Hollywood's Spotlight on Boston

[czsz]

Looks like the Turbo Train. Acela still hasn't beat its speed record!

 

[ablarc]

^ I rode that train. It creaked a lot (didn't seem safe). A valiant effort.

 

[Beton Brut]

A triumph of industrial design, toppled by not-ready-for-primetime technology (and other priorities).

 

[unterbau]

I almost forgot, there's a scene set in front of another one of Boston's brutalist 70s landmarks: Oak Grove Station

 

[Ron Newman]

The movie was released in 1973, but that station didn't open until 1977.

 

[unterbau]

Hmm. Maybe it's North Quincy?

Edit: yeah, on closer look, those are definitely red-line trains.

 

[czsz]

A triumph of industrial design, toppled by not-ready-for-primetime technology (and other priorities).

Was the interstate highway system still a priority in the 70s? I thought it was effectively complete a decade before.

 

[Ron Newman]

I-93 through Somerville and Medford opened in the early 1970s; otherwise, very little Interstate highway construction continued in this region. The only other exception I can think of was the connection of I-95 to 128 in the Lynnfield area, which happened some time in the late 80s or early 90s,

(Of course this is ignoring the Big Dig and Ted Williams Tunnel)

 

[Beton Brut]

Was the interstate highway system still a priority in the 70s?

Funds that could have been better spent on an improved rail network went to expanding and maintaining highways.

I thought it was effectively complete a decade before.

To a point, but large sections of I-95 remained in construction into the 80s.

The point of my drive-by comment yesterday was that our cultural commitment to the automobile was already made in the 50s, and there's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. How many Americans would trade their car for a rail-system equivalent to Japan or Europe?

 

[czsz]

^ Maybe it's just me, but I get culture shock whenever I come back to suburbia. I have a little Seinfeldian moment of "people still drive all the time? For everything? Really?" I don't think this would have been possible 20-30 years ago. It's possible (and more importantly, normal) to live in America now without your lips being plugged into the teat of your car and for it to be okay.

I guess I've always thought of the 70s as a turning point, when environmental and social concerns began to really start getting raised. A whole bunch of new transit systems went up then, in response (DC, SF Bay, Buffalo, among others), whereas transit contraction was the virtually unbroken rule in the 50s and 60s.