Talk:Transportation in Boston

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Question about the line "There are two major rail stations in Boston: North Station and South Station. There is a third station in Back Bay and a fourth on Rte. 128." Back Bay station is in Boston but Route 128 is not (I think it's in Westwood). Boston has other railroad stations as well. Don't know what the author's intent was... but could use clarifying.

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Has Amtrak begun stopping at North Station since 2000? I don't remember it doing so, but that may well be merely because I always took trains from New York, and trains terminate at South Station (which is closer to NY that N. Sta. is, obviously, unless the stations were named by the same person who decided a thoroughfare that makes a complete circuit should be called "Tremont Street" throughout). --Charles A. L. 19:25, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Amtrak trains from New York still terminate at South Station. North Station is the terminal for Amtrak trains from Maine. I don't know when these started running, but I thought it was before 2000. --AJD 05:42, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, never let it be said I don't admit it when I'm wrong. --Charles A. L. 18:58, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

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Roads POV

The "Roads" section has contained the following text, or something like it, for quite some time:

Roads change names and lose and add lanes seemingly at random, and many drivers are flummoxed by rotaries. Legally, cars already in a rotary have the right of way; that's not the way it always works in reality.

Is there any way to make this bit more NPOV? I mean, "seemingly at random"? Seemingly to whom? And so on. AJD 20:25, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Maybe something like this:

Not all the agencies that maintain road in the Boston area follow Federal standards (specifically the MUTCD) for signage and striping; lanes sometimes disappear from one side of an intersection to the other. In rotaries, the law gives right-of-way to drivers already inside the rotary, but drivers often ignore that. Additionally, street names sometimes change or make turns at intersections, more so than in most U.S. cities.

--SPUI (talk) 22:31, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Subway schedules

I made the changes stamped (00:10, 23 June 2007 140.247.248.176) regarding Boston's subway system having no fixed schedule and would like to respond to the modification stamped (15:55, 23 June 2007 82.71.57.183), which removed that information. The MBTA publishes subway timetable but it does not keep to that schedule. A subway car's schedule to arrive at a specific time at a specific station is merely a fuzzy guess. The stations themselves merely claim that trains probably arrive every fifteen minutes or so. That claim, unfortunately, being often proven wrong.

Contrast this with Tokyo's subway system, where a train scheduled to arrive at a specific time does indeed arrive nearly every time at that exact minute. Those schedules are published by the different operators and appear as electronic signs in each platform of every station. Only the Commuter Rail comes close to that punctuality with on-time performance of about 90%[1].

As such, the original statement was not erroneous at all.

71.192.166.93 08:26, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Weasel word?

How is "Bostonians" a "weasel word"? I'm just confused, because having grown up there, it's just part of the local vocabulary, and known far and wide outside Boston. -J —Preceding comment was added at 01:05, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not. "Some" is the weasel word.--Loodog 00:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Security breaches on international flights

The article contains the following:

Since September 11, 2001 attacks to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, exceptionally strict security has been implemented at all of Boston's airports. Because of this and Boston's location as the closest American port to Europe, it is one of the main destinations for airliners that experience security breaches or disturbances while enroute to the U.S. However, in many cases airplanes are diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia, or other Canadian airports.

The middle sentence of this is rather odd. Why would the fact that Boston's security is particularly strict, or indeed the fact it is the nearest airport to Europe, affect the incidence of security breaches on flights heading to that city. You might expect anybody deliberately intending to breach security to choose to fly to an airport with less strict security, and unintentional breaches are surely random. This statement certainly isn't common sense or intuitive, so I've requested a citation. -- Chris j wood (talk) 14:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you're misunderstanding it. It's not 'Flights whose destination is Boston have more security breaches', but rather 'Flights that experience security breaches are diverted to Boston, regardless of what their original destination was (because Boston is close and has strict security)'. AJD (talk) 15:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I see. That is certainly more understandable. I will rephrase to remove the ambiguity. -- Chris j wood (talk) 15:09, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposed restructure

It strikes me that the current structure of this article is rather awkward. Some sections are called out by mode, but there is a large section on Mass Transit which cuts across modes, and appears to be written on the assumption that Mass Transit = MBTA. This leads to some rather artificial splits (eg. Commuter rail v Intercity rail, even though both operate on the same tracks) and some confusion (eg. the section on water ferry, which says the main article is MBTA boat but then goes on to talk about water taxis that are not MBTA and fails to talk about the longer distance ferries to Provincetown and Salem).

Given that we already have a comprehensive article on Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority that describes the common aspects of the different modes run by the MBTA, I suggest that the Boston transportation article should be restructured along modal lines (eg. Road, Rail, Air, Water). This will bring together common aspects of the same modes irrespective of whether they are operated by MBTA or others, and give an overview of transportation. Obviously the operator will be referenced in the text, but it won't drive the structure.

Before I do this, does anybody have any objections. -- Chris j wood (talk) 12:29, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I've made the changes suggested above. -- Chris j wood (talk) 08:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

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