Bus depot for City Point?

It really happened.

There was Silver Line service to City Point briefly, but residents more concerned with their God Given Right to Double Parking™ complained and had it rerouted away from the major passenger areas to the point it was useless and canceled.

There used to be a SL3 line that went to City Point. It was discontinued.

It was the what....SL3 line? Yes, residents lost their shit over the possibility of double parking being enforced, so it was taken out of service.

Incidentally, enforcing parking would alleviate much of the problem currently hindering bus traffic, but hey it's Southie.

The Silver Line did have a line to City Point, which is no more than an open lot at the top of the hill on East First St.

While it was physically possible to get the longer bus in there, the hill proved to be an issue for the Silver Line buses itself. On the surface they operate on diesel but that motor is producing electricity, not a direct connection to the drive axle like a conventional truck or auto. They run much like a hybrid auto. However, the design does not produce enough electrical current to allow the buses to do that hill efficiently, (an unforeseen problem), so the Silver line buses had to strain to get there. In the end that route was discontinued during one of the MBTA's reorganizations of schedules with a claim that other buses already served the end points and streets in the middle (which they did for the most part). The line also had low ridership.

The longer articulated buses only increase passengers per mile served. It increases the MBTA's "look good on paper" statistics. Whether they move more people better, is arguable. They do however pose a number of challenges.

For example, it is common knowledge that Rt 39, which uses articulated buses will be served by a regular shorter bus during severe winter weather due to the risk of traction problems and risk of the bus jack-knifing on snowy roadways. The MBTA usually only does this for a couple of days till the roads are sufficiently cleared of snow to eliminate such risk. Even then, roads that have high banks at corners (piled up snow and parked cars) will present these buses from making this ancient city's street corners, and so inspectors will ply the route to make the decision on whether to use the longer buses or not. The extra-long buses are also taken out of service after a certain hour at night as well and the route runs with standard buses.

Similar buses are used on Rt 28 (Ruggles-Mattapan), and occasionally a couple have been seen on Rt 16 during peak service hours. However the special Rt 16 usage skips the South Bay Shopping Center and runs Boston Street to Uphams Corner because the extra-long buses cannot make the acute turns to get in and out of the parking lot there.

The Silver Line buses also have their own garage for service and storage yard on Southampton street as they have specific needs, and no other bus repair facility can handle them. As part of developing the Silver line and any use of articulated buses, they also had to factor a place to repair and store them.

So in summary, the longer buses are not necessarily the answer. They do the same job in a slightly different manner, and arguably not as well as a shorter bus. In fact anyone that uses the Silver line, even occasionally, will tell you it is painfully slow especially in the tubes underground.

As explained to me once by a rail guy once (right or wrong)...

A station is a place where a form of transportation stops and usually has some kind of a structure to accommodate and support that as well as parking. Most fo the commuter rail access points are "stations."

A depot is a station that may have additional modes of transportation or additional lines stopping there. Other commerce may also take place. In theory, though not called that, Anderson Regional Transportation Center (Anderson RTC) is a depot.

A terminal is essentially the end of the line where transportation of some mode ends. It may or may not connect with other modes of transportation. So both North Station and South Station are actually terminals.

The term "stop" as in "bus stop" is used mostly if not exclusively for surface transportation.

It would be cheaper and easier to reopen the closed tunnel and portal from Boylston Station to Eliot Norton Park, knock down the derelict Church of All Nations, and run tracks over the Broadway Bridge into South Boston. Or alternatively run a viaduct over the pike from the Pleasant Street portal which could connect into the existing South Station bus tunnel from the bus terminal side somehow.

Interestingly the original SL4 was planned to go Andrew to South Station via the waterfront. What that would mean is that anyone coming from the south side into the waterfront area could have taken an SL bus from Andrew inbound to south station. This way you can essentially split southern commuters (SL to Andrew) from northern commuters (SL to SS) and have full utilization of the SL in both directions.

Of course southie residents would never agree to articulated buses on the streets and certainly not to installing wires overhead.

Ari, sorry to kill your idea, which is a good one, Massport has taken most of that land to build a dedicated freight corridor to Summer St. It is currently under construction. The T now has virtually no open land on E. 1st St.

Listen, I don't disagree with you - leaving a little earlier helps. I don't think anyone is expecting to walk out their door at 8:45 and get to work on time. In fact, one could argue, we could all just walk, which I do, as long as it isn't pouring. I've been walking for the last 2 years since the big snow storm, which further compounded our transportation issues.

I think we take issue with paying for a monthly service that can sometimes take an hour - between getting on a bus (many pass by full) and then driving the 3 miles to downtown. L Street is also an added problem, now backing up because of the freight corridor construction. We can walk to work faster than that. The point is that we've been complaining about it for years and it's only getting worse.

You can't continue to build and simultaneous ignore parking and transportation issues - it's now at a breaking point. I'm not anti-development, but developers are building condos and the city takes their money for the permits and approvals but then doesn't support our basic infrastructure needs.

what if 'these commuters' have family obligations such as kids that need to be sent off to school at specific times of day? God forbid you get to take your kids to school before work!

This yuppie bought 11 years ago - it was a "for sale by owner" no realtor tried to sell me a damn thing. The owner was from Southie - she told me it was a great neighborhood. We didn't take a tour of the bus stops or talk about how things might change, and for the most part - I generally tend to think she was telling the truth. I love living here.

Development is an issue, but not because "yuppies" are moving it, it's because we can't support ANY new residents. No place for cars, no room on buses -- there are zero alternatives except to walk, which is currently my alternative, but I am healthy and mobile - that's not the case for everyone.

Tell all the nana's in town that they are fools when they try to get on the bus to get to an appt. They should have known better.

Seriously, dude. Your anger is directed at the wrong people.