OWNERSHIP
CONDITIONS
CONTEXT
HISTORY
DESIGN AND SOCIAL ISSUES

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OWNERSHIP:
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)

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CONDITIONS:
The Orange Line is a rapid transit line that runs north from Forest Hills Station in Jamaica Plain through downtown Boston to Oak Grove in Malden, north of Boston. There are nineteen stations on the Orange Line altogether, three of which are in the Heart of the City. Stonybrook and Green Street are neighborhood stations that are used primarily by walkers, while Forest Hills is a regional transportation hub reachable by bus and complemented by more than 200 parking spaces for commuters. Three sets of railroad tracks extend from downtown Boston to Forest Hills. A ride on the Orange Line and connections to the Red, Blue, and Green lines cost one dollar.

The Southwest Corridor Park runs along the southern section of the Orange Line beginning at Forest Hills Station. In its entirety, the Southwest Corridor Park is 4.7 miles in length, with 52 acres of parkland. Twenty-seven of these acres are in the Heart of the City. The parkland offers safe and shady walking and biking paths, recreational opportunities such as tennis, street hockey, and basketball, as well as tot-lots and fountains, passive sitting areas, and community gardens.

Orange Line trains leave Forest Hills Station beginning at 5:16 a.m. On weekdays trains run every six minutes from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Mid-day they run every eight minutes; late evening they run every thirteen minutes until the T closes down just before 12:30 a.m. On weekends trains run from 10 to 14 minutes apart, less frequently on Sundays than on Saturdays. On a daily basis, Stony Brook station is used by 2,500 people, Green Street is used by 3,400 people, and Forest Hills is used by 13,400 people (Access Boston, 2000). Orange Line trains are more crowded and more likely to be late during rush hours when trains are, at times, backed up. The cars are virtually always air conditioned.

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CONTEXT:
Transit connections:
Bus routes that connect at Forest Hills MBTA Station are 21, 31, 32, 34, 34E, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 50, and 51. A line of taxis typically waits along Washington Street at the Forest Hills Station.

The Needham Line Commuter Rail, which runs approximately every 30 minutes Monday through Friday, stops at Forest Hills MBTA Station and goes from Needham through West Roxbury, stopping in Roslindale Village, and Forest Hills Station, and then at Back Bay, ending at North Station. The cost of the Commuter Rail varies depending on the stop.

Greenspace connections: 
-- The Southwest Corridor Park is accessible from all three Orange Line stations in the Heart of the City.

-- Franklin Park is a safe quarter-mile walk from the Green Street station via Green Street/ Glen Road. 

-- The western side of the Forest Hills Station connects with a pedestrian walkway through a wetland area into the Arnold Arboretum. 

-- From the Forest Hills Station, one can cross Hyde Park Avenue and walk southeast to the Forest Hills Cemetery via Tower Street.

-- Jamaica Pond is approximately a one mile walk west from the Green Street Station

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HISTORY:
Elevated Orange Line:
Beginning in 1909, the Elevated Orange Line, known as "the El," ran over Washington Street from Chinatown in downtown Boston to Forest Hills Station in Jamaica Plain. This Orange Line brought large numbers of working class people out of the inner city and into the suburbs for the first time. Construction of the El caused chaos in Jamaica Plain for almost three years, and few residents welcomed it. Even after construction had been completed, the El was a cause of blight in the neighborhood, overshadowing residential and business districts, particularly in Egleston Square.

At the same time, the El offered rapid transit to downtown Boston, and was valued by many along the Washington Street Corridor. In 1987, the southern section of the line was demolished with federal funding and the new Orange Line was completed. The MBTA committed to restoring replacement service by 1994 and served the Washington Street corridor with buses in the meantime. The MBTA was not able to honor this commitment, and in the summer of 2002 opened the Silver Line in northern Roxbury, presenting it to the community as replacement service for the Elevated Orange Line. The Silver Line is an articulated bus in a partially dedicated lane, and many residents feel strongly that the no new bus system could be an adequate replacement for rapid rail.

Southwest Corridor:
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, under the Federal interstate highway program, developed plans for a southwest Boston segment of Interstate I-95. The Elevated Orange Line was to be replaced by an eight-lane highway that would circle Boston's central district, connect with a federally funded interstate, and cut directly through Heart of the City communities. By the late 1960s, a final design for the highway was well underway. The State had acquired the strip of land -- dubbed the Southwest Corridor -- and begun to demolish homes and businesses to clear the way for the interstate.

During this time period, the I-95 plan relocated an estimated 300 businesses and 700 households along the Southwest Corridor. In his 1970 book "Rites of Way," Al Lupo wrote about an elderly couple that was not displaced by plans for I-95 to come through the neighborhood. He writes: "[they had] seen and heard the bulldozers and the earth movers rip up their neighbors' homes and leave a flat dirt wasteland all the way to Number 226. They had watched the machines at work and had seen the vandals rip the plumbing and pipes and all the other vital organs out of the abandoned houses, and finally, they had smelled the stench of arson and had heard the almost nightly wail and clanging of fire engines."

In response to the plans for the highway, a coalition of communities and organizations -- literally thousands of residents -- collaborated to block construction of the new highway. Protest in the Jamaica Plain area was particularly strong. These efforts took place at a time when resistance to the construction of interstate highways in cities was increasing throughout the nation.

In 1969, in response to community opposition, Governor Sargent appointed a task force chaired by Professor Alan Altshuler, then at MIT, to study the planning and decision-making process for the Southwest Corridor. In 1970, after the task force produced a sharply critical interim report, the Governor announced a moratorium on land acquisition and highway planning and construction. The Governor decided to improve the transit, rail, and local street system rather than build the highway, and in 1975 the Southwest Corridor was officially removed from the Federal Interstate Highway System.

Beginning in 1970, the cleared and vacant land along the Southwest Corridor simply languished unused. Sam Bass Warner called the corridor "a wide, unattended scab" through the neighborhoods (Warner, S.B., To Dwell is to Garden, 1987). In Jamaica Plain as a whole, there was a concurrent 17.7% decline in population between 1970 and 1980. The Centre Street business district went into decline. Robert Glassman, a real estate broker with Jamaica Plain Realty, described the period in this way: "The period from 1973 to 1977 was a black hole -- a void. On some streets you couldn't give houses away."

In the mid-1970s, the community garden movement began, in part to fill this void. In 1976, a small group of citizens from community organizations wrote a proposal for a Southwest Corridor Community Farm. The farm drew a wide range of local people to garden in what had become a dangerous urban wasteland. Community members had an opportunity at the farm to create something productive together. After the first year, the farm had a solar heated community greenhouse -- the first in Boston. The garden began to turn a profit and the community garden movement began to spread explosively throughout Boston. By 1987, approximately 125 gardens had been established by communities all over the city (Warner, S.B., To Dwell is to Garden, 1987). 

Meanwhile, plans for a new Orange Line and the Southwest Corridor Park were underway. This was the first time in U.S. history that construction funds allocated for a major expressway had been redirected to a transit project.

Designing the new Orange Line and the Southwest Corridor Park was an extraordinarily complex endeavor due to the involvement of multiple players with often conflicting agendas, ambitious goals, and pressure to achieve a successful outcome. Numerous State and City agencies, as well as a wide variety of community groups collaborated over many years on the project. The initial plan for the park and railways was completed in 1978 after a year and a half of collaboration between MBTA consultants, community groups, and individuals in the neighborhoods.

The cost of the project was approximately $750 million. Ultimately, the Southwest Corridor Park received awards for design, engineering, and landscaping, including an award offered only once every four years to ten federally funded projects. The MBTA, which owned the land during construction, transferred parcels of the Southwest Corridor to appropriate public agencies -- primarily to the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC). 

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DESIGN and SOCIAL ISSUES: 
-- As noted above, many residents do not consider the MBTA Silver Line bus service along the Washington Street Corridor an adequate replacement service for the former Elevated Orange Line. However, use of the bus line since it opened in July 2002 has almost doubled the number of bus users along Washington Street, exceeding the usership hoped for by the MBTA (Doug Hanchett, "The Silver Line rapidly growing." The Boston Herald,  April 22, 2003). 

-- The City of Boston through the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) seeks to encourage transit-oriented development near transit stations. Transit-oriented development refers to centers of housing and commercial life in the vicinity of transit stations that can decrease dependence on the automobile and improve the quality of community life. The three transit stops along the MBTA Orange Line, particularly at Forest Hills, represent opportunities for transit-oriented development. Commercial revitalization has already begun along Hyde Park Avenue near the Forest Hills Station.

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