I wrote the last time about limits and why I thought it was the most important idea I learned in school. I’m following up today with a basic application to everyone’s favorite punching bag, the MBTA.
I originally thought about limits when I made a summer trip to Revere Beach. This meant a rare trip on the Blue Line. The trip was mostly uneventful. One thing I learned is that like it is for most of the system, the names of the Blue Line stops accurately reflect their immediate surroundings. Aquarium is located at the aquarium, Maverick is in Maverick Square, and Airport connects you to Logan via a regular shuttle bus. The lone exception is at the end of the line. Wonderland, it turns out, is the best station for Revere Beach even though the previous station is suggestively named… Revere Beach.
Huh.
The only other station I can think of with this odd feature is Fenway on the D branch of the Green Line. The name implies that it is the best station for the famous ballpark. This is not the case. The honor belongs to Kenmore, one stop closer to the city (and accessible by the B and C lines). At least the name 'Fenway' makes no specific promise about the stadium (Fenway is also the name of the neighborhood). I imagine many first-time riders have shown up in the second inning after confusing themselves on the way to the game and having to walk an extra five minutes.
The roundabout point here is that at the moment the T has a lot of potential improvements. They have so many public problems that they are, as some of the UK football pundits like to say, ‘spoiled for choice’. There’s so much the T could do that it seems like it could do anything. And it’s doing a lot – buying new subway cars and buses, repainting and repairing old stations, adding staff and information at stations to help riders. And yes, they could even rename the stations because, you know, that might make a little sense. Each of these changes, real or hypothetical, makes the T a better system.
My advice, though, is to focus a little more on future impact. Draw a lesson from limits – the most power idea expands our horizons. The best thing the T can do is increase the number of potential riders. The most surprising thing about going to Revere Beach by going to Wonderland wasn’t about the names of the stations – it was that the station opened in 1954. Sixty-plus years later and that's as far as we've gone. Is Lynn the end of the world? The T is moving in the right direction in terms of expansions but, as always, moving slowly (we’ve been talking about the ongoing Green Line extensions for almost two decades). It just needs to focus a little more and get expanded or reliable service to as much of the area as possible. A city interconnected by reliable mass transit is always stronger than one defined by varying levels of access. And linking the city to its surrounding areas via consistent service will allow Boston to retain its somewhat inexplicable status as a global city – a fact the T played no small role in establishing over the past few decades.
The rest of the stuff the T is working on are just details. These are easy enough to fix later when everyone is on board. Details don’t determine survival, significance, or relevance. The problem the T has at the moment isn’t related to details, it’s related to how casually they cut existing service and how slowly they expand new service. The T is like an ice cream shop that won’t introduce new flavors and regularly runs out of Rocky Road. The only product the T offers is transportation service! If it wants to reach its potential, it first needs to believe in it, and then work to expand it. Each day that passes without a renewed commitment to expanding service shrinks its limits. Each day, the T invites competitors to catch up. Someday, these competitors will pass by the T, and the world will pass by Boston.
