The Greenbush line and visionaries

Well, surprise, surprise. Ridership on the new Greenbush line exceeded expectations.

Massachusetts needs a visionary when it comes to public transportation. Here, it's the same old same old. Commuter trains run fairly constant during rush hour, but if you have to be somewhere during the afternoon, or late at night, you're standing on train platform for a long time. If I miss the 7:15 out of Boston, I wait an hour for the next train. The next train after that comes an hour and forty-five minutes later.

It seems the prevailing attitude is, no one rides the train at that time of day (or night) so we won't run the trains. But I think the answer is, run the trains and people will ride them. Give them a way to get home, and they'll spend more time in Boston, and spend more money in Boston.

Visionaries don't ask people what they want. They tell them. In 1984, if you had asked people what they wanted in a computer, no one would have said, well, I want this thing I can slide around on my desk so I can point at pictures on my computer screen. But that's exactly what Apple and Macintosh did. (No people, the Mac came long before Windows.)

Visionaries lead. No one is leading here in Boston when it comes to transportation. Like so many other things here in Boston, transporation is way behind the curve.