[BBLISA] Kind of moving to Boston

[Carl Alexander]

> ....  Hopefully I 
> can be on a decent transit line and not have to worry about the bad days, 
> though -- I've done hour-long public transit commutes before, and they 
> were still preferable to driving (that was in Portland, OR, which 
> actually doesn't have bad traffic).

I'm a big fan of public transit, and have fist-hand experience
with it in a dozen or so cities, including both Boston and
Portland.  To a first approximation, there is no such thing as
a "decent transit line" in Boston.  The bus drivers are rude,
sometimes endanger their passengers, and simply disregard their
schedules.  (I was a part-time bus driver in college and a member
of the same union as Boston's drivers.  Pretty much every time I
ride a bus here I feel the same sort of professional embarassment
I might feel if I walked into someone's network room and found
a hundred or so desktop PCs stacked haphazardly on top of one-
another and connected by a pile of spaghetti.)  The subways are
better run than the busses, but are noisy, prone to lurching, and
too infrequent.  The commuter rail lines, which are reasonably
well operated on (mostly) well-maintained track, nevertheless come
nowhere near the standards of quiet, smooth running, and
cleanliness of Portland's Max, and run on very limited schedules.
You can get by without a car in Boston if you work downtown or if
you live within walking distance of work; otherwise it is very 
difficult.  I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for being able to
get by without one.  Your best bet is to figure out what transit
goes within walking distance of work (bearing in mind that 
winter weather can make walking beside the road untenable), and
track those back to see if you can end up somewhere reasonable.
But again, I wouldn't bet on it.

Carl Alexander                                            KD7GUR
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