car would go by, stick a little plow in there
and pick up power. But that didn't last very long
(28:54):
with ice and snow, and kids used to stick pennies
in there to short it.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
People step on it and get electric cue. There were
there was basically that was the third rail. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
No, there were horses on a bridge that were electrocuted
and then the fire department comes.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
They start getting zapped.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Nobody died, nobody was hurt, but it was like, Okay,
this isn't going to work.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
We don't need current under our feet with ice and snow.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
And that's why they put it up above. One of
the reasons.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
Yeah, all right, and.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
At some point, I mean, is this when we get
to the MTA? Uh? And is there something happening in between?
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Let's jump there basically, no, no, don't jump okay.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
What's in between?
Speaker 3 (29:30):
What's in between is remember the idea of publicly owned
and operated and funded public transport trans public transportation.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
That's really a.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Twentieth century concept. It was owned, operated and funded by
private companies right up until I would say, you know,
right up into friend Boston, at least right until the
forties when we created the MTA.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
That's our first public.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Agency, Massachusetts Massachusetts Transit Authority.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Metropolitan Transit, Metropolitan Metropolitan Transit.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Is that true? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (30:00):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Why did they change that?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Okay when they came up with the MBTA. Yeah, then
they added Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
So you're going to do the rise and fall of
the MTA that was yep, okay, and that's going to
require a little time. So we'll do that right after
the break on WBZ.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
You're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
We're talking Boston history as far as transit goes in
public transit, and we're getting up to the MTA and
the MBTA. We're going we don't have much time, so
our guest, Steven Bauchet is going to speed us through there,
so I have some time to make some comments.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Sure sounds good, let's get to those.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
So yeah, twentieth century, early twentieth century, that's when we
transitioned from public i'm sorry, privately owned and operated public transit,
so private companies for profit running street cars, running omnibuses,
running these coaches, even running those ferries back in the
seventeenth century. But as the twentieth century dawns, that becomes
less and less profitable. And in one of the reasons, well,
(31:02):
the Boston Elevator Railway Company was legally prohibited by the
legislature from raising their fares beyond five cents. That was
a big, big issue. But as it is now, costs
were going up. They couldn't raise fares, and by nineteen twelve,
the state is already stepping into subsidize I'm sorry, nineteen
(31:24):
eighteen to subsidize the Boston Elevator Railway. But it gets
so bad that in the nineteen forties, by forty six,
the Commonwealth steps in and creates the MTA. They take
over the Boston elevator railway wholesale, and for the first
time we have an entirely public agency owning and operating
the system. That network was too small, the MTA system,
(31:46):
and I go into it in detail in the store
in the book, but basically the network was too small.
They couldn't reach the suburbs. Too many people were living
in their cars beyond the reach of the network. And
they tried really hard. I mean, they brought us great
projects like the Revere Extension. They brought us tokens for transit,
they brought park and ride to stations, they brought us
(32:07):
the Riverside Line. But by the time we get to
the sixties again commonwealth steps in all sorts of studies
are made.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
That's something that's tracked in the book Last Year Studies
sixties sixty four.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
So this is a time when people don't care about
public transport. It's all about the cars and the highways.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah, railroads are going out of business. They're petitioning the
federal government to get rid of they don't want to
do they don't want to be passenger carriers anymore, which
they were obligated to do by the federal government. So
they're getting out of that, and interestingly enough, in the
midst of that, everyone's going to the cars, everyone's going
to the suburbs.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
The center city's hollowing out. Railroads are going bankrupt.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Massachusetts funds the railroads for a bit, it creates the MBTA,
and eventually by the time you get to the eighties,
we've bought the railroads. So therefore that's our commuter rail network.
Bought things from the New Haven Railroad, from the Boston
and Maine Railroad. We're lucky that that did happen here.
Other cities, other cunt states didn't want that. There wasn't
(33:06):
the political will or the funding. But also when the
t came in nineteen sixty four, it's the last thing
I'll say about that is that they were They tapped
the largest and unpreceded amount of federal funding from the
federal level for public transit at.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
The local level. So that's what what got the MBTA
off the ground.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
By the way, before I forget, I need you to
call Phil eng, the general manager of the MBTA, tell
him I want to be the voice of the MBTA
that says the next, you know, the next Union Square
station train ten minutes. Can you make that happen.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Next next time I run into him, I'll mention it was.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Come on, I'm such a I'm such a big t booster.
I deserve it. So have we have? Well, let me
ask you this, Well, in the limited time we have,
what are the challenges face? Now?
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Challenges face? And now?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Are keeping up the excellent work that Phil Ang as
that guy I mean people call him train daddy. I
mean he is a genuinely skilled person that cares and
has brought in a team and has overseen I mean
everyone I talk to at the tea, just about everybody.
There's a there's a different feeling, but also a new energy,
(34:18):
a new energy, but also we can feel it for
the first time. I can take the red line. I
live in Porter Square, so Porter to Park Street. You
know that should be like fifteen minutes. It hasn't been
that way in a long time. And there's so many
physical improvements, structural improvements, organizational improvements. He is making fabulous
changes as well as all the hard working people at
(34:40):
the NBTA under his oversight. So if we keep going,
that's our biggest change is keep it going, keep it funded,
keep it consistent, and and and just keep improving. I
mean there's specific things. If you want to get into
specific things, give.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Me two specific things that'll leave me time for my suggestions.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Specific things we need to not forget about some big
plans that we've been on, that have been on the books,
some of these for nearly a century, like connecting our
bifurcated commuter rail network all the commuter rail trains north
side at North Station.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, all the commuter rails.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
I mean there's North South rail as why do you
do that? Essentially it's a big tunnel.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Build a bridge to build a tunnel.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
No, but I mean that's the kind of thing that
that if we take that next step, you maximize so
much infrastructure that's already in place, but also you start
to tap whole regions of the country north I'm sorry
the state. People north of Boston can now work south
of Boston without having to drive, and it's a much
easier connection were we're long.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
I think we've evolved past.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
The commuters commuting into the core center anymore now if
we need to think regionally and bigger, and there are
great people at Mascot and thinking about all this stuff
we've got, you know, East East West rail. We've got
Compass rail out for Springfield, so we we can't forget
we got it.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
We fixed things, Let's keep fixing them. But we can't
forget to think bigger.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Is there some group that is a think tank that
tries to figure out how to connect North and South Station?
I mean there has to be a way as long
as if there was a will, there's a way. I
mean there's also a mono rail, but you couldn't carry
enough passengers with a mono rail, could you. There are
those kind of airport things that get you from terminal
to terminal where those were, but you'd have to go
back to basically something going over the city, which they
(36:33):
spent gazillions of dollars to get rid of. I mean
put it right over the roof Kennedy Greenway.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
I mean the thing that comes to mind is back
in the late eighties early nineties, we're putting the big
dig together and we caught out the fact that we
could have put a tunnel underneath, Yeah, for for the trains.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
I mean, that was the time to do it.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
The funding was there, but it was it was caught,
and then then the political will kind of fell away.
I mean, you asked about people. There are fabulous all
sorts of studies. I mean in looks, some of the
local schools, but I mean people like transit matters.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
There are earnest, earnest outside.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Groups that are consulting with the TEA that are advocating
for some of these projects.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
So this as an MBTA writer a lot because I
love it. I don't. I don't even like getting off
when I'm sad when I get to my stop, because
I just love listening to music and looking at Boston
Globe online and cruising along on the train. I see
things that need improvement. And one thing I don't understand
filling is that I'm guessing a lot of money was
(37:40):
spent to put a pair excuse me, pay stations at
EAT entrance so all doors could be open. That's a
great thing, but there's no enforcement on them. And I
get on and see a few people pay and millions
of dollars are being lost. What is Why is it
enforcement such a problem for that and things like motor
(38:06):
scooters at It seems like Boston Area just doesn't want
to enforce anything. All it would take is a few
people on the team said, let me, like in other countries.
Let me check and see if you validated your pass.
Oh you didn't. It's five hundred bucks. All they would
have to know that there's a shot that'd be five
hundred bucks, and that would make a difference. But I
don't even think people believe they have to pay anymore.
(38:28):
It is obvious to them that no one cares, at
least not enough to do anything about it, so they don't.
And I feel like kind of an idiot, kind of
like this old old school fool with this ancient notion
that I should pay. I should follow the rules. I understand,
and so what is the thinking behind that? It wouldn't
(38:50):
cost any money? And I know that's the bottom line.
It would make money. You pay somebody twenty bucks an
hour to check that, and you bust person and it's
five hundred bucks.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
I hear you.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
It's a very common complaint, very reasonable one. I can't
stand it when somebody doesn't pay their fare, and I do.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
I'm you're a rule.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Follower, yeah, And it's part of a general hesitant, hesitancy
to enforce any rules at all in the t in
the highway, and it's it's a trend that's concerning to me.
And I feel kind of like an outcast as a
rule follower. And I'm getting to the point where I'm saying,
look if no if no one cares, I'm not gonna
(39:29):
care either. I'm gonna If I can't beat them, I'll
join them.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Here's something to think about.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
What do you have thirty seconds?
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Okay, what do you think about fair free transit?
Speaker 2 (39:38):
If you can, I don't. Can you afford it? That's fine,
I don't mind paying. If you wanted free, that's fine.
You mean I have to pay a little bit more
in taxes? Fine, Well, I don't care because I use
it anyway. Yeah, that's gonna be a problem for someone
who doesn't use it.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
But I mean we're doing it around the state right
now with some of the regional transit authorities. And if
we can get to a point where imagine free and reliable,
that's a.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
That's a conversation for another day. We're out o time. Folks.
You like Italian cooking, well you're gonna you're gonna like
this next guest. I've tried to make homemade pasta. I've
tried to make, you know, my own Italian food fail,
not quite epic fail, but you know, no good, throw
it out. This next guest is going to try to
(40:23):
help me and help you with Italian cooking on wb
Z
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on z WBC, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Boy's cold out there, much colder than I remember winter being.
And I used to like cold. I was proud, I
was strong bringing on the winter. But now I'm all set.
I don't like summer and I don't like winter. There's
not much left for me. Now we're going to talk
about talk about Boston. I love talking about Boston stuff,
and I love talking about Boston transit. And we have
(00:29):
an expert, a fanatic a Boston transit. I won't say
geek in a bad way, but you know what I mean,
Stephen Buche had the right Stephen. Stephen is many things.
One of them is the owner or the operator of
the well known MBTA store on mass Ave between Harvard
(00:51):
and Porter. I walked by it all the time. I
went in only one time because it's across the street
from my route, and I had no idea until today
you were the proprietor of that store becoming up closing
that microphone there talk about the store. There are a
lot of MBTA people out there. I don't even know
if they know about the store.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
So yeah, besides being an unabashed transit geek been a
long time rail fan. H Since inception, we've run MBTA Gifts,
which is the tea's merchandise program, essentially their gift shop.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Did you grow up wanting to open an MBTA store?
When did that spark hit you?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I always grew up wanted to do to do anything
with trains and transit.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I grew up out in the suburbs.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Which your first train memory.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
My first train memory is sitting in the car seat
at the back of the seat. I don't know what
two three years old train goes by and just making
noises at the train. I think my first words or
vocalizations where we're just talking to the train as it
was going by Soma.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It was something like chow chow.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Yeah, I think it was nut nut, something like nut nut.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Is that a train sound?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
When you're too it sounds good?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Okay? And then how did that manifested stuff? Were you
that way through grammar school and high school? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yeah, I mean I used to write down when what
do you want to be train engineer? And then as
I got older by the time I grew up out
in Chelmsford down the suburbs, as soon as I could
get on the commuter rail come into Boston. That that
just clinched it for me that the networks were here.
I could go play on them. I could what is
this train? Where does it go to? What's the Orange Line?
What's this neighborhood? And I've been exploring and learning every since.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
What happened to your your train conductor train operator dreams?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, that evolved into train engineer, and then some something
clicked and they became a licensed architect.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
So I went into architecture.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I actually became for about three years a long range
train Amtrak fanatic, and I've been on eight across country
Amtrak trips and those you know, those are like forty
eight hours. So you start talking to everybody, including there
were a couple of engineers or a couple of people
high up in the company who were just riding along.
(03:01):
So I struck up a conversation and asked him, so,
what does it take to become an engineer? And it
was surprisingly not that hard. I thought, I how quit
my radio job and do that?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
No?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Wait, no, I won't. But had that presented itself as
a when I was a young kid, who knows I
might have become an engineer?
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You no, absolutely I mean I have friends who are
engineers or who are trained engineers worked for MTA down
in New York and people I know a lot of
people work for the MBTA and Kiolus up here, and
that skill set which is phenomenal and so needed, Like
we need more people going into that industry so that
our transit systems can grow.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
What do I suppose it is about trains that attracts
so many people and a few of them so strongly.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
I mean, there's there's a bunch of freedom.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Is it? The freedom?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I mean that's one layer, right, there's also a nostalgia layer. Oh,
this this thing is more associated with history than let's
say modern highway, but like on a contemporary on a
contemporary basis, it's a literal connection that is open to all,
and that is, it is something that we can all
(04:16):
access and it can get us places that we do
it as a shared experience, and I think that's part
of it is you're not in a cocoon of your
individual automobile. You're making a commitment to be social and
to be part of the community when you go on
a train.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
So what is it about America that doesn't like trains?
We don't like America overall, despise us trains love cars.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Why I think that we have in America as we
have always had so many different segments of people like this,
don't like this, like this, don't We're not a homogeneous culture.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
We've never been.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
So there are people who will never get on a train,
But there are also people who like myself, I'll probably
never buy a Ford f one fifty.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Good to know, I see, Oh, we still have a
little bit of time. Now. You also have a book
that you have brought in. Tell me the book weighs
six pounds. It is a beautiful book. I wish Christmas
were not over because this would be a tremendous tremendous gifts.
Six hundred I mean six hundred pages, six pounds, six
(05:21):
six years.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Get six years to write six hundred pages, six pounds,
four hundred years of history. I, as a transit historian,
wanted to tell the whole story in one book, from
sixteen thirty to I wrapped up the manuscript right before COVID.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So before we actually get into the history and go
step by step, which we will. I mentioned that America
was not a train country, but Boston was into public
transit pretty heavily up till the fifties, right and then
the highways. It became a car country and the highway
system they wanted cars. They wanted to make it car friendly.
(05:59):
At the spen some public transportation isn't that correct, So.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I think Boston is. We are very lucky. We never
lost one hundred percent completely lost our networks. There are
cities in the country that are transit deserts. They used
to have vast street.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Car networks or bus networks or even railed transit networks.
We've had our ups.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And downs in terms of ebbs and flows of how
many people use it, how reliant we are on it.
Of course, in the middle of the twentieth century, railroads
are going bankrupt, the federal government spending billions on highway
infra infrastructure that didn't exist. So there was there was
There was a natural move away from transit, but we
never got rid of it, and we're one of the
(06:41):
lucky states that invested in it and made sure we
didn't lose it. Though it may have gotten you know,
underfunded and became poorly reliable. We're now, I hope, coming
out of decades of ups and downs.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Okay, and you know Phil.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Ang Phil is fabulous supporter, which is title.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Oh my god, Phil Angery. He's a general manager of
the general manager.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
If anybody's listening to me that now that knows Phil,
please have him call us at call call us. He
can call six one seven two five, because Phil, I
have a couple of suggestions for you, and I want
you to know. I am a tea lover. I love
the MBTA so much, and I'm not. I'm not a
super trained geek. I mean, I guess compared to most
(07:27):
time I did go on eight of those crazy cross
country trips, I guess maybe I am a train geek now.
But I love the MBTA for reasons other than being
a train gig. When I got to Boston, the fact
that I didn't need a car and you know, a
handful of change would take me away from it all.
I love the common experience. You're underground, everybody's going the
(07:50):
same speed, everybody's going the same direction. It's one of
the very It's a very unifying experience.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Extremely democratizing, and that's why I think that's what bothers
some people.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
It's not a me, it's not a me me me thing.
It's a wee thing. And Americas are very much a
me country.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
That is definitely there's a lot of people who they
would prefer to put themselves over their neighbor at all costs.
And unfortunately, you know, in Boston and Massachusetts, the Commonwealth,
we've had a pretty solid mix of of cultures of
you know, left and right in this and and I
think we've done a pretty good job of keeping things
(08:27):
like we have good roads, we have a reasonable transit network.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
We're not a city that one.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Of them is, you know, like let's say like Greater Miami,
where you just have spaghetti and spaghetti of of highways
that are like the size of let's say downtown Boston
and they have you know, very lean transit system or
you know, but then you look at another place like
New York, massive transit network, you know, largest, one of
(08:54):
the largest in the world, largest in the country, but
you can still you know, get around by car.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
So like balances is important.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
So Philang, even if you don't want to call. And
the reason I said I love the tea is because
I'm not going to ask you the hard questions or anything.
I'd love to speak with you. I have a couple
of suggestions and even if you don't call Phil, tune in.
I'll give the suggestions and you can listen. I need
I need to communicate with Phil. Or are we going
(09:21):
to get into the history of transit in Boston. We're
gonna go way back into the sixteen hundred, right, Yes,
the very first public transit. We had nothing to do
with trains, and I think you're gonna love it if
you like Boston history. W BZ.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
We're with Stephen Bouchet, who is the author of Boston
and Transit, a magnificent heavy I guess you'd call it
a coffee table book mapping the history of public transportation
in the Hub. And we're going to go directly to
the very first paint the picture of you know this Boston,
sixteen thirty and the first public transportation was what and when?
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Okay, So sixteen thirty, we've got Winthrop's group coming over
from England and as they made down their way down
the coast from Salem and then stopping in Charlestown by
that fall, they're like they couldn't get good water in Charlestown.
They thought that France or somebody was going to invade,
so they hopped over to the Shamat Peninsula. If you
(10:28):
don't know what the Shamat Peninsula is, that's essentially the
North end and the Financial district, government center part of Boston.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And you have maps of all this in your books.
Oh yeah, many, You have a thousand men over as.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Nine hundred images in the book. So sixteen thirty they
arrive in the sham At Peninsula. They being the Massachusetts
Bay Company. Remember this is a private company that came
over here to sort of take some land.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I wasn't listening with you. Tell me exactly where the
peninsula is.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I want to So the Shamat Peninsula is essentially from
the north end to the South end and from Beacon
Hill to where South Station.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Is, so the beginning of the South end or to
mass Ave to us.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
It got very narrowed down by like Dover Street, which
was Boston Neck. Okay, but yeah, essentially half of the
northern the eastern half of the South End.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
To get off, I had to go through Boston Neck.
The turnstyle, you had to pay and everything.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I don't know about the turnstyle, but it got wet
at high tide. That's what the gallows were.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
And so.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Do you know exactly where that So the spot was
in the south end where Boston Neck where.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
It was long, and it sort of stretched from Dover
Street down to where like sort of mass Ave is
today but Dover Street or I keep calling it Dover Street.
This is West East Berkeley Street today, essentially where JJ
Foleys is and everything.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And now name all the Boston that did not exist
that was.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Just marsh.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Be specific.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
I mean back from the foot of Charles Street all
the way out to parts of Brookline.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
So at Boston Common was basically the beach. Yeah, the
foot you could put up, you'd pull your boat up
to Boston Common. Yep.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
The only land based way to get on was the neck.
So as what the colonists when they arrived the Massachusetts
Bay Company, they looked to the people who are already
living here the Massachusetts, the indigenous people, and they were
using canoes to get everywhere because it was much easier
to go on the walls.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
If you didn't go on the water, it took you
like mostly almost two days.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Right, because you had Salem to the north of us,
and you had Plymouth Colony to the south of US
and they set up Massachusetts Bay Colony. They named it
Boston in the middle and land travel to those was
much more excruciating than just getting in a boat. But
after the Massachusetts Bay Colony moved over from Charlestown over
(12:56):
to the Shamat Peninsula, they sixteen thirty November, they aim Boston.
They say, we're gonna call the sham At Peninsula Boston.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So first the natives called it shaman right, Yeah, it.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Was sort of a name that was used by not
only them, but the traders that had been here for
years before.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And then before Boston it was also called Tremonte.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well, on the sham At Peninsula was the Trimount, the Trimonte,
Free Mounts.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
The Trimonte, and that was what bought before Boston was Boston.
It was called Tremonte.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yes, you could use all of those names.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
And then and then it became officially Boston because some
official names. One or two people named it after their
hometown in England.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, so that's the Massachusetts Bay Company. At that same
meeting or the one after it, depending on how you
read the colonial documents, they also said, hey, we need
a piece of public transportation. We need somebody to set
up a ferry between Charlestown that we just left and
the new settlement of Boston. By the next year, sixteen
thirty one, mister Convert is running a ferry. And my
(14:02):
definition of public transportation is something that is sanctioned, overseen, permitted,
not necessarily funded by the governing body. So at the
time that was Massachusetts Bay Company and everyone could ride it,
you just but the fares were set. They were set
by the colony and the person who wrote who operated it.
He's basically the first contractor who took a public public
(14:25):
contract to run public transportation.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
So we made a bid to have that franchise and
he made the money.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, and he had it for three or four years.
What was his name, I forget the first name, but
his last name was.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Converse, Converse, and there was just the one.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
There was just the one. And then later as more
and more ferries get developed, like the next one goes
to win a summit, which is now Chelsea, the next
one ends up going to East Boston. There's these great colonne.
They will have meetings and they'll say, okay, you need
to have so many boats on the water during the day,
it's just like we would assign so many buses to
a bus route today. And some of the great colonial
(15:01):
rules were you need to have two able bodied sober
men running the boats at night. You can charge a
little bit more because it's probably a little harder for
you go if you took a pig the surge pricing.
Oh yeah, the swine cost more. But interesting, if you
took two people in the winter, simmeit ferry, you actually
got a little bit of a discount as opposed to
(15:22):
traveling independently.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
And then what came after the fairies was that the
horse dron coaches next.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, I mean, so that's sixteen thirty. We really don't
get like good coaches for like another we're talking another
two hundred years. But during that time, you basically walked.
You could ride. If you were rich, you may have
had a ride a horse, you mean, yeah, or you
would get carried around.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So pub this is public transportation.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
This is more private transportation.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So they had only the fairies for the longest time. Yeah,
and then the next were there public transportation. Horse drown carriages.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
That's what evolves, so that by the time you get
to the late eighteenth into the early right at the
beginning of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
You can do a coach for hire.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
You can pay anyone can board as long as you
have fare, and they'll take you around town. But most
of these were actually starting to evolve to go, you know,
let's say, to go to newbury Port or to go
down to Plymouth.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
So was it like a bus system and they were
just circling around you half off?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
No, they were highly scheduled. It was more like a
commuter rail train today.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Okay, coaches. How come it took so long to get
good coaches.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
It's interesting because we the way you look at all
this transit history, Like in France in the sixteen twenties
they had really good coaches and omnibuses, but we don't
get those until the eighteen twenties eighteen thirties, so.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
They had terrible suspension and bad wheels.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
The stories of riding in the coaches. Sometimes if there
wasn't a bridge, everyone riding in the coach had to
go out help the driver take the wheels off. They
would float it over on a primitive ferry. Then they'd
all put it back together. But there's stories of people
riding around Greater Boston, and your knees would get bloody
as you bounced around.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And people complain about the MBTA today for five minute delay,
and back in the day you had to get out
and help take the wheels off.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yeah, you were, and you were physically drained and dirty.
And you know, I mean this. There was no air conditioning.
There was no windows, you know, no glass, no.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Pain so everything is muddy, either frozen or muddy. Yep.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
And then in the winter there were put sleighs on,
I mean, I'm sorry, put skis on.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And the odor was a thing in the city, right
because they were all horses.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Oh my.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
By the time you get to the nineteenth century, all
the modes of public land based travel are pulled by horses.
So many horses, so much stink, and then we also
have to deal with the horses.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
So in the nineteenth century Boston, the coach companies, which
evolve into the omnibus companies, they're bringing in so many
horses from New York State, from Western mass They used
them for up to like five years and then they're
worn out. So it's like a piece of a vehicle
that you no longer can have a lot of them
keep going East and they end out on Spectacle Island.
(18:07):
They're turned rendered into more other usable products.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Oh now, we didn't really talk about the omnibus.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Yet, right, Yes, that's next.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Okay, so I'll talk about it now. I could this
a little early for a break, so we have time
to do that. Okay, cool.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I mean omnibus.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
It's a great word, all carrying vehicle, omnibus. Yeah, we
still use the word bus today. Basically, someone had the
bright idea to take a coach and when you were
wroteing a coach, just think of you know, Cinderella, You've.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Got indoors on the sides. Omnibus.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
They put the door in the back and put two
long benches, so basically it's like getting in the back
of a school bus. For the first time it was
it was more like a modern transit vehicle when you
went in on a door at the end, and then
you sat along the sides on benches and you would
put a little coin in or pay your fare as
you got in and out, and there was a little
bell sometimes it would go to the top and let
(18:58):
the driver know you're paid. So that you could fit
twice as many people in the same sized vehicle in
an omnibus than you couldn't.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Have coached how many people.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
I mean, you could easily get twelve.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
But in the summer the barges came out, so the
companies would bring out these they were called barges, but
they were huge omnibuses.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
You got in on the back. They could hold thirty
forty fifty people.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
And imagine them all sitting on this open benches on
this big thing going through and they would take them
up to Revere Beach or go down to Nantasket, and
there were more.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Those were brought out in the summer.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So once again MBTA complainers, it's pretty easy to get
to Revere Beach now. Before you had to get on
this omnibus of wooden with wooden benches and wooden wheels
and bumpy roads and probably take you two hours to
get to Revere Beach and you'd be all dirty and sweating.
And I can imagine how bumpy the roads were because
it'd be wagon ruts. People. I don't think they have
(19:55):
any idea how run it out these were yet. So
that's anymore on the omnibus. That's that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Interesting because but that's the bridge right into the railroad
is coming.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Next any omnibus is left to see.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
There's some in some museums, like up at the Sherborne
Museum up in Vermont.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yeah, a great little collection there.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
But yeah, some good transportation museums always have a couple
omnibuses floating around.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And there's something that was used all throughout the country. Yes,
on the omnibus and it was still wooden wheels with
like iron.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah, rims, yep, yep. So those what did they use for?
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Would they use leaf springs? Do they have any?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Early ones were wood and then later yeah, then later
they got to be metal. But right at the same
time as the omnibuses are coming over at eighteen twenties,
over in England, they're really refining the idea of a
steam powered vehicle that became the iron horse, which becomes
the train, the locomotive and coaches, and the first trains
(20:59):
arrive here in austin eighteen thirties and basically all they
did was take a coach, put it on some wheels
that could then go on steel tracks, pull it by
a we'll call it basically a really really high pressure
hot water heater that was your locomotive. So imagine there's
an engineer with a high pressure water tank that's producing
(21:22):
steam to propel the locomotive. You have some coaches that
they put on wheels with metal rims, and then they
put rails down. And the first rails were just like wood.
Some were wooden, but and then they even put them
on granite, like up to low they put them on granite,
and then they realized this is way too hard and
they went to wood.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
So before that didn't they have vehicles that were on
tracks butt pulled by horses.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
So those are going to come a little later. Eighteen
fifty They come after the steam Yes, because the steam
train proved to everyone whoa, it's a lot smoother to
ride on these steel rails in this coach pulled by
this thing. So all the omnibuses company, all the omnibus
companies said hey, we're going to put tracks in the streets,
and they went to the Commonwealth and they all got charters.
(22:09):
All of a sudden we had street railways. But street
railways come after the steam railroads. Steam railroads arrived in
the eighteen thirties eighteen fifties. First route for the street
cars from Harvard Square and Central Square over to Boden
Square over the West Boston Bridge, and yeah, and then
(22:30):
that just proliferates.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So you think about how important horses were to the
culture and the commerce, the support system for the blacksmiths,
the places that kept the horses fed the horses. Farmers
were going hey for the horses and feed for the horses.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It was a massive, massive amounts of real estate too.
When all of those horse car companies become consolidated into
one company called the West End Street Railway Company in
the eighteen nineties, So we're getting now towards the end
of the nineteenth century. The number one biggest thing they
could do was then figure out how to get rid
of all the horses, all the stables, the car houses,
(23:07):
and all of the infrastructure involved with that.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
And they were able to electrify.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Right around the eighteen nineties. You get electricity and as
an assign related aside over by the Union Oyster House.
I believe there's and there may be others around, but
an actual Thomas Edison era light pole like made of
I don't know what much. I think it's made of metal.
All right, we'll get to the electric street car next
(23:33):
on w.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
B Z Night Side with Dan ray On WBZ, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
It is Nightside Bradley J for Dan Tonight with Stephen Bouchet,
and we're talking about public transports transit in Boston. And
the anchor of this is Steven's book Boston in Transit,
a massive success, mapping the history of public transportation in
Boston in the During the break, Stephen and I were
(24:07):
kind of discussing, kind of debating where the actual checkpoint
in Boston Neck was. The Boston Neck is the how
you got off the peninsula and onto the mainland, and
there was a checkpoint you had to get through. And
maybe not all the time, but at some points when.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
They were early on, they definitely wanted to They being
the Massachusetts Bate Company, wanted to secure it because they
were in what they perceived as hostile country. But also later,
by the time you get to the American Revolution, that
is fortified.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
It needs to be.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
So no one seems to know where that is. I mean,
where exactly it is the two or three square yards
where the checkpoint was. I want to know, and you
can call me at six one seven and it's unlikely
and if you know, but if you do six one seven,
two five, ten, thirty. Somebody must know and when when
(25:03):
it's found out, I want a stone marker there that
said this is where the turnstyle was, because to me,
that's everything pivots around that spot.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
I'm going to look into it for you.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
All right. Now we've gotten through the ferries and the omnibus,
it's time to talk about the electric the first electric
street cars.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Yeah, first electric street cars eighteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
They really it's you know, a lot of time goes
by now and not too much changes. You look back.
The iPhone was evented in two thousand and seven. That's
twenty years ago. Yeah, that was a big deal, But
twenty years has passed. Back then, in the eighteen nineties,
things were happening a lot more quickly than that. Electricity
was made available right around that and within no time
(25:49):
everything's electrified, including these street cars.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Yeah, and it's it was. It was scary to a
lot of people.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
There's a poem written called the broomstick Train and the
very first street cars that went around Remember that they
were initially pulled by horses. Now all of a sudden,
you have a stick going to a wire in the
air and with sparks, with sparks and the street cars
moving through the street, and there's no horses, and you
had seen the horses for fifty years. So there's a
great poem called the Broomstick Train and the author describes
(26:20):
and that the car is channeling the witches and the supernatural,
and that must be what's you know, what is?
Speaker 4 (26:28):
What is?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
They couldn't figure out what was powering it.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
That it was if you didn't know electricity existed. Remember
this is before there's no power stations yet, there's no
electrical grid yet. So the streetcar companies were among the
first in the nation to build power plants. The first
one was built in Allston and that powered our first streetcars.
Where in Austin, Oh my god, it's right over by
essentially where Regina's the that big steak restaurant. Essentially where
(26:57):
the stockyard.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yees, stockyard.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
It's you mean right by the mass Pike. Yeah, okay,
essentially back up reg Is and now it's something else.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, it backs up to the backed up to the pike,
which I meant them was the railroad.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, And what do these can
you do? You describe the omnibus very well? How about
the appearance on the inside and outside of the electric
street car.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
I think the street cars were fabulous because they evolved
so quickly. They started as twenty foot cars and there
were thirty foot so they got longer and longer. But
we also started doing interesting things, just like we did
with the coaches, where we would have a winter one
where the windows would close, but then there were summer versions.
Those were called open cars, and again you could ride
(27:40):
down the South Shore.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
On benches with no sides on the car.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
And it was great in the winter because I'm sorry,
great in the summer when when there's no air conditioning,
no electrical air conditioning. And by the time the subway
opens in Boston eighteen ninety seven, you could literally ride
on an open bench street car in the subway. And
there's great pictures of these overloaded street cars with people
hanging off the side. Today, imagine the cable cars in
(28:07):
San Francisco that are pulled by a cable. We had
those propelled by electricity, so they had open benches. I
would have loved to ride one of those.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So you had your power plant and somehow these these
wires over the building. The infrastructure must have been a
big deal.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Oh yeah, I mean they're they're figuring this out as
they go. They'd put a motor in a street car
six months it was like it was like tech now where.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Like six weeks yeh, bom bone.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah, six weeks later someone's got a better motor. Oh,
we better put use that motor. Six months later, ten
times better motors. And we had interesting things in Boston
where we didn't know if the wire was going to
be above our heads or in the street. For a
while down the back bay, the wire was in a
trough in the middle of the street and the street
car would go by, stick a little plow in there
and pick up power. But that didn't last very long
(28:54):
with ice and snow, and kids used to stick pennies
in there to short it.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
People step on it and get electric cue. There were
there was basically that was the third rail. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
No, there were horses on a bridge that were electrocuted
and then the fire department comes.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
They start getting zapped.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Nobody died, nobody was hurt, but it was like, Okay,
this isn't going to work.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
We don't need current under our feet with ice and snow.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
And that's why they put it up above. One of
the reasons.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
Yeah, all right, and.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
At some point, I mean, is this when we get
to the MTA? Uh? And is there something happening in between?
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Let's jump there basically, no, no, don't jump okay.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
What's in between?
Speaker 3 (29:30):
What's in between is remember the idea of publicly owned
and operated and funded public transport trans public transportation.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
That's really a.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Twentieth century concept. It was owned, operated and funded by
private companies right up until I would say, you know,
right up into friend Boston, at least right until the
forties when we created the MTA.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
That's our first public.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Agency, Massachusetts Massachusetts Transit Authority.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Metropolitan Transit, Metropolitan Metropolitan Transit.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Is that true? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (30:00):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Why did they change that?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Okay when they came up with the MBTA. Yeah, then
they added Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
So you're going to do the rise and fall of
the MTA that was yep, okay, and that's going to
require a little time. So we'll do that right after
the break on WBZ.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
You're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
We're talking Boston history as far as transit goes in
public transit, and we're getting up to the MTA and
the MBTA. We're going we don't have much time, so
our guest, Steven Bauchet is going to speed us through there,
so I have some time to make some comments.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Sure sounds good, let's get to those.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
So yeah, twentieth century, early twentieth century, that's when we
transitioned from public i'm sorry, privately owned and operated public transit,
so private companies for profit running street cars, running omnibuses,
running these coaches, even running those ferries back in the
seventeenth century. But as the twentieth century dawns, that becomes
less and less profitable. And in one of the reasons, well,
(31:02):
the Boston Elevator Railway Company was legally prohibited by the
legislature from raising their fares beyond five cents. That was
a big, big issue. But as it is now, costs
were going up. They couldn't raise fares, and by nineteen twelve,
the state is already stepping into subsidize I'm sorry, nineteen
(31:24):
eighteen to subsidize the Boston Elevator Railway. But it gets
so bad that in the nineteen forties, by forty six,
the Commonwealth steps in and creates the MTA. They take
over the Boston elevator railway wholesale, and for the first
time we have an entirely public agency owning and operating
the system. That network was too small, the MTA system,
(31:46):
and I go into it in detail in the store
in the book, but basically the network was too small.
They couldn't reach the suburbs. Too many people were living
in their cars beyond the reach of the network. And
they tried really hard. I mean, they brought us great
projects like the Revere Extension. They brought us tokens for transit,
they brought park and ride to stations, they brought us
(32:07):
the Riverside Line. But by the time we get to
the sixties again commonwealth steps in all sorts of studies
are made.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
That's something that's tracked in the book Last Year Studies
sixties sixty four.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
So this is a time when people don't care about
public transport. It's all about the cars and the highways.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah, railroads are going out of business. They're petitioning the
federal government to get rid of they don't want to
do they don't want to be passenger carriers anymore, which
they were obligated to do by the federal government. So
they're getting out of that, and interestingly enough, in the
midst of that, everyone's going to the cars, everyone's going
to the suburbs.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
The center city's hollowing out. Railroads are going bankrupt.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Massachusetts funds the railroads for a bit, it creates the MBTA,
and eventually by the time you get to the eighties,
we've bought the railroads. So therefore that's our commuter rail network.
Bought things from the New Haven Railroad, from the Boston
and Maine Railroad. We're lucky that that did happen here.
Other cities, other cunt states didn't want that. There wasn't
(33:06):
the political will or the funding. But also when the
t came in nineteen sixty four, it's the last thing
I'll say about that is that they were They tapped
the largest and unpreceded amount of federal funding from the
federal level for public transit at.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
The local level. So that's what what got the MBTA
off the ground.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
By the way, before I forget, I need you to
call Phil eng, the general manager of the MBTA, tell
him I want to be the voice of the MBTA
that says the next, you know, the next Union Square
station train ten minutes. Can you make that happen.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Next next time I run into him, I'll mention it was.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Come on, I'm such a I'm such a big t booster.
I deserve it. So have we have? Well, let me
ask you this, Well, in the limited time we have,
what are the challenges face? Now?
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Challenges face? And now?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Are keeping up the excellent work that Phil Ang as
that guy I mean people call him train daddy. I
mean he is a genuinely skilled person that cares and
has brought in a team and has overseen I mean
everyone I talk to at the tea, just about everybody.
There's a there's a different feeling, but also a new energy,
(34:18):
a new energy, but also we can feel it for
the first time. I can take the red line. I
live in Porter Square, so Porter to Park Street. You
know that should be like fifteen minutes. It hasn't been
that way in a long time. And there's so many
physical improvements, structural improvements, organizational improvements. He is making fabulous
changes as well as all the hard working people at
(34:40):
the NBTA under his oversight. So if we keep going,
that's our biggest change is keep it going, keep it funded,
keep it consistent, and and and just keep improving. I
mean there's specific things. If you want to get into
specific things, give.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Me two specific things that'll leave me time for my suggestions.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Specific things we need to not forget about some big
plans that we've been on, that have been on the books,
some of these for nearly a century, like connecting our
bifurcated commuter rail network all the commuter rail trains north
side at North Station.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, all the commuter rails.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
I mean there's North South rail as why do you
do that? Essentially it's a big tunnel.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Build a bridge to build a tunnel.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
No, but I mean that's the kind of thing that
that if we take that next step, you maximize so
much infrastructure that's already in place, but also you start
to tap whole regions of the country north I'm sorry
the state. People north of Boston can now work south
of Boston without having to drive, and it's a much
easier connection were we're long.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
I think we've evolved past.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
The commuters commuting into the core center anymore now if
we need to think regionally and bigger, and there are
great people at Mascot and thinking about all this stuff
we've got, you know, East East West rail. We've got
Compass rail out for Springfield, so we we can't forget
we got it.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
We fixed things, Let's keep fixing them. But we can't
forget to think bigger.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Is there some group that is a think tank that
tries to figure out how to connect North and South Station?
I mean there has to be a way as long
as if there was a will, there's a way. I
mean there's also a mono rail, but you couldn't carry
enough passengers with a mono rail, could you. There are
those kind of airport things that get you from terminal
to terminal where those were, but you'd have to go
back to basically something going over the city, which they
(36:33):
spent gazillions of dollars to get rid of. I mean
put it right over the roof Kennedy Greenway.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
I mean the thing that comes to mind is back
in the late eighties early nineties, we're putting the big
dig together and we caught out the fact that we
could have put a tunnel underneath, Yeah, for for the trains.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
I mean, that was the time to do it.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
The funding was there, but it was it was caught,
and then then the political will kind of fell away.
I mean, you asked about people. There are fabulous all
sorts of studies. I mean in looks, some of the
local schools, but I mean people like transit matters.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
There are earnest, earnest outside.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Groups that are consulting with the TEA that are advocating
for some of these projects.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
So this as an MBTA writer a lot because I
love it. I don't. I don't even like getting off
when I'm sad when I get to my stop, because
I just love listening to music and looking at Boston
Globe online and cruising along on the train. I see
things that need improvement. And one thing I don't understand
filling is that I'm guessing a lot of money was
(37:40):
spent to put a pair excuse me, pay stations at
EAT entrance so all doors could be open. That's a
great thing, but there's no enforcement on them. And I
get on and see a few people pay and millions
of dollars are being lost. What is Why is it
enforcement such a problem for that and things like motor
(38:06):
scooters at It seems like Boston Area just doesn't want
to enforce anything. All it would take is a few
people on the team said, let me, like in other countries.
Let me check and see if you validated your pass.
Oh you didn't. It's five hundred bucks. All they would
have to know that there's a shot that'd be five
hundred bucks, and that would make a difference. But I
don't even think people believe they have to pay anymore.
(38:28):
It is obvious to them that no one cares, at
least not enough to do anything about it, so they don't.
And I feel like kind of an idiot, kind of
like this old old school fool with this ancient notion
that I should pay. I should follow the rules. I understand,
and so what is the thinking behind that? It wouldn't
(38:50):
cost any money? And I know that's the bottom line.
It would make money. You pay somebody twenty bucks an
hour to check that, and you bust person and it's
five hundred bucks.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
I hear you.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
It's a very common complaint, very reasonable one. I can't
stand it when somebody doesn't pay their fare, and I do.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
I'm you're a rule.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Follower, yeah, And it's part of a general hesitant, hesitancy
to enforce any rules at all in the t in
the highway, and it's it's a trend that's concerning to me.
And I feel kind of like an outcast as a
rule follower. And I'm getting to the point where I'm saying,
look if no if no one cares, I'm not gonna
(39:29):
care either. I'm gonna If I can't beat them, I'll
join them.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Here's something to think about.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
What do you have thirty seconds?
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Okay, what do you think about fair free transit?
Speaker 2 (39:38):
If you can, I don't. Can you afford it? That's fine,
I don't mind paying. If you wanted free, that's fine.
You mean I have to pay a little bit more
in taxes? Fine, Well, I don't care because I use
it anyway. Yeah, that's gonna be a problem for someone
who doesn't use it.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
But I mean we're doing it around the state right
now with some of the regional transit authorities. And if
we can get to a point where imagine free and reliable,
that's a.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
That's a conversation for another day. We're out o time. Folks.
You like Italian cooking, well you're gonna you're gonna like
this next guest. I've tried to make homemade pasta. I've
tried to make, you know, my own Italian food fail,
not quite epic fail, but you know, no good, throw
it out. This next guest is going to try to
(40:23):
help me and help you with Italian cooking on wb
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