Boston
The oldest and busiest light rail system in the United States is the MBTA Green Line in Boston. With 235,300 daily ridership on its 25.4 miles (40.9 km) of track, the Green Line is a primary transportation route within downtown, and is patronized by students and workers from close-in suburbs like Brighton and Allston.
The subsurface portion of the line was opened in 1897 to alleviate congestion for street level trolley cars, with numerous lines from the north and south converging via several portals to Park Street Station. By 1964, the transformation to today's system was nearly complete with the elimination of streetcars entering at Lechmere and Boylston; lines into the four remaining portals would be designated B, C, D, and E (the A line to Watertown being abandoned in the late 1960s). Three of today's four lines, although having their own separate path in the medians of their respective roads, still have segments without grade-separated rights-of-way, and consequently wait at traffic lights. The D line, which runs on a former Boston and Albany Railroad right-of-way, is the lone exception.
In 2004, the MBTA removed of the Causeway Street Elevated portion of the line, and replaced it with an underground tunnel, as a part of Big Dig environmental remediation, leaving the Lechmere Viaduct as the only remaining elevated part of the line. Other work includes many station overhauls that will improve handicapped accessibility.
Read more about this topic: Light Rail In The United States
Famous quotes containing the word boston:
“In Boston they ask, “How much does he know?” In New York, “How much is he worth?” In Philadelphia, “Who were his parents?””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Let those talk of poverty and hard times who will in the towns and cities; cannot the emigrant who can pay his fare to New York or Boston pay five dollars more to get here ... and be as rich as he pleases, where land virtually costs nothing, and houses only the labor of building, and he may begin life as Adam did? If he will still remember the distinction of poor and rich, let him bespeak him a narrower house forthwith.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“this planned
Babel of Boston where our money talks”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)