Hey, there! Log in / Register
O'Bryant student who lives in East Boston tries out the commute to the school's proposed new location in West Roxbury
By adamg on Fri, 07/07/2023 - 9:06am
Would it surprise you it did not go well? Benny Balderson left home at 9 a.m., reports the round trip to and from the former West Roxbury Education Complex on VFW Parkway, where the city wants to move the O'Bryant, took 4 1/2 hours.
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Reasonable solution
There is a reasonable solution to this, which in a country with better city planning would have been propose before building a giant high school on the far edge of town in the first place, which is to extend the orange line along the Needham line.
OLX Needs to Happen
The city is officially in favor of an Orange Line extension to Roslindale Square, but with this planned O'Briant move, not only must we start to think larger about an OLX, but also get very serious about advocacy. The T won't just do it because it's an obviously good idea to anybody who spends 30 seconds thinking about it.
They'll get right on that
GLX only took what, 30 years from when it was first seriously proposed?
This 8th grade student will be a tenured professor when OLX opens if they start now.
More like
His grandkids will be in high school in Florida by then.
Florida?
Grandkids?
I hate to break it to you, but ... there will be a lot less habitable Florida by then.
Not really
Even the most pessimistic scenario for sea level rise from the IPCC has global sea level rise under 1 meter in 2100, which is when his great-grandkids would be going to high school. 1 meter of sea level rise is bad for the Everglades but there's not much impact to the inhabited areas of Florida apart from the homes of the wealthy on the barrier islands. You can celebrate the probability that Mar-a-Lago will probably be underwater.
And in any event, all your hand-wringing will do nothing as long as the global trajectory of climate policy is to allow developing nations (or nations claiming to be "developing") to continue to burn fossil fuels at an ever-increasing pace. China is still building coal power plants -- to charge their EVs, I suppose.
So
The insurers are pulling out over ... nothing?
Sure.
Sea level rise is happening, but there are a zillion other climate problems plaguing Florida that will make it far less habitable before it actually drowns.
Not in my lifetime
West Roxbury is insular by design... original plans to build the Orange Line to Needham and Dedham scuttled in the last century by residents who feared it would make it easier for the "bad" people to come here. The current city council and mayor may support such a plan, but I'd bet it would be just as divisive (and fought along much the same lines) as the road diet, and that support would ebb and flow as the two sides duke it out.
I would think it's pretty clear there's a connection between the traffic issues on Centre and the lack of real public transportation (I mean, the tracks run nearly parallel to Centre and Spring, don't they?) around here. Look, the Orange Line (and the whole T subway system) is hardly world class at this point, but it would be far better than the options we have now.
And how long did I take for the third harbor tunnel??
n/t
So many obstacles
Lots of desire fo rthis but you would need to trade off an Orange Line for the commuter rail. You cannot have both. Transit and commuter cannot use the same tracks by federal law. The road bed may not be wide enough in some places to accommodate 2 tracks. The standards changed since the steam era. Some bridges (if not all) would have to be replaced. DC power used by the Orange Line fades after so many miles so you need a place fo ra high-voltage tap to inject additional DC power.
You also need a new bridge over Rt 95/128.
The Ol would likely end at Needham Junction. Beyond that the single track to the end of the line has buildings that back right up to it which would force a 2-track line to take property by eminent domain.
You'd be better off with shorter trainsets and more-frequent service. That was on the MBTA's drawing board for Fairmount and other locations but they were forced to take their retired fleet out of mothballs to supplement what is needed now. This would be the only way to add service and keep the commuter rail at the same time.
Great ideas but federal laws and regulations limit what will be allowed.
Yes there is even a DPW
Yes there is even a DPW facility right at the entrance of millennium park they could repurpose as a station! Its all single track through west roxbury though
Only 99% single track
There's actually a siding that turns the Needham Line into a two-track railroad right near the high school, if only for, what, a quarter mile? They use it to hold a train going one way while a train going the other way passes through.
I know, picky, picky. The new train bridge over Robert Street in Roslindale Square was designed to allow for the addition of a second track, so at least somebody at the T is thinking about the future.
The current number of tracks doesn't matter
All that matters is that the ROW is wide enough for 2 tracks, which it is all the way.
Plenty of room
The ROW used to be double tracked and hasn’t been encroached there is room for two tracks. This is a layup. That the T/commonwealth hasn’t moved on it yet is an indictment of both.
The ROW
Is wide enough for two tracks the entire way to Needham.
Or make the Needham Line not
Or make the Needham Line not suck. There's no reason why a Commuter Rail line has to be a big stinking behemoth running once an hour with one car open. Just buy some of these and run them every 12 minutes. All the benefits of an OLX at a fraction of the cost.
there are yellow buses
When Wrox HS was open there were school buses. I know there were several school buses at Ashmont Station. I believe that there were also buses that picked up in Maverick Sq.
High schoolers don't get
High schoolers don't get yellow busses unless they're on an IEP or sometimes the school runs them for activities. Even still going from Eastie to Ashmont and then on a bus ride through the semi-suburbs is a haulllll.
Mostly true
They do have yellow buses where the commute is prohibitively long on the T but there's typically only one per area that is super early and crowded and inconvenient in general.
The T bus
There were plenty of teenagers taking the T to that school when it was open and the 36 bus runs more frequently during rush hour. It's out of the way but not as bad as they made it by leaving later.
Most of the previous students were getting off at the Baker and Spring St. Dunkin' and probably just walking the rest of the way down Gardner St. to the Parkway.
Close
There were two cut throughs. One in a dirt ally way across from baker street market where kids would enter in the back of the school property via the graveyard. Or across from CM, there was a staircase that took you to the office park next to savers.
Paths and Yellow Buses
In the past the school buses only ran from specified hubs such as Cleary Sq. amd Forest Hills to name 2. Many students did not ride those buses due to periodic trouble. For many getting to the hubs to get the transport was harder than just taking the T there and walking almost a mile at some times of the day.
Add to this that the MBTA upcoming bus plan for the 36 bus will see it skip Millennium Park and detour to the Dedham Mall, so an MBTA bus is no longer a solution.
So this little gem of an idea has a lot of flaws.
Also in the ensuing years since the building as closed, a lot of the short cuts the kids used are also gone or fenced off. Oh yeah, the 37 bus a lot of them took to us ea short cut down a hilly path is also going away with the "better" bus plan if no one knew. The 37 goes away, and the 52 to Watertown will move to LaGrange street to pick up that buses former stops between Centre St and Baker & Vermont.
So no MBTA for you kids.
The 36 bus?!?!
LOLOLOLOLOLOL…. (Gasp)
LOLOLOLOLOLOLLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!
Congrats to this kid on his
Congrats to this kid on his journalistic instincts. BPS is going to say 'oh we'll run shuttles' and 'they can take blue bikes down the 100% safe and bike friendly centre street' and 'the tooth fairy will appear and magically fix the T before the school opens' but most people understand that even if a specific bus is set up, it will be extremely limited and likely to be cut at the first opportunity.
The T also said they were not going to run the bus to Millennium anymore with all the bus network changes so walking to/from the VA is going to be dujour. That one house across the street (where the ingoing stop is) that put up all the signs to not sit on their fence or throw trash in their yard is about to have a bad time if all the teenagers are headed over there to hitch a ride.
If there was a commitment to extending the orange line down the Needham tracks and including an infill station somewhere in the park area, this would be one thing (although that's still a trek from Eastie.). But as-is it's a joke.
Good for him
Although I think the plan will be for him to just go to Boston Latin (or Latin Academy if he wants).
Also did he not get on that Orange Line train because there were no seats?
" did he not get on that Orange Line train"?
Answer is in the article.
Transfer to BLS or BLA not likely
If he plans to transfer to either of the other exam schools, he can only do it as a rising 9th grader, so he'll need to make that decision soon.
Transfer means losing education
O'Bryant provides different educational options than the Latin schools - more STEM-focused. At a college level that would be like being forced to transfer from MIT to Wellesley - both excellent schools, but very different educations.
You realize
MIT and Wellesley offer cross registration...maybe MIT and WIT is what you seek?
Ah, I get it
A high school for "anyone in the city" that just happens to be inconvenient to a substantial percentage of the city.
There is a word for that ...
I'm a bit misty-eyed ...
Poor thing didn't get a seat on the Orange line until the Tufts stop ...
Well done, Benny
No need to just believe what people tell you - better to find it out for yourself.
A week ago I took a Jet Blue
A week ago I took a Jet Blue flight from Milwaukee to Logan in 1:45 -less time than this student spent traveling to school one way.
As expected nowadays, the remaining
6 miles (as the crows fly) from Logan to my house by T took nearly as long.
Benny and the Jets...
Does have a nice ring to it
Do you live at the airport?
I mean, doubling this kid’s commute may be a bad choice, but surely it took you more than 2 hours from leaving your house to your arrival in Milwaukee.
The decision was made by
The decision was made by college-educated adults with far greater experience of publicity rides on the Orange Line.
College-educated adults also
College-educated adults also started an unwinnable war in Iraq and decided to pursue urban warfare in Fallujah against the recommendation of the troops (some of them not college educated *gasp*) on the ground. So please step off your snobby high horse.
Learn to read sarcasm
You completely missed that Rwgfy was sneering at the folks who made the deicsion. Also, not for nothing, but a lot of college educated folks were strongly opposed to a war in Iraq, most likely including the current leadership in Boston and at BPS. We aren't some monolithic group.
you’re being quite generous
i wouldn’t call what that commenter does sarcasm. they just string some words from the current headlines together until they form the general outline of a joke
break up the school system
On Planet Earth students from East Boston and West Roxbury (and Brighton and Hyde Park) aren't in the same school system. Just because we have randomly drawn and anachronistic city lines does not mean we have to force people from far off disconnected places to share schools. You can create the necessary diversity by pairing East Boston with downtown communities and the same with the remote neighborhoods at the city's southern and western ends.
Maybe
Draw a big red line across the city?
Creat neighborhood schools, each school gets equal funding based on the student population and have excess fund to address schools that are not meeting certain criteria.
Honestly the biggest thing holding back BPS from using any sort of rational logic, is upsetting the hardliners of the DEI cult.
You are missing the point
Diversity of people isn't the only game here - its diversity of educational experience.
Unless you plan to do a whole lot of eminent domain takedowns in all parts of the city to build high schools that serve each educational niche AND build enough elementary schools where people live, this is never going to work.
No way
Im sure he is a great kid, but I question a few things here. He’s an eighth grader, I’m sure it’s ok to stand on the orange line. I never had a seat from Forest Hills to New England medical when going to Bosco. I would hope he would gladly give his seat up to somebody that needed it. And there is 3 different buses that run from Forest Hills and put you in close walking distance to west Roxbury high. The 35, 36, and 37. Which, when the school was open, many of them utilized, and walked. And waking up early is normal, some of my close friends were in the metco program and waiting for the bus at 5:30 am to get to their school. If that’s the best option to move the school there, I’m sure they’ll find a way to get there.
Could you do a better job of missing the point?
Which is essentially that the WREC is not a good option for the O'Bryant.
How helpful are nice athletic fields if students have to allow an extra hour each way to get there? He had pretty much the best-case bus connection on the way since he only waited a few minutes at Forest Hills -- and it still took an hour-and-a-half.
Yeah, you'd have to get up earlier for Metco because you do actually have to travel by bus to a different town. That doesn't make the plan of almost moving the O'Bryant to a different town good.
Um, About That METCO thing.
It may be lookism, but I don't think this kid qualifies under the current guidelines.
Well METCO
Maybe in trouble after the recent SC ruling and now the new challenge to legacy admissions, which METCO uses extensively. And proudly I made add.
Cool kids club.
Gotta wonder about
All those folks who think Metco is great but charter schools are bad...
No 36 for you, nor a 37
Under the MBTA's proposed "Better Bus" plans that are forthcoming. #37 is eliminated as the Baker-Vermont route. Instead the 52 will move from Baker Street to LaGrange Street and pick up those stops to Baker-Vermont then continue to Watertown, and on a less-frequent schedule. Ther ewill be no direct connection to Forest Hills to that neighborhood. Even then, the shortcuts the kids used have been blocked and developed fo rthe most part.
Also the 36 will no longer serve the stops on Charles Park Road and no longer go to Millennium park. Instead after leaving the VA Hospital it will go up VFW to the Dedham Mall.
So as of now that plan will not serve the school or even nearby in any capacity.
I am shocked, SHOCKED…
…this wasn’t 4.75 hours!
Boston Public Schools can't seem to get it right.
We put one kid in private school when he entered high school, our youngest got in to the O'Bryant so we kept her in there, next school year she will be going to private school as well, her brother graduated and we can afford her tuition now. I'm sure there are thousands of stories like ours, I know many people who would not even stay in Boston, once they had kids they moved, the few that stayed use or have used private schools.
It's embarrassing how screwed up such a well funded school system is.
Students can drive there.
There’s plenty of parking spots in that property.