Boston is a city of transit. The first subway system in the United States opened in Boston under Tremont Street in 1897, and the system has since expanded throughout the city and into a few neighboring municipalities. In 2019, the MBTA, the organization that operates Boston's transit, carried over 152 million riders on its three heavy rail lines, the Orange Line, Red Line, and Blue Line, and over 47 million riders on its two light rail lines, the Green Line and Mattapan Trolley. Collectively, this gives Boston the honor of having the fourth-largest rapid transit system in the country by ridership, yet its network is actually relatively small compared to its peers. The Chicago L, the third-largest rapid transit system, only carried about 10.5% more passengers in 2019 than Boston's combined heavy and light rail lines. Yet, the L has more than 60% more track miles than Boston's rapid transit network. In fact, Boston's network is so dense that its light rail is the most used per mile of any system in the country, and its heavy rail is the most used per mile of any system in the United States outside of New York City.
Boston's Existing Rapid Transit Network
A rapid transit system's size can be small and still be impactful, but Boston's small size results in a major flaw: the system does not cover the entire city, including many dense, heavily populated regions. As shown on the map below, sizeable parts of Charlestown, Allston, Brighton, South Boston, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and the Seaport have no rapid transit within walking distance, with West Roxbury, Roslindale, and Hyde Park having no rapid transit access at all.
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| Map of Boston and its transit lines courtesy of Boston Planning & Development Agency, with yellow circles added to show a half-mile radius around all rapid transit stations, or around a ten-minute walk |
An eagle-eyed reader may note that there is a rail line going between Downtown Boston and Hyde Park through Dorchester and Mattapan not marked on the map with yellow circles. This is the Fairmount Line, and it is one of the MBTA's commuter rail lines that is fully grade-separated. Unlike every other MBTA commuter rail line, the Fairmount Line does not have any stations beyond Boston's boundaries, making it the shortest commuter rail line in the system at just 9.2 miles. Realizing the area's lack of rapid transit, the MBTA started offering some of its most frequent commuter rail services along the corridor in recent years, with weekday schedules having a train depart every 45 minutes in each direction. While this does provide additional transit for neighborhoods along the corridor, 45-minute headways pale in comparison to true rapid transit, where schedules should be frequent enough that a rider does not need to worry about when the next train is coming when needing to use the train. While there is no exact headway that trains must achieve to qualify as rapid transit, the MBTA's Orange Line, which has the medium ridership of the MBTA's heavy rail rapid transit lines, currently has weekday headways of 6-11 minutes.
It is also worth noting that the MBTA operates a single bus rapid transit line that has yet to be mentioned. The Silver Line is a collection of five bus routes marketed as bus rapid transit, but in reality, only three of the five lines actually qualify as bus rapid transit and only for a short segment between South Station and the Silver Line Way in the Seaport via a tunnel and two underground stations. This tunnel and its two stations are the only rapid transit option for the Seaport, which has been redeveloped over the past twenty years into one of Boston's primary business hubs and fastest growing neighborhoods, housing the headquarters of General Electric, Reebok, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and PTC among other companies. This development has been such a success that it has overwhelmed the Silver Line, with an additional service called "SLW" needing to run during peak hours on the bus rapid transit section between South Station and Silver Line Way. Additionally, since only SL2 serves the eastern portion of the Seaport, transit access is so poor that a developer proposed spending $100 million of private money to finance the construction of an aerial gondola to connect the area to South Station in 2018. No matter how many additional busses are added, the Silver Line will never be able to achieve the same capacity as Boston's rail rapid transit routes, as the Silver Line busses can only hold a maximum of about 100 passengers while trains can hold multiple times that amount.
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| MBTA Silver Line network, courtesy of the MBTA |
A Solution North of the Border
To solve both of these problems, Boston can turn to a nearby city north of the border. Not the state's border in New Hampshire, but the nation's border in Canada. In 2015, Montreal found itself in a similar situation, with a commuter rail line traveling primarily in the city's borders through an area not served by the city's Metro and an underutilized tunnel connected to the city's primary rail station. With this, the Réseau express métropolitain, or REM for short, was born. The project, which is scheduled to open in phases between 2023 and 2024, is a fully automated metro system that combines the former Deax-Montagnes commuter rail line and Mont Royal Tunnel with additional spurs to create a 42-mile long system with headways as low as 2.5 minutes through the core. This is all wonderful, but arguably the most impressive aspect is the system's cost. The entire project is only projected to cost $6.9 billion in Canadian dollars, or a little over $5 billion in U.S. dollars, even though Canada is not immune from very expensive infrastructure costs like the United States.
Boston does not need a 42-mile long system, but a scaled-down REM could link Dorchester, Mattapan, and Hyde Park to the Seaport and beyond by converting the Silver Line tunnel and Fairmount Line to a similar rapid transit system. Infrastructure-wise, both key segments are already fully grade-separated, with the Fairmount Line only needing the addition of either catenary or third-rail electrification and the Silver Line tunnel needing both rails and the same electrification system. Connecting the two segments would be an approximately 1.25-mile-long tunnel, which would extend south beyond the current terminus of the Silver Line tunnel at South Station and go under Atlantic Avenue, South Station's approach tracks, Fort Point Channel, and the current Dorchester Branch alignment through the MBTA's Cabot Yard and Amtrak's Southampton Yard before rising to the surface prior to the line's existing rail bridge across the Southeast Expressway.
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| The existing Silver Line tunnel, in silver, and Fairmount Line, in purple, connected by the proposed tunnel, in brown, with all existing stations shown in blue, courtesy of Google Maps |
All existing stations on both segments will need to be renovated to accommodate a new type of train. Additionally, given the wide spacing between both Blue Hills Avenue and Fairmount stations and Uphams Corner and Four Corners/Geneva stations on the Fairmount Line, new infill stations can be built at River Street and Quincy Street, respectively.
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| Fairmount Line segment, in purple, with renovated existing stations, in blue, and new infill stations, in green, courtesy of Google Maps |
On the other end of the line, the existing Silver Line tunnel can be extended approximately 1.1 miles to the Boston Design Center, effectively replacing SL2's current route, before going under Reserved Channel and into the heart of South Boston and City Point, which is currently another rapid transit desert. With this extension, the remaining two Silver Line routes utilizing the current tunnel, SL1 and SL3, would instead terminate at World Trade Center, where existing bus bays can accommodate passengers wishing to transfer to the new REM-like service.
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| The existing Silver Line tunnel, in silver, with the extended tunnel to South Boston, in yellow, with existing stations, in blue, and proposed extension stations, in green, courtesy of Google Maps |
In total, Boston's REM will extend over 11 miles, connecting the rapid transit deserts of Hyde Park, Dorchester, Mattapan, and South Boston to the historic economic center of the city at South Station and the booming business hub of the region in the Seaport. At South Station, riders will be able to connect to the Red Line, commuter rail services, and Amtrak via the existing station complex, while commuter rail connections will also be available at Readville. These connections to the rest of the MBTA network are critical for people along the corridor to be able to live a car-free or car-lite lifestyle. According to the Boston Planning and Development Agency, 31% of Dorchester households, 30% of South Boston households, 27% of Mattapan households, and 19% of Hyde Park households are already without a car, and the addition of Boston's REM will surely bolster these percentages to match the approximately 50% of households without a car in neighborhoods of the city that currently have rapid transit, such as South End and Mission Hill.
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The MBTA's Pushback
Without having ever discussed this plan with a single MBTA official, it can already be determined what one of their biggest, if not their absolute biggest, concerns will be: preserving access to the commuter rail's Readville Yard 2. Currently, the MBTA's South Station commuter rail operations utilize four layover yards to store their trains midday while not in use: Readville Yard 2, South Side Service and Inspection Facility, Amtrak's Front Yard, and Amtrak's Southampton Yard. While the latter three yards are within a 1-2 mile radius of South Station, Readville Yard 2 is about 9 miles away and requires trains to traverse the Fairmount Line. Commuter rail operations are not compatible with the metro-style service proposed under Boston's REM, so the commuter would effectively be blocked out of this space.
This is definitely problematic at first glance, but the problem can be solved in two ways. First, the MBTA can run more commuter rail trains midday. In the current commuter rail system, layover yards are needed in Boston because schedules call for numerous city-bound trains in the morning hours and suburb-bound trains in the evening hours, meaning they need a place to sit during midday. However, the MBTA has already committed to reorienting as a regional rail rather than a commuter rail, meaning trains and schedules will be consistent throughout the day in both directions. This means layover facilities will not have as much use for midday storage and instead be for overnight storage, which can take place at the existing MBTA layover facilities at the suburban termini of commuter rail lines. However, the MBTA's Readville Yard 2 also has an equipment shop and other facilities, which leads directly to the second solution: Build a new commuter rail yard in the suburbs where land is cheap. Many European rail systems realized long ago that land is cheaper farther away from the city center, so that is where many systems chose to construct their rail maintenance facilities. The United States has been slow to learn this lesson, but the MBTA can follow this proven international model by constructing a new equipment shop and maintenance facility to replace Readville Yard 2 outside of Boston's city limits. The commuter rail's South Side Service and Inspection Facility is also not going to be touched, so midday maintenance can still be performed in Boston if needed, and the existing Readville Yard 2 is the perfect location to construct the vehicle maintenance and storage facility for Boston REM's.
The Path from Idea to Reality
The MBTA and state legislature have already shown a willingness to fund economical transit projects and avoid those whose costs are too high, which was demonstrated by the recently completed Green Line Extension that was only approved after shedding approximately $1 billion in costs. Cost-saving measures pioneered by the REM, such as reutilizing existing infrastructure, using fully automated trains, and building simpler stations, can be applied to make the project more appealing to both politicians and the public. However, what may be the most important part is that the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, or CDQM, which is the institutional investor behind the REM, has expressed interest in exporting the REM business model elsewhere.
There has not been a better time to build transit in Boston in recent memory. The mayor rides the MBTA to work every day, the governor-elect has prominently discussed her desire to invest in public transit, and the MBTA recently opened its first rapid transit expansion since the 1980s with the Green Line Extension. The time is now for the MBTA, the City of Boston, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to court the CDQM to build a REM-like system along the Fairmount Line/Silver Line corridor.
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