đź”· Open Thread

I couldn't say this in any other thread, but hot dang, I love the Green Line. Even when it's slow, stalled, or broken it makes me happy. Ding ding! All the other lines should have been the Green Line. A wild tangle of green trolley noodles. Who looks at the Orange Line and says damn, that's an attractive line? Nobody. This isn't just because green is my favorite color (even though I think that does play a role to a small extent). Go Green Line!
[/caffiene]
 
Yeah, I love the Green Line too, unless I have to be somewhere.
 
I have very mixed feelings about the Green Line. There's a balance to be struck between charm and big-city feel, and don't most of us agree the scale is already tipped in the former's favor?

When I look at the RBO lines, I say, damn Boston is a real city. When I look at the Green line underground, I think, how quaint. As for the surface lines? I guess I think, man, get these jokers from Newton out of here.
 
The Green Line is the coelacanth of transit, a living anachronism, a throwback to the days of street railways and horse drawn streetcars. I wish they still ran those futuristic, wind cheating "PCC" or "BVD" or "BBC" cars (or whatever they call them. Do they still run one or two on that little Ashmont spur?)
The Green Line has real charm. I can't help but smile when I drive past it.
 
PCC (Presidents' Conference Committee) cars still run between Ashmont and Mattapan.
 
Exactly the point. They shouldn't mimic each other in exactly every way.
 
Is it mimicry, or do similar responses make sense in different places?

Do Amsterdam's canals mimic those of Venice? And do Hong Kong's skyscrapers mimic New York's? And what shall we say about all those twin-towered Gothic cathedrals perhaps mimicking each other all over Europe? Those pesky Interstates, they seem to be everywhere; you would have thought one would be enough! And as for ancient temples ... fuhgeddaboutit. :)

Novelty is rarely unique, anyway.
 
All of those are variations on a theme; you're talking about using a specific type of streetcar in a very similar environment. It would be like importing gondoliers to Amsterdam and building a replica of the Empire State Building in Hong Kong, to apply your examples.
 
PCC's were used in every American city where streetcars ran --except New Orleans. The engineering was also adapted for Europe's narrower streetcars, like the ones in Brussels and Zurich, which ended up looking quite different --though a sharp eye could detect their PCC heritage. For a while, I think they even made them in Eastern Europe, though I can't remember which country.

A nice thing about San Francisco's line is that they also run Peter Witts from Milan, and a variety of one-offers from Melbourne, New Orleans, Blackpool --and even San Francisco!!

When you're waiting at the streetcar stop, you never know what will roll up. It's not so dry and academic.

And finally, we could just run the standard Green Line Bredas along the waterfront. Most people don't know they're Italian, anyway.

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^^^
Not only are the Breda cars Italian, but they are designed by the "king" of Italian coachbuilders, Pininfarina. (I am more of a Carrozzeria Touring guy.)

Since the T still runs the PCC cars, it wouldn't be "faux" to run them on the Greenway (if you had to have a street railway there.)
 
Green Line cars are designed by Pininfarina?! The Pininfarina? Like, the one that does Ferrari design?
 
Hey, who hits a homer every time they step up to the plate?

(He also designed the '52 Nash.)
 
It is the bulk industrial design revenue that supports the less commercial artisan projects. The Nash is an excellent example. I was also going to cite Raymond Loewy, but, then again...
 
^ One way New York is so much more creative.

You'd be unlikely to see this idea born in Boston.



@ tobyjug: Loewy was more impresario than actual designer. He knew a good thing when one of his creative employees came up with it, so he'd ride their coattails and take the credit. Streamlined locomotives were an early springboard. Then Virgil Exner provided him with the '47 Studebaker to take credit for, and after that came the '53, known as the Loewy coupe, though it was designed by Bob Bourke ?who languishes in obscurity.

Loewy was trained as an architect and gifted his native Paris with its Hilton, a stinker of a building.
 
^^ So you are saying that a city with 6 million people has more creative minds than a city with 600,000 people?

Could be, could be.
 
statler said:
^^ So you are saying that a city with 6 million people has more creative minds than a city with 600,000 people?
Click to expand...
I wonder if it's just population. Isn't it possible to imagine this coming out of say, Amsterdam? Prague?
 
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