Transportation Improvement Ideas That Can’t Be Worse Than Charlie Baker’s

What the hell is this guy doing?

Governor Charlie Baker’s transportation chief this week suggested that among the cuts that needed to happen to the MBTA was the limiting of weekend commuter rail service as well as ride programs for people with disabilities. This is perfectly aligned with Baker’s existing fetish with privatizing portions of the T. These, of course, are lousy ideas.

So since we’re just throwing out any old idea that makes us happy regardless of whether or not they are actually helpful, here’s a list of transportation improvements for MassDOT and the MBTA that I would like to see happen. They mostly range from dangerous to impractical, but they can’t possibly be worse than the idea that you can save public transportation by making it less useful and letting the private sector profit off it. Here they are:

• A new fleet of boxcars for the B line so people can exit and enter in the style of our nation’s great history of hobos.
• Acela-style cafe cars on the Red Line (Note: If there are budget concerns, the cafe car can just be a guy with a bag full of Gansetts in a regular car)
• To help keep cyclists safe, replace the little bell on Hubway bikes with a reggae air horn.
• Lookouts stationed every 3 miles of the Fitchburg line to make sure no mustachioed villains are tying damsels to railroad tracks.
• Connect Mattapan to Longwood with one of those sky cable rides that bring you across amusement parks.
• Force Uber to give all their new Massachusetts drivers a copy of Das Kapital.
• Bring back the A line but only for telling spooky Halloween stories about a ghost train.
• More ferries. Haven’t really fleshed this plan out but ferries are cool.
• Replace that giant escalator at the Porter Station with a fun slide.
• Throw money at MIT kids until they figure out how to teleport people.
• Campaign encouraging passengers of 39 bus and E Line to throw eggs at each other as they race down Huntington.
• Make up budget gaps by selling T-shirts and buttons to pedestrians that say “I walked here which means I’m better than you.”
• Promote the positive growth of our public transportation sphere so it can combat the effects of car culture by giving people options that are safer, greener, and more affordable to the working people of the greater Boston area, not just now but for a future where more and more young people are looking to live in urban areas with reliable transit infrastructure and realizing that by staying true to that investment and keeping it out of privatized hands we are setting our city up to have an invaluable public asset for years to come.
• Maybe run the 64 bus a little more often?