Boston Needs Buses, Not Gondolas

The Boston Seaport neighborhood should get more transit, but rather than a new gondola service, some argue the area would be better served by buses. "Instead of running cables over Summer Street, we should be running buses on it, in their own lane. Running the Silver Line underground and bus rapid transit above would essentially double the number of transit seats serving the Seaport at a time when traffic is threatening to choke the neighborhood before it gets off the ground," Ari Ofsevit and Eitan Kensky argue in CommonWealth Magazine. Besides a cost savings over a gondola, extending the Silver Line could leverage existing transit resources so trips that would previously have required a transfer could now become a straight shot.

"If we’re willing to make a bigger investment, we should convert the existing underground Silver Line into an extension of the Green Line, by extending the Green Line from a point near Boylston Station to South Station," Ofsevit and Kensky write. If Boston were to "Turn the Silver Line Green," as the authors suggest, the city would need to dig an additional tunnel to extend the track but, if the city were willing to make that investment it would add capacity to the crowded Silver Line and bring more people to Seaport.