Thursday, May 28, 2009
Ridin' the (Light) Rails
A couple of weeks ago I had to be in downtown Boston on a Saturday. The easiest thing to do probably would have been to drive and take a chance of finding a place to park, but that seemed very un-green. After all, we’ve got a perfectly good public transportation system – well, OK, an adequate one, if you overlook the occasional rear-end crash.
So I decided to make an expedition of it, by taking one of above-ground light rail lines, over whose track I drive virtually every day on my way to work. When I’ve crossed the Green Line tracks as they go through a stretch of woods about halfway between home and work, I’ve often thought how incongruously railroad-like the whole thing looks. There’s a station that I pass when I come home a different way that looks like a small train station, a rural limited-only stop on a long line of straight track.
The trip was delightful, if lacking in the pleasant duration of inter-city rail travel. The cars rocked slightly side to side in a very train like manner. But what truly astonished me was my complete disorientation when I approached, on the below street level tracks, locations
that I know perfectly well at grade level, from a car. I was literally at the same location, but it was a Newton Highlands I had never been in. What houses are these whose backs I am looking at? Where is the road? In what foreign land am I traveling?
In a variant of this, there are certain multi-road intersections which I can only experience from one approach direction. That is, when I approach them from one direction, I experience the geography in such a way that I cannot imagine how to incorporate in this location the geography I experience when coming from another direction.
And I was never very good at those intelligence/aptitude test questions where you are supposed to identify which of four or five shapes is the test shape rotated.
So I decided to make an expedition of it, by taking one of above-ground light rail lines, over whose track I drive virtually every day on my way to work. When I’ve crossed the Green Line tracks as they go through a stretch of woods about halfway between home and work, I’ve often thought how incongruously railroad-like the whole thing looks. There’s a station that I pass when I come home a different way that looks like a small train station, a rural limited-only stop on a long line of straight track.
The trip was delightful, if lacking in the pleasant duration of inter-city rail travel. The cars rocked slightly side to side in a very train like manner. But what truly astonished me was my complete disorientation when I approached, on the below street level tracks, locations
that I know perfectly well at grade level, from a car. I was literally at the same location, but it was a Newton Highlands I had never been in. What houses are these whose backs I am looking at? Where is the road? In what foreign land am I traveling?In a variant of this, there are certain multi-road intersections which I can only experience from one approach direction. That is, when I approach them from one direction, I experience the geography in such a way that I cannot imagine how to incorporate in this location the geography I experience when coming from another direction.
And I was never very good at those intelligence/aptitude test questions where you are supposed to identify which of four or five shapes is the test shape rotated.
But what a cheap way to be amused, if each location has multiple different experiences!
