Railnutternews: Boston pg 2
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FROM SAILBOATS TO DIESELS
Four Centuries of Boston Transit
by C. J. Callahan
BOSTON is a city of firsts. At over 350 years of age, it can look back on a colourful and interesting history. It is the site of America' s oldest university (Harvard, founded just six years after Boston in nearby Cambridge), the site of some of the earliest demonstrations of discontent with the British Crown (The "Boston Tea Party") and, of note to railfans everywhere, the site of North America's first "subway."
Transit historians are proud to point out that Boston's history of public transit dates from the year of the city' s foundation, with a ferryboat franchise created in 1630. Harvard owned the first franchise, and used the profits to support the funds of its fledgling college for the next two centuries!
As 19th century landfills turned what was almost a small island into what is now the seventh largest metropolitan region in the US, Boston' s transit needs multiplied. Horse drawn stagecoaches and omnibuses gave way to horse drawn streetcars and steam railways. Multiple horsecar companies vied for downtown fares until they were consolidated in the creation of the West End Street Railway (with the state's blessing) in 1887. Caring for almost eight thousand horses was deemed impractical and a new means of propulsion was sought.
Having tried and rejected steam powered streetcars (talk about frightening the horses!), cable cars and even battery powered electric lines, the WESR finally fixed on Frank Sprague' s successful overhead electric traction system in Richmond Virginia. This worked so well that between 1889 and 1895 the West End Company replaced all but one of its horsecar routes with electric ones. Cars on the last holdout, on Marlborough Street, were sold to New York City in 1900, where municipal law (dating from the Blizzard of 1888) demanded the expense of underground power conduits instead of overhead cantenary. Thus, at the time, it was cheaper to use horsecars on lightly traveled routes in Manhattan.
But the new speedy "trolley" cars soon created a fresh problem, traffic gridlock! The peculiar nature of Boston's geography required most streetcar lines to converge into a single three track line in the heart of the city. Soon, distances which would require no more than a brisk fifteen minute walk were taking the better part of an hour for the hapless riders in the stalled trolleys! An initial proposal to solve this dilemma with an overhead railway or "elevated" (as had been done in New York, Brooklyn and Chicago) was too much for conservative Bostonians, so ironically the city was left with the more radical "European" approach of putting the trolleys underground!
Misgivings about everything from collapsing building foundations to contagious respiratory epidemics notwithstanding, the city' s newly created Boston Elevated Railway (as the name implies they did in fact build "els" later in the suburbs north and south of the city centre) began construction in 1895. A fatal gas main explosion, the reinterment of the remains of colonial settlers and a host of lesser problems plagued the work. Yet in what seems like lightning speed by modern construction timetables, the first leg of the system, one incline with two stations opened to the eager and the curious, with the first suburban streetcar sailing down the ramp just on six a.m. September 1, 1897. The New World had its first true underground transit system.
Boston's rapid transit lines have grown and flourished over the years. Within a year the original system had six stations, by 1914 it had ten. A second underground trolley route (to East Boston) which opened in 1904 produce another first for Boston; the earliest underwater transit tunnel in the country, preceding even New York's Hudson and Manhattan Tubes! An elevated "heavy rail" system opened in 1901, followed by another, in the form of a subway line in 1912. Later the East Boston line was also converted to conventional rapid transit trains and extended north along the route of an abandoned commuter railroad.
Since the 1960's Boston has rebuilt virtually all its transit stations, introduced brand new rolling stock, and rerouted or extended each of its three heavy rail lines. Less happily, it has reduced what were once some twenty-eight traction routes to only five, and all but eliminated what was one of the largest trolley bus systems in the country in favour of more conventional motor vehicles. Boston however remains, of necessity, a city committed to good, inexpensive mass transit. The regional authority which runs the city' s subways, the M.B.T.A., is now in the process of upgrading, rebuilding and expanding the dozen commuter rail lines which connect Boston with eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Many Bostonians can live freely without automobiles, with minimal inconvenience, a rare feat in modern America. The city has lately introduced five water ferries to shoreline suburbs and while less esthetically pleasing and comfortable than the trolleys they replaced, the region does boast service by over 160 bus routes, supplementing the five remaining streetcar lines and the three rapid rail systems. Traction fans as well as advocates of mass transit can look both forward and into the past with interest and pride as Metropolitan Boston enters its fifth century of public transit.
