The T-Terminus Trek Travelog

My friend Matt Herman once asked www.chacha.com, "How long would it take to ride to every terminus station on the Boston subway system?" The answer he received was, "A looooooong time." On Saturday, June 28th, Matt and I endeavored to find out how long a "looooooong" time took. There were a couple of ground rules. Our goal was to reach every terminus station via public transportation. That meant we allowed ourselves to travel between terminus stations that were nearby. We would travel every length of track that was operational – shuttle bus service did not qualify and we would skip lines that had no weekend service. Furthermore, by spending a day traveling to the far reaches of the subway, we would also be able to answer a secondary question: What sort of people live in the different neighborhoods of Boston?

When we started our journey, we immediately, we began to notice trends. Unsurprisingly, the Green line toward Newton was filled with affluent Caucasian families and college students while the Red line towards Mattapan was mostly used by African American families. Orange line towards Oak Grove had many older people, possibly indicating a higher percentage of generational families and long time residences. Other trends emerged. For instance, people who wore sandals typically wore hats. Perhaps the unconscious mind wants one end of the body to be covered at all times? This would be a question some sociology graduate student may wish to answer. By coincidence, most people who wore sandals and carried picnic baskets got off the train at the Revere Beach station. Matt and I did not fit into this social microculture of residents wearing flip-flops and carrying picnic baskets. Similarly, we noticed that people who got on and off at the Airport station usually carried luggage. What a strange culture to carry luggage everywhere you went!

As the train whizzed across the system, we noticed that JetBlue and the State of Vermont had purchased the most advertisement space. Sadly, there was no synergy, as Vermont is not a JetBlue destination nor does JetBlue allow in-flight flyfishing. Residents on the Braintree extension of the Red Line drew the best graffiti. The designs were large with brazen colors. Some included the blending of hues and shades to create stunning shadow effect. The worst graffiti was on the Orange lines. Here, unimaginative outlines were rarely filled in and typically the artists utilized dark earth-tones.

By late evening, we returned to our home base in a PF Chang Bistro and compiled the statistics of the day. We spent the most amount of time on the Red line: 2 hours and 34 minutes going through 61 stations. The least amount of time was on the Silver Line from Boylston St. to Dudley square: 14 minutes for 10 stations. Silver Line to South Boston had the longest wait of 16 minutes. Over the course of the day, I consumed 3 granola bars and 1 bottle of water. (In our defense, we did not plan to go the entire day without eating. We kept saying "Let's take a break after this next leg of our journey.") We saw six baby carriages, one pair of knee-high orange socks, and overheard one conversation of "Would you shoot someone if they robbed your house?" But most importantly, 11 hours and 17 minutes after we started, we had our answer of how long would it take to ride to every terminus station on the Boston subway system: A reeeeeaally looooooong time.