The Green Line shutdown has made me appreciate the journey
The MBTA shutdowns have been rough. My Green Line commute has doubled from 25 minutes to 50 minutes on a good day and tripled on a bad one since the Feb. 20 shutdown of the B, C, and D lines — the third D Line shutdown since November. What was a one-train ride on the D line has turned into a commuter’s triathlon, two subways and a bus.
And yet … it hasn’t all been terrible. In pre-shutdown days, my fellow passengers and I rode silently, plugged into electronics, oblivious to each other. This was not a space to make small talk — or eye contact. The only allowable sounds were the screeching brakes and the incomprehensible messages blasted over the public address system.
But the shutdown changed all that. Suddenly, and somehow, the bubble burst. Thrust from the subway cars to the shuttle buses in Kenmore Square, no one is an island now. To survive, we have had to rely on each other. We are in this together. We are a “we.”
On the first day of the shutdown or, as the T positioned it, the “diversion,” the one person who had looked at the MBTA website became our leader. Like timid kindergarteners on a field trip, we followed him up the station’s stairs, past the waving T greeters in red jackets, up another staircase, and onto the shuttle bus to Copley Station, where we were greeted by more greeters, more stairs, and vague instructions to walk to Back Bay Station if we wanted to catch the Orange Line.
Together, Team Green Line walked and talked — mostly, but not exclusively, about what a mess the T is.
One woman told me about a great Symphony Hall concert she attended. I overheard another group talking about the Patriots. There was convivial chatter, nervous though it was. “Has anyone taken the Orange Line before?” one guy asked.
And the conversations didn’t stop on the first day. One night the man sitting next to me on the shuttle bus spotted my Globe ID and shared his frustrations with his apartment rental company. I advised him to contact Sean P. Murphy, the Globe’s consumer advocacy columnist. While waiting on the Orange Line platform, a Mass General researcher, whom I’d helped navigate her journey to the Red Line a week earlier, approached me, and we talked all the way to Back Bay Station.
Still, the “diversion” weighs on me. One time, I got on the wrong shuttle bus and was stranded in a public transit desert. The long waits in the dark, cold, and rain wear me down. More than once, I’ve looked out my condo window at the dormant T stop — I’m that close — and it felt like the T was taunting me.
But even in those dark moments, there were snatches of joy — like the night when I scored a seat on one of the luxury buses. The driver played Christmas carols as we drove up Commonwealth Avenue, past the holiday lights on the mall, and I was transported to a Hallmark movie. You don’t get that joyful feeling underground.
The shutdown has prompted me to walk to work more often. I windowshop on Newbury Street, stroll through the Public Garden, and I made a friend named Gilbert in Boston Common. Also known as “The Town Crier,” he shouts out news headlines and has a GoFundMe page to help make ends meet. We bonded over journalism. Gilbert makes me smile, and I bring him a meal on Mondays.
I’ll be glad when the Green Line is back on track — supposedly March 8 — but, as I’ve learned, it’s not just about the destination. The journey matters too.