When was the "A" Watertown line closed for good

Why can't the parking for Centre Street businesses just be displaced onto the small cross streets?

Ron Newman wrote:Why can't the parking for Centre Street businesses just be displaced onto the small cross streets?

There already are plenty of people who park on the cross streets!

FatNoah wrote:Let's face it, for whatever reason, a bus in any form has a bad stigma to many people who will gladly ride the Green Line.

I have to disagree here on a few points. First of all, how much better would the service really be? We are talking about a route which involves a long street-running stretch from Jamaica Plain to Brigham Circle, as opposed to the reservations of Comm. Ave. and Beacon St. I rode PCC's on the E route many times - it was always a slow ride, and anyone who thinks that a restored Arborway route with modern LRV's will speed riders along is sadly mistaken. If light rail returned, I would expect to see a spike in ridership initially, but a later drop-off when riders learned that the ride really wasn't faster than the bus.

My second point is the perception of buses vs. light rail. While there will always be a subset of riders who prefer light-rail to buses, I believe that people respond much more favorably to good transit service. While the Silver Line Washington St. service has its faults, it cannot be argued that the current service is far better than the route 49 service it replaced and ridership has increased significantly as a result.

If the Arborway trolley advocates really want to improve Jamaica Plain, they need to focus on two areas regardless of whether that service is bus or light rail - getting the MBTA to enforce operational discipline in operating the line, and getting the city of Boston to do their job and enforce traffic regulations.

Jim

It would be better because it would have the right-of-way over all car traffic, and it would provide a one-seat ride to downtown, instead of requiring a transfer at Heath or Copley,

The last trip of the Arborway route was well documented.
Does anyone actually remember the final tripover the Watertown line?
Was it an official occasion?
Did people know that it was going to be closed for good?

When was the final shot of it in active service take. Unlike the Arborway line which in its final days was distinctive in having PCCs while the other lines had LRVs, all lines had PCCs at this point. So there was no way of it being obvious that closure was imminent.
Was service as frequent as with the other lines?

Ron Newman wrote:It would be better because it would have the right-of-way over all car traffic

Is that new? I know that cars are prohibited from passing streetcars that are stopped to load passengers, but otherwise I thought that a light-rail vehicle has no special priority when operating along street-running rails.

If you are referring to new traffic laws giving light rail vehicles priority in certain situations, the same can be done for buses - in fact, I believe Toronto recently passed a regulation prohibiting motorists from passing a bus that is signaling to pull out of a stop. Doing that in Boston and giving buses on busy routes signal priority would certainly help improve service.

and it would provide a one-seat ride to downtown, instead of requiring a transfer at Heath or Copley,

I haven't seen the numbers, but I've been told that a single-seat ride to downtown Boston is less important now than it used to be, and that a significant portion of route 39 ridership travels to the Longwood medical area and the colleges located along Huntington Ave.

JD

It would be better because it would have the right-of-way over all car traffic, and it would provide a one-seat ride to downtown, instead of requiring a transfer at Heath or Copley,

As I posted in another thread, I never traveled or did any shopping of any sort of with South Huntington businesses, It was more convenient for me to catch an inbound trolley to get to were I needed than to wait for the bus.

Case it point, I found it easier to take the trolley from Mission Hill to Arlington, transfer over to a 'C' train and ride out to Brookline to ship at Trader Joe's, than to wait around for the 66 bus to take me down Harvard Ave.

I wasn't even a rail fan then, but it was the convenience and comfort of using the trolleys to get around that won me over to railfanning.

scoopernicus_in_Maine wrote:As I posted in another thread, I never traveled or did any shopping of any sort of with South Huntington businesses, It was more convenient for me to catch an inbound trolley to get to were I needed than to wait for the bus.

Case it point, I found it easier to take the trolley from Mission Hill to Arlington, transfer over to a 'C' train and ride out to Brookline to ship at Trader Joe's, than to wait around for the 66 bus to take me down Harvard Ave.

I wasn't even a rail fan then, but it was the convenience and comfort of using the trolleys to get around that won me over to railfanning.

Well, the 66 bus is one of the worst routes in Boston, so that's a pretty poor example.

If a bus service is well-run, passengers will use it instead of going way out of their way to use an all-rail routing. New York City's M15 bus carries between 65,000 and 70,000 riders a day - that is higher than the Blue Line.

JD

Well, the 66 bus is one of the worst routes in Boston, so that's a pretty poor example.

Well it certainly soured my attitudes toward buses.

. New York City's M15 bus carries between 65,000 and 70,000 riders a day - that is higher than the Blue Line.

New York City has nearly 12 times the population of Boston, and wide, straight avenues, so that's not the best example either.

(since postings cannot denote nuance very well, I want to emphasize that the post is meant in the spirit of friendly, bantering debate, unfortunately, I realize I'm also badly off topic)

scoopernicus_in_Maine wrote:(since postings cannot denote nuance very well, I want to emphasize that the post is meant in the spirit of friendly, bantering debate, unfortunately, I realize I'm also badly off topic)

Mine too.

tristanh1 wrote:Does anyone actually remember the final tripover the Watertown line?
Was it an official occasion?
Did people know that it was going to be closed for good?

At the time, the bustitution was supposed to be temporary, so while some people correctly suspected that trolleys would never come back, the last run wasn't officially the end of Watertown rail service. I know that some fans rode the final revenue trip, but some of us skipped it because we believed the MBTA that the buses were temporary. There were photos of the last trip published at the time in the BSRA's "Rollsign".

Was service as frequent as with the other lines?

Pretty much. You didn't have all of the current express bus routes to Newton Corner and Watertown in the late 1960s.