August 19, 2025 • 27 mins
Boston's North and South stations serve as critical transit hubs but remain disconnected despite a century of failed attempts to link them.
• North Station serves 40,000 daily commuters from northern suburbs and connects to Amtrak's Downeaster route
• South Station handles 60,000 daily commuters and serves as terminus for multiple Amtrak routes including Acela
• Transferring between stations requires a 16-25 minute journey using multiple subway lines
• Five major attempts to connect the stations have failed since the 1930s due to funding issues and political obstacles
• The Big Dig highway project complicated future connection possibilities by placing a tunnel between the stations
• Current estimated costs for connecting the stations range from $12-21 billion
• Engineering challenges include tunneling under existing infrastructure, electrifying commuter rail, and working in a dense urban environment
• Advocates continue pushing for the connection citing climate goals and regional transit equity
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Doors are closing Public transit.
That's my way to roll On themetro.
I'm taking control.
Bus stops, train tracks it's mydaily grind.
Transit, it's the rhythm of mylife.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Boston, one of America's oldest cities, boasts
two major train stations, butthere's one glaring problem they
don't connect.
Today we dive into the historyof this century-old transit
quirk on this episode of TransitTangents.
Hey everybody, and welcome backto this episode of Transit
Tangents.
My name's Chris and I'm Lewis,and today we are talking about
(00:41):
the tale of two terminals.
We are going to dive into thestory of the North and South
stations in Boston and tell youall about what is happening to
these two stations, what they door how they service the Boston
area, and why they exist in thisweird way.
They exist today.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, and we actually got film this portions of this
episode that you'll see later.
While we were on our trip kindof through the Northeast, we did
Boston, philadelphia andBaltimore.
Boston was our first stop andthis was kind of one of our side
quests while we were in Bostonwas to go check out both North
and South stations and kind oflook at the ridiculous reasons
(01:22):
why they don't connect to eachother and we'll get into kind of
how that happened.
But before we get into thehistory of all of it and
actually showing you today howyou get between these two
stations, we wanted to take asecond to just kind of explain
the importance of both NorthStation and South Station as
well as how many people reallygo out and use these things.
(01:43):
So the North and south stationsprimarily act as the terminus
for the commuter rail lines inthe city of boston, um.
The commuter rail lines serviceroughly 105 000 daily riders
per weekday.
Um and north stationunsurprisingly serves most of
the kind of suburbs of theBoston area in the north and to
(02:06):
the northwest, while SouthStation kind of serves the folks
more to the south and thesouthwest Makes a lot of sense.
Yes, and there's not specificridership numbers that are
easily accessible for eachindividual line.
But what we do know is thatroughly 40% of the 105,000 daily
(02:28):
commuters are people who arecommuting on those northern
lines.
So you can make a roughestimate that there's maybe, on
the high end, 40,000 or sopeople commuting in and out of
North Station each day in Boston.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, and this North Station.
It's the major terminus for thenorth part of the city and so
you also have a lot of peoplenot only using this station to
access commuter lines, whichI've done in the past I took the
train to Salem a couple yearsago, really good experience
there but this is also wherepeople are hitting the northern
states too.
(03:03):
So this is sort of thelaunching off point for Amtrak
service to continue through therest of New England into New
Hampshire and Maine as well,using the Amtrak Downeaster.
The Amtrak Downeaster in 2024actually had an annual ridership
of about 600,000 riders, whichis higher than pre-pandemic
(03:25):
levels.
So a lot of Amtrak traffic iscoming out of this Northern
Terminus and then looking inwardto Boston.
This is also a central hub fora lot of the internal
connections to the city, wherethis station has connections to
the green and the orange subwaylines as well.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Totally.
And one other kind of fun factabout North Station is that it
literally sits underneath the TDGarden, which is home to the
Boston Celtics and the BostonBruins, so it's a really
important hub for getting folksto and from sports games,
specifically for basketball andhockey there.
So it makes it for easy accessfor folks who are riding on the
(04:04):
subway as well as on thecommuter rail, at least if
you're on the north side of thecity.
But moving on though, southStation again plays a very
similar role, but for the Southhas eight commuter lines and it
serves roughly 60% of that105,000 daily commuter rail
traffic, so maybe 60,000 or so.
(04:24):
Maybe not everybody's goingdirectly to South Station or
North Station, but they're goingto be a lot of them getting
close.
In addition to that, that iswhere several of the Amtrak kind
of routes in the Northeastterminate.
You've got the Acela, theNortheast Regional, as well as
the Lakeshore Limited all end atBoston South Station.
(04:44):
In 2024, 1.8 million Amtrakriders passed through the
station, which is a lot ofpeople, obviously.
And then, in addition to all ofthe different regional rail
options, you also haveconnections locally to the Red
Line, which is part of thesubway system.
(05:04):
Connections locally to the RedLine, which is part of the
subway system, as well as theSilver Line, which we had a
chance to ride in our BostonUsing Only Public Transit
episode.
The Silver Line is kind of aBRT.
In some areas it runsunderground in its own dedicated
tunnels, and part of that areais literally underneath South
Station.
One other cool thing aboutSouth Station, though, that
Chris and I got to go check outwas the bus terminal, which I
(05:27):
think we were both prettyimpressed with.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, absolutely the bus terminal.
It opened in the 90s with about29 different gates.
When I say gates, it feels likean airport.
This is probably one of thenicest bus terminals or bus
stations I've ever been in.
It was very clean.
You had, I think, a McDonald'sand some other stuff happening
in there if you wanted.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So nice.
It's got a McDonald's inside.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well, no, but like you know what I'm kidding?
I'm kidding, but it's.
It was a really nice space andit does kind of feel like you
are at an airport.
There's, you know, a concoursewith multiple gates where the
buses pull up and you walk outto the bus.
It's actually really cool.
Exact number of riders for thisbus terminal are pretty hard to
(06:08):
find.
In 2011, the regional busstation saw nearly 600 bus
departures per day, so a ton oftraffic coming through here,
totally yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Part of the reason it's tricky to track down the
exact numbers for this sort ofstuff is there are a whole bunch
of different bus companies thatall utilize this space, uh,
ranging from, like bigger kindof you know, uh, flixbus,
greyhound type stuff, but alsoin the northeast, there are a
lot of like regional busservices.
You've got the concord coachlines, you've got c and j,
you've got peter pan, you've gotall these different uh kind of
(06:44):
options.
Uh, I think, like dartdartmouth has one as well, like
there's a whole bunch ofdifferent companies that all
sort of utilize, uh, this space,um, in south station, um, and
trying to kind of go through andfigure out all the different
departures is tricky, but yeah,that that's stat from 2011 is
pretty interesting.
With over 600 buses, is prettywild.
But you would think, though,that, given the amount of people
(07:05):
traveling on both the commuterrail lines, on the buses, on
Amtrak again, you've got 600,000people riding the Downeaster at
North Station, 1.7 millionpeople from Amtrak passing
through South Station you wouldthink that these two massive
stations would connect, butthere is one huge problem, and
that huge problem is that theydon't connect, and it's not even
(07:28):
that easy to get between them.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, and as Lewis said at the top of the episode,
we took this as a side questduring our Boston trip and we
decided to go to the stationsand see just how easy or how
difficult it was to connectbetween the north and the south
station.
You'd think it'd be really easyto get between where I am at
North Station and where Lewis isat South Station.
Right, let's find out.
Starting at the North Station,we had to find our way
(07:52):
underground, where we exploredthe labyrinth of hallways to the
Orange and Green Line platform.
Meanwhile, lewis waited for usat the South Station, boarding
the first Orange Line train thatthat came.
We took it for two stops untilwe arrived at the transfer
station to join the red line,lewis still waiting for us.
From here, we took the red linefor one stop to south station,
(08:15):
made our way up all of thestairs, through the gates and
into the concourse where wefinally met up with lewis.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Hey, lewis, you made it.
How was that?
It was good, it's fast.
Yeah, you got here faster thanI thought you would.
About 16 minutes, 16 minutes,that's honestly really good
considering.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Or by special YouTube magic, I made it here in 30
seconds, 30 seconds just likethat.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
You know this wouldn't be too bad if you
didn't have to do the transferin the middle, too bad if you
didn't have to do the transferin the middle.
All in all, it didn't take ustoo long.
It was actually only 16 minutes, but still it's 16 minutes that
you shouldn't have to worryabout.
You should be able to justcontinue to sit on your train
for one more stop to connect youto this next station.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
When I think about taking the Amtrak, say, from
Portland to New York, and nowyou have to stop in Boston,
unload all of your luggage andeither take a taxi or an Uber, a
bus, or now transferringthrough a subway stop to get to
your next train which is thengoing to take you to New York.
So definitely a hassle thatcould be improved.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Totally.
At this point, I think it'stime to probably take a look at
why this problem was neversolved.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Why does it exist and why haven't we solved it?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, for sure, and very similar story to a lot of
other places in the UnitedStates.
Rail was very much a privateindustry.
By the 1830s, passenger rail inthe Boston area was becoming
very popular and growing veryrapidly.
You had five or six differentrailroads all popping up with
(09:52):
their own private networks.
Many of them all had their ownlines and their own stations and
their own terminals in thedowntown area, which obviously
was a problem.
Does not bode well forefficiencies if you're trying to
transfer between thesedifferent options.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, in fact it was so disorganized.
At one point there were fourprimary passenger rail terminals
or depots in the Boston area,including the Providence Depot,
the Worcester Depot.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
You should keep saying Worchester.
The Boston people call itWorcester.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Worcester.
Okay, so the Worcester Depot,the Boston and Mainz Haymarket
Square Depot and the EasternRailroad's terminal near
Causeway Street.
So you had this mix and matchof companies that were sort of
had rail lines stretching acrossthe city, again very
disorganized, all privatecompanies.
There's no fare sharing at thispoint.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
So definitely I can imagine it being a pretty
confusing time their terminusstation in the city and that's
where we get the creation ofSouth Station in Boston, which
(11:11):
is actually called South UnionStation, and this really cleaned
up the amount of chaos, atleast on one half of the city.
But Chris found someinteresting stuff while digging
through this about why this wascalled South Union Station and
why we see Union Stations kindof all over the country.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
We see Union Station everywhere.
I mean, you have Union Stationin DC, I believe in Philadelphia
it was Union Station, or it'sPenn Station, sorry, in Denver
there's a Union Station.
It's just all over the country.
You see this and it's as simpleas it is the union of multiple
rail companies into one centralterminal or one central station.
(11:50):
So kind of a cool, cool historyfact for railroads across the
country.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
I was always saying I just like this is with, having
not really put thought into it.
I always assumed that, likeUnion Pacific had something to
do with all of these.
Now, obviously Union Pacificwas not everywhere, but I always
just thought it was UnionPacific, but that this makes a
lot of sense, obviously.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I always thought that it had something to do with
like the Union as like the US.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Well, you would think that with South Station being
formed and this kind ofconsolidation of infrastructure
on the south side of Boston,that the same would be done on
the north side of boston.
That, uh, the same would bedone on the north side of boston
, but it actually took basicallyan additional 30 or so years
before that came to fruition.
So you had 30 more years ofmultiple terminus stations on
(12:38):
the north side of boston andthat still did not connect into
the south station.
But eventually, in 1926,construction began on north
station, um, and it kind ofconsolidated those remaining
lines to the north all into oneplace.
Um, you would think, finally,rail service in boston is fully
(13:01):
united, um, however, at the timewhen they put north station
together, there was no thoughtor effort really put into
connecting North Station toSouth Station.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
For the time period.
I'm actually really amazed theydidn't just demolish a part of
the city and have one centralstation in the very middle of
Boston.
It all goes back to theprivatization of passenger rail
service.
These two, these companies,didn't necessarily want to
intermingle.
Perhaps One of the cool thingsabout the North Station is that
it was really innovative for itstime.
It was incredibly modern.
But also it incorporated asporting venue with the station
(13:37):
from the start, which reallyhadn't existed anywhere else,
and it's a legacy that continuesto this day at the North
Station with the TD.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Garden Center, formerly the Boston Garden.
It should probably just be theBoston Garden, but whatever,
we're going to jump right backinto this episode in just a
second, but first, if you havenot liked this video, go ahead
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Speaker 2 (14:10):
And if you don't have time to watch YouTube videos in
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Just be sure to leave us arating and give us a comment.
So the North Station isfinished around 1930.
As we were saying, it surprisesus that they didn't necessarily
have the foresight to think toconnect to these stations
beforehand, but there wereplenty of people at that time
(14:33):
who were really pushing for thisconnection to happen.
So now we're in the 1930s.
The Public Works Administrationis in full force and the Works
Progress Administration lookingfor ways to employ the American
people and keep in mind, we'resort of in the Great Depression
era and they really looked atthese large infrastructure
projects.
They set their eyes on Bostonwith a plan to connect the North
(14:58):
and South stations with a railterminal.
So finally, here's the plan,here's how we're gonna connect
them.
We have all of this labor to doit and it's going to happen.
But it didn't happen and one ofthe reasons it didn't happen
and this is going to be arecurring theme over the century
is that the funds just weren'tthere.
(15:18):
Again, we're in the GreatDepression.
It made this a very politicallytricky project to do.
And there were other prioritiesthat existed elsewhere in the
country, other New Dealpriorities like roads and
bridges and dams, like theHoover Dam, and other power
projects.
And then, as we talked aboutbefore, the railroads were still
(15:41):
privatized and there justwasn't the cooperation needed
between the companies to finallybridge that gap.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Now this wouldn't be the only attempt at trying to
build a North to South Stationconnector.
Fast forward to the 1970s, theMBTA was trying to work with
Penn Central, who at the timewas the largest railroad in the
United States.
They were studying thepossibility of doing this exact
same thing building a tunnelbetween the two terminals.
There was a lot of good reasonto look into it at the time In
(16:11):
the 70s.
You've got rail ridershipdeclining as everybody can
afford a car now, but with thatyou have massive suburban sprawl
car congestion.
Think about Boston traffic Atthat point.
This is pre-Big Dig.
You don't have the tunnel goingthrough.
You've got a double-deckerhighway running right through
downtown Boston and there wassome federal interest in
(16:32):
actually supporting these sortsof projects and it felt like all
of the pieces were in place tomake this happen.
Unfortunately, penn Centralgoes through a major financial
crisis and their end of the dealis starting to seem like it
can't come through Politically.
It starts to become less of apopular idea and unfortunately,
(16:57):
it basically fizzled away and,once again, was never completed.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Then we fast forward to the next attempt, which was
in 1984.
Congress actually passedfunding to make this connection
happen.
So for the first time on thefederal level, congress says no,
we're going to pay for this,we're going to make this vital
rail connection actually happen.
It was part of a broaderfederal transportation bill
where they approved $5 millionto study this In today's money,
(17:23):
that's about $15 million.
In today's money, that's about$15 million and the funds were
specifically for creating thepreliminary design and the
engineering for this north-southrail link.
Again, this was a period oftime where the gap that existed
in Boston was again a federalfocus.
This is a criticalinfrastructure project that
(17:50):
needs to be completed.
So it passes Congress, it moveson to the White House where the
president should sign it.
However, 1984, ronald Reagan ispresident and famously this is
around the time that, I think,public transportation projects
started to fall out of favorwith conservatives.
So, president Ronald Reagan, hevetoes the entire
transportation bill, objectingto what he calls unnecessary
(18:13):
pork barrel spending and federaloverreach in local
transportation planning.
So we could have had it, if onlyit wasn't for.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Reagan, and that was the third attempt.
Uh, so here we are, uh, attemptnumber four uh, we're in the
1990s now.
I lightly mentioned the big digbefore.
Um, that's what's going on inthe 90s in boston is planning
for the big dig, which isburying i-93, which was a
double-decker highway that cutsright through downtown boston,
(18:43):
and burying it under the city.
Um, that project obviously tookthat is like the the classic
example of like way over budget,way past time due.
Um, but it's done and it's,it's like, made downtown boston
such a more pleasant space onfoot, you know, in the actual
city, compared to what it wasbefore.
(19:03):
But this would have been theperfect time to consider, while
you're down there already doingthis tunneling work, major
transportation project, tocomplete both of these projects
at the same time.
It was seriously considered asan add on to this huge project.
There was a whole bunch ofdifferent alignments and
engineering.
You know schematics andscenarios that were drafted up
(19:24):
for it and ultimately it wasexcluded, just given the sheer
costs and undertaking of the BigDig at the time.
But this was a huge kind ofblow to the North-South Rail
connection as a whole for acouple of reasons, but primarily
if you look at a map of Boston,the Big Dig essentially
(19:46):
connects I-93 in a way where itsplits right between north and
south stations.
So that means if you're going togo from south station to north
station in a tunnel, you have togo under or over the Big Dig.
You can't go over the Big Digbecause you've got downtown
Boston dig.
Because you've got downtownBoston, you can go under.
(20:06):
However, it's really trickybecause you need to get the
trains from South Station, theyneed to go down to get under the
big dig and and then they needto come back up again to get to
North Station and those gradesnow that this wasn't done during
the big dig are just barelyfeasible.
There's some good visuals fromthe North-South Rail Link
(20:30):
website that talk about this andit's about a 3% grade down and
then flat for a quick second toget underneath.
Then it's about a 3% grade backup, which doesn't sound like a
lot if you're walking orsomething, but for a train you
can't go much more than thatwithout running into issues.
So it definitely complicatedthings quite a bit not having
this done and thought out whilethe big dig was being undertaken
(20:52):
.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So the big dig was a bust for Rail Connection and
then we move into the 2000s.
So here we are brand newcentury, tons of opportunity out
there.
Romney is now the governor ofMassachusetts and is actually in
favor of transportationspending between the North and
(21:16):
South terminals.
He commissioned a formalfeasibility study, evaluated a
two-track versus four-tracksolution.
They identified portallocations, tunneling, logistics
and costs.
They did all the estimationsand it came out to around $4 to
$8 billion.
Again, he endorsed this inprinciple, but when it actually
(21:37):
came time to fully fund and putthe money there, the political
will just kind of evaporated.
Mitt Romney leaves office andunfortunately the project just
didn't move forward.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
And then the last attempt here in 2016, 2018, the
Massachusetts Department ofTransportation kind of decided
to reevaluate this whole projectagain.
There were some studies thatwere reopened.
You know they were able toreaffirm that, yes, this is
still technically feasible to beable to do.
It's not impossible.
But you know, again, like wesaid, it's definitely more
(22:11):
complicated now than it maybewould have been.
You know, pre-big Dig or any ofthe other.
I don't even know what numberof attempts we're at here now,
but any of the other.
I don't even know what numberof attempts we're at here now,
but any of the five times before.
Um, but uh, you know the theestimated costs at this point
were just going up, as you wouldexpect, as everything has gone
up like crazy in regards toinfrastructure spending in the
(22:33):
united states.
Uh, the estimated costs at thispoint were now somewhere
between 12 and 21 billion.
That's a bit of a wiggle roomthere to play, with Support from
all the right folks that youneeded.
As far as the groups that we'reworking on this sort of thing
Amtrak, regional planning groups, the city.
Unfortunately, though, politicsgets in the way, as it always
(22:55):
does in the United States.
That sounded like a real doomerthing for me to say right there
, but it's been true lately it'sbeen true.
Governor Charlie Baker insteadprioritized expanding the
capacity at South Station,saying that that's more
practical.
It's like okay, yes, sure, youprobably do need capacity
upgrades at these things in time, but that's nowhere close to
(23:17):
the same level of project orproject benefits that you would
get from actually connectingthese two stations together.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, and the interest is still there.
I mean, we're now in the 2020sand quickly approaching the
2030s Don't like to think aboutthat and the current governor
continues to express interest inreconsidering this North-South
rail link.
Current governor continues toexpress interest in
reconsidering this North-Southrail link.
There are plenty of advocatesin the city of Boston who are
citing reasons like climategoals, regional equity and the
(23:52):
federal infrastructure windowthat did exist during the Biden
administration.
That has somewhat closed in theTrump administration.
And then there's also stillfederal support with people like
Representative Seth Moulton,who is a huge advocate for this.
Senator Ed Markey.
All of the interest is stillthere.
It just it needs to get thepolitical will to finally make
it happen.
And that leads us to the lastpart here, which is will it ever
(24:15):
happen?
And the answer is maybe it'stechnically possible.
As you said, lewis, thegeography is very complicated.
Somebody has described it and Idon't have the exact quote, but
it was described as performingopen-heart surgery on a crowded
city, while it's still awake forall of the reasons that Lewis
(24:36):
has already mentioned.
You have the big dig.
That's in the way.
You have a ton of historicarchitecture that you can't
really disrupt.
The subways are also there.
Boston is one of our oldestcities so there is a ton of
stuff that is underground inbetween these two locations and
it's a very, very denseenvironment.
Also, boston famously Port Cityand has really close proximity
(25:00):
to water and the Big Dig.
If anybody else grew upwatching modern marvels and
looking at every episode aboutthe Big Dig, like I did, you
learned all about how waterseeping into the tunnels was
such a huge issue for the BigDig and that is going to
continue to be an issue if theymake this project as well.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Totally and in addition to all of those
constraints, I mean presentlythe Boston commuter rail system
is not electrified.
To have these commuter railsrunning through tunnels at this
length, you can't be runningdiesel trains through there
without dealing with all sortsof different ventilation and
whatnot.
So you would need to be able toelectrify these trains, which
(25:40):
is, you know, it's not justelectr electrify these trains,
which is, you know, it's notjust electrifying that one
section, it's, you know, gettinglocomotives that actually can
be electrified.
It's dealing with catenarywires and whatnot along the
tracks and or doing batterycommuter trains and whatnot.
Andrew talked about that alittle bit in our interview with
him.
There's a lot of folks who areskeptical about that sort of
technology as well.
(26:01):
So you know, it's not just onething, it's a whole bunch of
different things all stacked ontop of each other.
But I would say that whilecomplicated, that doesn't mean
there shouldn't be an attempt todo it and that in this case the
benefits for the city of Bostoncould be immense.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
So the real question is, Bostonians, are you ready
for the second big dig or areyou still a little traumatized
from the first?
Let us know in the comments ifyou support this, if you think
it's feasible, if you think it'sgoing to happen.
Let us know.
We want to hear from you ifyou're local to the area.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Absolutely.
If you want to support the show, the best ways to do so are via
our Patreon.
Buy me a coffee, or you cancheck out our merch store, which
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But without further ado, thankyou all so much for watching and
enjoy the rest of your Transit.
Tangents Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I think,
Doors are closing Public transit.
That's my way to roll On themetro.
I'm taking control.
Bus stops, train tracks it's mydaily grind.
Transit, it's the rhythm of mylife.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Boston, one of America's oldest cities, boasts
two major train stations, butthere's one glaring problem they
don't connect.
Today we dive into the historyof this century-old transit
quirk on this episode of TransitTangents.
Hey everybody, and welcome backto this episode of Transit
Tangents.
My name's Chris and I'm Lewis,and today we are talking about
(00:41):
the tale of two terminals.
We are going to dive into thestory of the North and South
stations in Boston and tell youall about what is happening to
these two stations, what they door how they service the Boston
area, and why they exist in thisweird way.
They exist today.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, and we actually got film this portions of this
episode that you'll see later.
While we were on our trip kindof through the Northeast, we did
Boston, philadelphia andBaltimore.
Boston was our first stop andthis was kind of one of our side
quests while we were in Bostonwas to go check out both North
and South stations and kind oflook at the ridiculous reasons
(01:22):
why they don't connect to eachother and we'll get into kind of
how that happened.
But before we get into thehistory of all of it and
actually showing you today howyou get between these two
stations, we wanted to take asecond to just kind of explain
the importance of both NorthStation and South Station as
well as how many people reallygo out and use these things.
(01:43):
So the North and south stationsprimarily act as the terminus
for the commuter rail lines inthe city of boston, um.
The commuter rail lines serviceroughly 105 000 daily riders
per weekday.
Um and north stationunsurprisingly serves most of
the kind of suburbs of theBoston area in the north and to
(02:06):
the northwest, while SouthStation kind of serves the folks
more to the south and thesouthwest Makes a lot of sense.
Yes, and there's not specificridership numbers that are
easily accessible for eachindividual line.
But what we do know is thatroughly 40% of the 105,000 daily
(02:28):
commuters are people who arecommuting on those northern
lines.
So you can make a roughestimate that there's maybe, on
the high end, 40,000 or sopeople commuting in and out of
North Station each day in Boston.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, and this North Station.
It's the major terminus for thenorth part of the city and so
you also have a lot of peoplenot only using this station to
access commuter lines, whichI've done in the past I took the
train to Salem a couple yearsago, really good experience
there but this is also wherepeople are hitting the northern
states too.
(03:03):
So this is sort of thelaunching off point for Amtrak
service to continue through therest of New England into New
Hampshire and Maine as well,using the Amtrak Downeaster.
The Amtrak Downeaster in 2024actually had an annual ridership
of about 600,000 riders, whichis higher than pre-pandemic
(03:25):
levels.
So a lot of Amtrak traffic iscoming out of this Northern
Terminus and then looking inwardto Boston.
This is also a central hub fora lot of the internal
connections to the city, wherethis station has connections to
the green and the orange subwaylines as well.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Totally.
And one other kind of fun factabout North Station is that it
literally sits underneath the TDGarden, which is home to the
Boston Celtics and the BostonBruins, so it's a really
important hub for getting folksto and from sports games,
specifically for basketball andhockey there.
So it makes it for easy accessfor folks who are riding on the
(04:04):
subway as well as on thecommuter rail, at least if
you're on the north side of thecity.
But moving on though, southStation again plays a very
similar role, but for the Southhas eight commuter lines and it
serves roughly 60% of that105,000 daily commuter rail
traffic, so maybe 60,000 or so.
(04:24):
Maybe not everybody's goingdirectly to South Station or
North Station, but they're goingto be a lot of them getting
close.
In addition to that, that iswhere several of the Amtrak kind
of routes in the Northeastterminate.
You've got the Acela, theNortheast Regional, as well as
the Lakeshore Limited all end atBoston South Station.
(04:44):
In 2024, 1.8 million Amtrakriders passed through the
station, which is a lot ofpeople, obviously.
And then, in addition to all ofthe different regional rail
options, you also haveconnections locally to the Red
Line, which is part of thesubway system.
(05:04):
Connections locally to the RedLine, which is part of the
subway system, as well as theSilver Line, which we had a
chance to ride in our BostonUsing Only Public Transit
episode.
The Silver Line is kind of aBRT.
In some areas it runsunderground in its own dedicated
tunnels, and part of that areais literally underneath South
Station.
One other cool thing aboutSouth Station, though, that
Chris and I got to go check outwas the bus terminal, which I
(05:27):
think we were both prettyimpressed with.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, absolutely the bus terminal.
It opened in the 90s with about29 different gates.
When I say gates, it feels likean airport.
This is probably one of thenicest bus terminals or bus
stations I've ever been in.
It was very clean.
You had, I think, a McDonald'sand some other stuff happening
in there if you wanted.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So nice.
It's got a McDonald's inside.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well, no, but like you know what I'm kidding?
I'm kidding, but it's.
It was a really nice space andit does kind of feel like you
are at an airport.
There's, you know, a concoursewith multiple gates where the
buses pull up and you walk outto the bus.
It's actually really cool.
Exact number of riders for thisbus terminal are pretty hard to
(06:08):
find.
In 2011, the regional busstation saw nearly 600 bus
departures per day, so a ton oftraffic coming through here,
totally yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Part of the reason it's tricky to track down the
exact numbers for this sort ofstuff is there are a whole bunch
of different bus companies thatall utilize this space, uh,
ranging from, like bigger kindof you know, uh, flixbus,
greyhound type stuff, but alsoin the northeast, there are a
lot of like regional busservices.
You've got the concord coachlines, you've got c and j,
you've got peter pan, you've gotall these different uh kind of
(06:44):
options.
Uh, I think, like dartdartmouth has one as well, like
there's a whole bunch ofdifferent companies that all
sort of utilize, uh, this space,um, in south station, um, and
trying to kind of go through andfigure out all the different
departures is tricky, but yeah,that that's stat from 2011 is
pretty interesting.
With over 600 buses, is prettywild.
But you would think, though,that, given the amount of people
(07:05):
traveling on both the commuterrail lines, on the buses, on
Amtrak again, you've got 600,000people riding the Downeaster at
North Station, 1.7 millionpeople from Amtrak passing
through South Station you wouldthink that these two massive
stations would connect, butthere is one huge problem, and
that huge problem is that theydon't connect, and it's not even
(07:28):
that easy to get between them.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, and as Lewis said at the top of the episode,
we took this as a side questduring our Boston trip and we
decided to go to the stationsand see just how easy or how
difficult it was to connectbetween the north and the south
station.
You'd think it'd be really easyto get between where I am at
North Station and where Lewis isat South Station.
Right, let's find out.
Starting at the North Station,we had to find our way
(07:52):
underground, where we exploredthe labyrinth of hallways to the
Orange and Green Line platform.
Meanwhile, lewis waited for usat the South Station, boarding
the first Orange Line train thatthat came.
We took it for two stops untilwe arrived at the transfer
station to join the red line,lewis still waiting for us.
From here, we took the red linefor one stop to south station,
(08:15):
made our way up all of thestairs, through the gates and
into the concourse where wefinally met up with lewis.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Hey, lewis, you made it.
How was that?
It was good, it's fast.
Yeah, you got here faster thanI thought you would.
About 16 minutes, 16 minutes,that's honestly really good
considering.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Or by special YouTube magic, I made it here in 30
seconds, 30 seconds just likethat.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
You know this wouldn't be too bad if you
didn't have to do the transferin the middle, too bad if you
didn't have to do the transferin the middle.
All in all, it didn't take ustoo long.
It was actually only 16 minutes, but still it's 16 minutes that
you shouldn't have to worryabout.
You should be able to justcontinue to sit on your train
for one more stop to connect youto this next station.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
When I think about taking the Amtrak, say, from
Portland to New York, and nowyou have to stop in Boston,
unload all of your luggage andeither take a taxi or an Uber, a
bus, or now transferringthrough a subway stop to get to
your next train which is thengoing to take you to New York.
So definitely a hassle thatcould be improved.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Totally.
At this point, I think it'stime to probably take a look at
why this problem was neversolved.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Why does it exist and why haven't we solved it?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, for sure, and very similar story to a lot of
other places in the UnitedStates.
Rail was very much a privateindustry.
By the 1830s, passenger rail inthe Boston area was becoming
very popular and growing veryrapidly.
You had five or six differentrailroads all popping up with
(09:52):
their own private networks.
Many of them all had their ownlines and their own stations and
their own terminals in thedowntown area, which obviously
was a problem.
Does not bode well forefficiencies if you're trying to
transfer between thesedifferent options.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, in fact it was so disorganized.
At one point there were fourprimary passenger rail terminals
or depots in the Boston area,including the Providence Depot,
the Worcester Depot.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
You should keep saying Worchester.
The Boston people call itWorcester.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Worcester.
Okay, so the Worcester Depot,the Boston and Mainz Haymarket
Square Depot and the EasternRailroad's terminal near
Causeway Street.
So you had this mix and matchof companies that were sort of
had rail lines stretching acrossthe city, again very
disorganized, all privatecompanies.
There's no fare sharing at thispoint.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
So definitely I can imagine it being a pretty
confusing time their terminusstation in the city and that's
where we get the creation ofSouth Station in Boston, which
(11:11):
is actually called South UnionStation, and this really cleaned
up the amount of chaos, atleast on one half of the city.
But Chris found someinteresting stuff while digging
through this about why this wascalled South Union Station and
why we see Union Stations kindof all over the country.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
We see Union Station everywhere.
I mean, you have Union Stationin DC, I believe in Philadelphia
it was Union Station, or it'sPenn Station, sorry, in Denver
there's a Union Station.
It's just all over the country.
You see this and it's as simpleas it is the union of multiple
rail companies into one centralterminal or one central station.
(11:50):
So kind of a cool, cool historyfact for railroads across the
country.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
I was always saying I just like this is with, having
not really put thought into it.
I always assumed that, likeUnion Pacific had something to
do with all of these.
Now, obviously Union Pacificwas not everywhere, but I always
just thought it was UnionPacific, but that this makes a
lot of sense, obviously.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I always thought that it had something to do with
like the Union as like the US.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Well, you would think that with South Station being
formed and this kind ofconsolidation of infrastructure
on the south side of Boston,that the same would be done on
the north side of boston.
That, uh, the same would bedone on the north side of boston
, but it actually took basicallyan additional 30 or so years
before that came to fruition.
So you had 30 more years ofmultiple terminus stations on
(12:38):
the north side of boston andthat still did not connect into
the south station.
But eventually, in 1926,construction began on north
station, um, and it kind ofconsolidated those remaining
lines to the north all into oneplace.
Um, you would think, finally,rail service in boston is fully
(13:01):
united, um, however, at the timewhen they put north station
together, there was no thoughtor effort really put into
connecting North Station toSouth Station.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
For the time period.
I'm actually really amazed theydidn't just demolish a part of
the city and have one centralstation in the very middle of
Boston.
It all goes back to theprivatization of passenger rail
service.
These two, these companies,didn't necessarily want to
intermingle.
Perhaps One of the cool thingsabout the North Station is that
it was really innovative for itstime.
It was incredibly modern.
But also it incorporated asporting venue with the station
(13:37):
from the start, which reallyhadn't existed anywhere else,
and it's a legacy that continuesto this day at the North
Station with the TD.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Garden Center, formerly the Boston Garden.
It should probably just be theBoston Garden, but whatever,
we're going to jump right backinto this episode in just a
second, but first, if you havenot liked this video, go ahead
and do so.
Also, leave a comment.
We love reading all of them andrespond to as many as we can,
and be sure that you aresubscribed so that you catch
every episode as they come out.
Please share this with yourfriends.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
And if you don't have time to watch YouTube videos in
the future, you can catch us onany of the podcast platforms
that are out there.
Just be sure to leave us arating and give us a comment.
So the North Station isfinished around 1930.
As we were saying, it surprisesus that they didn't necessarily
have the foresight to think toconnect to these stations
beforehand, but there wereplenty of people at that time
(14:33):
who were really pushing for thisconnection to happen.
So now we're in the 1930s.
The Public Works Administrationis in full force and the Works
Progress Administration lookingfor ways to employ the American
people and keep in mind, we'resort of in the Great Depression
era and they really looked atthese large infrastructure
projects.
They set their eyes on Bostonwith a plan to connect the North
(14:58):
and South stations with a railterminal.
So finally, here's the plan,here's how we're gonna connect
them.
We have all of this labor to doit and it's going to happen.
But it didn't happen and one ofthe reasons it didn't happen
and this is going to be arecurring theme over the century
is that the funds just weren'tthere.
(15:18):
Again, we're in the GreatDepression.
It made this a very politicallytricky project to do.
And there were other prioritiesthat existed elsewhere in the
country, other New Dealpriorities like roads and
bridges and dams, like theHoover Dam, and other power
projects.
And then, as we talked aboutbefore, the railroads were still
(15:41):
privatized and there justwasn't the cooperation needed
between the companies to finallybridge that gap.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Now this wouldn't be the only attempt at trying to
build a North to South Stationconnector.
Fast forward to the 1970s, theMBTA was trying to work with
Penn Central, who at the timewas the largest railroad in the
United States.
They were studying thepossibility of doing this exact
same thing building a tunnelbetween the two terminals.
There was a lot of good reasonto look into it at the time In
(16:11):
the 70s.
You've got rail ridershipdeclining as everybody can
afford a car now, but with thatyou have massive suburban sprawl
car congestion.
Think about Boston traffic Atthat point.
This is pre-Big Dig.
You don't have the tunnel goingthrough.
You've got a double-deckerhighway running right through
downtown Boston and there wassome federal interest in
(16:32):
actually supporting these sortsof projects and it felt like all
of the pieces were in place tomake this happen.
Unfortunately, penn Centralgoes through a major financial
crisis and their end of the dealis starting to seem like it
can't come through Politically.
It starts to become less of apopular idea and unfortunately,
(16:57):
it basically fizzled away and,once again, was never completed.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Then we fast forward to the next attempt, which was
in 1984.
Congress actually passedfunding to make this connection
happen.
So for the first time on thefederal level, congress says no,
we're going to pay for this,we're going to make this vital
rail connection actually happen.
It was part of a broaderfederal transportation bill
where they approved $5 millionto study this In today's money,
(17:23):
that's about $15 million.
In today's money, that's about$15 million and the funds were
specifically for creating thepreliminary design and the
engineering for this north-southrail link.
Again, this was a period oftime where the gap that existed
in Boston was again a federalfocus.
This is a criticalinfrastructure project that
(17:50):
needs to be completed.
So it passes Congress, it moveson to the White House where the
president should sign it.
However, 1984, ronald Reagan ispresident and famously this is
around the time that, I think,public transportation projects
started to fall out of favorwith conservatives.
So, president Ronald Reagan, hevetoes the entire
transportation bill, objectingto what he calls unnecessary
(18:13):
pork barrel spending and federaloverreach in local
transportation planning.
So we could have had it, if onlyit wasn't for.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Reagan, and that was the third attempt.
Uh, so here we are, uh, attemptnumber four uh, we're in the
1990s now.
I lightly mentioned the big digbefore.
Um, that's what's going on inthe 90s in boston is planning
for the big dig, which isburying i-93, which was a
double-decker highway that cutsright through downtown boston,
(18:43):
and burying it under the city.
Um, that project obviously tookthat is like the the classic
example of like way over budget,way past time due.
Um, but it's done and it's,it's like, made downtown boston
such a more pleasant space onfoot, you know, in the actual
city, compared to what it wasbefore.
(19:03):
But this would have been theperfect time to consider, while
you're down there already doingthis tunneling work, major
transportation project, tocomplete both of these projects
at the same time.
It was seriously considered asan add on to this huge project.
There was a whole bunch ofdifferent alignments and
engineering.
You know schematics andscenarios that were drafted up
(19:24):
for it and ultimately it wasexcluded, just given the sheer
costs and undertaking of the BigDig at the time.
But this was a huge kind ofblow to the North-South Rail
connection as a whole for acouple of reasons, but primarily
if you look at a map of Boston,the Big Dig essentially
(19:46):
connects I-93 in a way where itsplits right between north and
south stations.
So that means if you're going togo from south station to north
station in a tunnel, you have togo under or over the Big Dig.
You can't go over the Big Digbecause you've got downtown
Boston dig.
Because you've got downtownBoston, you can go under.
(20:06):
However, it's really trickybecause you need to get the
trains from South Station, theyneed to go down to get under the
big dig and and then they needto come back up again to get to
North Station and those gradesnow that this wasn't done during
the big dig are just barelyfeasible.
There's some good visuals fromthe North-South Rail Link
(20:30):
website that talk about this andit's about a 3% grade down and
then flat for a quick second toget underneath.
Then it's about a 3% grade backup, which doesn't sound like a
lot if you're walking orsomething, but for a train you
can't go much more than thatwithout running into issues.
So it definitely complicatedthings quite a bit not having
this done and thought out whilethe big dig was being undertaken
(20:52):
.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So the big dig was a bust for Rail Connection and
then we move into the 2000s.
So here we are brand newcentury, tons of opportunity out
there.
Romney is now the governor ofMassachusetts and is actually in
favor of transportationspending between the North and
(21:16):
South terminals.
He commissioned a formalfeasibility study, evaluated a
two-track versus four-tracksolution.
They identified portallocations, tunneling, logistics
and costs.
They did all the estimationsand it came out to around $4 to
$8 billion.
Again, he endorsed this inprinciple, but when it actually
(21:37):
came time to fully fund and putthe money there, the political
will just kind of evaporated.
Mitt Romney leaves office andunfortunately the project just
didn't move forward.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
And then the last attempt here in 2016, 2018, the
Massachusetts Department ofTransportation kind of decided
to reevaluate this whole projectagain.
There were some studies thatwere reopened.
You know they were able toreaffirm that, yes, this is
still technically feasible to beable to do.
It's not impossible.
But you know, again, like wesaid, it's definitely more
(22:11):
complicated now than it maybewould have been.
You know, pre-big Dig or any ofthe other.
I don't even know what numberof attempts we're at here now,
but any of the other.
I don't even know what numberof attempts we're at here now,
but any of the five times before.
Um, but uh, you know the theestimated costs at this point
were just going up, as you wouldexpect, as everything has gone
up like crazy in regards toinfrastructure spending in the
(22:33):
united states.
Uh, the estimated costs at thispoint were now somewhere
between 12 and 21 billion.
That's a bit of a wiggle roomthere to play, with Support from
all the right folks that youneeded.
As far as the groups that we'reworking on this sort of thing
Amtrak, regional planning groups, the city.
Unfortunately, though, politicsgets in the way, as it always
(22:55):
does in the United States.
That sounded like a real doomerthing for me to say right there
, but it's been true lately it'sbeen true.
Governor Charlie Baker insteadprioritized expanding the
capacity at South Station,saying that that's more
practical.
It's like okay, yes, sure, youprobably do need capacity
upgrades at these things in time, but that's nowhere close to
(23:17):
the same level of project orproject benefits that you would
get from actually connectingthese two stations together.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, and the interest is still there.
I mean, we're now in the 2020sand quickly approaching the
2030s Don't like to think aboutthat and the current governor
continues to express interest inreconsidering this North-South
rail link.
Current governor continues toexpress interest in
reconsidering this North-Southrail link.
There are plenty of advocatesin the city of Boston who are
citing reasons like climategoals, regional equity and the
(23:52):
federal infrastructure windowthat did exist during the Biden
administration.
That has somewhat closed in theTrump administration.
And then there's also stillfederal support with people like
Representative Seth Moulton,who is a huge advocate for this.
Senator Ed Markey.
All of the interest is stillthere.
It just it needs to get thepolitical will to finally make
it happen.
And that leads us to the lastpart here, which is will it ever
(24:15):
happen?
And the answer is maybe it'stechnically possible.
As you said, lewis, thegeography is very complicated.
Somebody has described it and Idon't have the exact quote, but
it was described as performingopen-heart surgery on a crowded
city, while it's still awake forall of the reasons that Lewis
(24:36):
has already mentioned.
You have the big dig.
That's in the way.
You have a ton of historicarchitecture that you can't
really disrupt.
The subways are also there.
Boston is one of our oldestcities so there is a ton of
stuff that is underground inbetween these two locations and
it's a very, very denseenvironment.
Also, boston famously Port Cityand has really close proximity
(25:00):
to water and the Big Dig.
If anybody else grew upwatching modern marvels and
looking at every episode aboutthe Big Dig, like I did, you
learned all about how waterseeping into the tunnels was
such a huge issue for the BigDig and that is going to
continue to be an issue if theymake this project as well.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Totally and in addition to all of those
constraints, I mean presentlythe Boston commuter rail system
is not electrified.
To have these commuter railsrunning through tunnels at this
length, you can't be runningdiesel trains through there
without dealing with all sortsof different ventilation and
whatnot.
So you would need to be able toelectrify these trains, which
(25:40):
is, you know, it's not justelectr electrify these trains,
which is, you know, it's notjust electrifying that one
section, it's, you know, gettinglocomotives that actually can
be electrified.
It's dealing with catenarywires and whatnot along the
tracks and or doing batterycommuter trains and whatnot.
Andrew talked about that alittle bit in our interview with
him.
There's a lot of folks who areskeptical about that sort of
technology as well.
(26:01):
So you know, it's not just onething, it's a whole bunch of
different things all stacked ontop of each other.
But I would say that whilecomplicated, that doesn't mean
there shouldn't be an attempt todo it and that in this case the
benefits for the city of Bostoncould be immense.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
So the real question is, Bostonians, are you ready
for the second big dig or areyou still a little traumatized
from the first?
Let us know in the comments ifyou support this, if you think
it's feasible, if you think it'sgoing to happen.
Let us know.
We want to hear from you ifyou're local to the area.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Absolutely.
If you want to support the show, the best ways to do so are via
our Patreon.
Buy me a coffee, or you cancheck out our merch store, which
is linked down below.
Also, if you have notsubscribed or liked this video,
please consider doing so.
It helps us out quite a bit.
But without further ado, thankyou all so much for watching and
enjoy the rest of your Transit.
Tangents Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I think,
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