BOSTON: TRANSIT

Unlike many of the cities covered, Boston has retained and modernized much of its legacy rail infrastructure. However, like many of the other cities, Boston followed flawed mid-century planning techniques which ultimately led to the reduction, dismantling, and de-electrification/dieselization of much of the network. 

In general, electrified rail transit was another casualty of the federal government’s concerted effort to create a white, automobile-based suburbia. Whereas local transit systems had provided mobility within the city, the government had plowed its interstates through downtowns and urban neighborhoods in order to provide mobility OUT of the city—and to the racially-restricted suburbs. The freeways—for which the federal government at the time provided a whopping 90% federal funding match—were the literal routes of white flight, connecting with suburbs governed by “racial covenants,” prohibiting “persons of any race other than the Caucasian race” from living there.

By the 40s, when freeway planning was beginning, Boston was already a mature city with a large electric transit network. Boston’s significant existing investments in transit infrastructure* meant that complete abandonment, bustitution, and automobilization—as happened in many cities—was infeasible. Instead, from 1947 (when the city took over the network) until the 2000s, the MBTA steadily shifted the network to a more suburban focus.

In the north, Orange Line service to the redlined, close-in city of Everett (Redlining Grade 4: “Hazardous”)  was replaced with buses when the line was diverted to Malden (Grade 2: “Desirable”). To the south, the Washington Street El (also Orange Line), which served the heart of Black Boston in Roxbury (Grade 4), was demolished. The line was rerouted around Roxbury into land that had been cleared for the construction of a canceled freeway (more on this to come). Across the city, against the protests of residents, streetcar tracks were ripped up and service replaced with buses. Only those lines which absolutely could not be dieselized (the lines which used the downtown tunnel) retained streetcar service, today as the Green Line.

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*Including the Tremont Subway (Green Line), the Washington Street Tunnel (Orange Line), the Cambridge and Dorchester Tunnels (Red Line), and the East Boston Tunnel & Revere Extension (Blue Line).