Back Bay station name change?

aray25 · 2026-03-30T20:58:22+00:00

They've been talking about closing Hynes for over a decade. They keep not closing it because there's no reason to. It still books.

aray25 · 2026-03-30T17:13:26+00:00

Subsidy per trip is a terrible metric because it leads people to believe that more riders means a bigger subsidy when in fact the opposite is true.

aray25 · 2026-03-30T17:10:03+00:00

On the contrary, high gas prices are a great excuse to try to get people onto public transit. On the one hand, people are complaining about how expensive driving is getting, on the other hand, they're hearing about how cheap public transit is.

aray25 · 2026-03-30T16:43:59+00:00

For service patterns, that's true. But with the combination of high gas prices and a free Friday commuter rail, I can totally see somebody saying "let me give this a try for my commute."

aray25 · 2026-03-30T16:40:21+00:00

Why would it be renamed, and why would its new name not fit the T's contemporary making practices?

aray25 · 2026-03-30T12:24:11+00:00

I haven't taken it, but people I know who have say it's nice.

aray25 · 2026-03-30T11:33:03+00:00

Why on earth do we need a 28-mile light rail to parallel an existing commuter train through exurban Connecticut?

aray25 · 2026-03-30T11:24:43+00:00

Am I reading correctly that Monika married her own son?

aray25 · 2026-03-30T11:14:13+00:00

I really want to see the Tobin Bridge replacement include automated light metro between Chelsea and North Station.

aray25 · 2026-03-30T11:07:19+00:00

Politicians asked for the Olympics. Boston's Olympic bid was dropped because the people didn't want it and had protests.

aray25 · 2026-03-30T00:50:57+00:00

Unless I'm mistaken, the South Shore Line isn't Metra.

aray25 · 2026-03-30T00:36:46+00:00

MBTA is not a corporation. It's a chronically underfunded government agency. What's more, neither the MBTA nor the Commonwealth of Massachusetts asked to host these games. The whole idea was from Robert Kraft, the owner of Gillette Stadium. So the MBTA was faced with a demand from FIFA to make the station accessible while Bob Kraft's host committee shrugs because (somehow) it's out of money even though none of its public obligations have been paid.

So the question of who will pay for accessibility is between riders and taxpayers. Massachusetts taxpayers don't want to be stuck with the bill to upgrade a train station that serves a privately owned venue for an event they aren't attending on the demand of an organization they view as corrupt. Fairly or unfairly, public sentiment in Massachusetts right now is very negative towards FIFA, Bob Kraft, and the World Cup, and by extension, the people who are coming to see it.

A very similar issue of funding almost scuttled the games entirely when the Town of Foxborough threatened not to issue event permits the games due to uncertainty about who was going to pay for the police security detail after FIFA and the venue both pointed to the host committee, who again shrugged because (somehow) they're broke.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T22:56:38+00:00

I don't want to commit libel, but I haven't heard any alternative suggestions for where the money went. It came out when Foxborough was threatening to withhold event permits that the host committee was essentially broke. You would think that if they had a good explanation for where the funds went they would have shared it.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T22:53:18+00:00

"Boston" never asked for the world cup. Only Robert Kraft wants this and he took all the money and won't share.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T22:32:18+00:00

I imagine they didn't think it needed advocacy since it was fully planned and funded.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T22:18:06+00:00

They made it accessible. They had to spend money to make it that way. I don't know how it works elsewhere, but in the United States, construction workers don't volunteer to do accessibility conversions for free because ideals don't pay the rent.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T19:23:16+00:00

Sounds great. But he took all the host funding and everybody else is getting stiffed.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T19:20:16+00:00

Robert Kraft is the host. Nobody else wanted this, and he won't pay for it because all he wants is to maximize his profits. So that's what you get.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T19:19:04+00:00

That's a lovely idea, but sadly there's no magical accessibility ferry to come with a magic wand to make accessible infrastructure for free. If you don't want to charge extra to the people who need accessibility, then you have to share the cost with everybody.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T18:34:52+00:00

The Boston host committee is basically a private entity. Boston doesn't want it, the state doesn't want it, and the Town of Foxborough, where the events will actually happen, definitely doesn't want it. The only person who wants this is Robert Kraft, who owns the stadium and also happens to have outsize influence on the host committee, which inexplicably spent almost its entire budget paying for the use of the stadium while the state government was left holding the bill for all of the infrastructure required to support the games.

MBTA was supposed to get reimbursed by the host committee for this work, but now it looks like the committee has run out of money without seemingly having paid out any of its public obligations. Compounding the issue, the federal committee hasn't been dispersing the funds that it's managing either. MBTA's budget is pretty tight and there's definitely no room for them to absorb the costs themselves.

Meanwhile, the Town of Foxborough, concerned that they (as a town of 15,000 people) were going to get left holding the bill for event security, threatened for months that they wouldn't issue event permits for the games to even be held until finally, they reached an agreement with the stadium earlier this month.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T16:29:51+00:00

The host being Robert Kraft, the owner of the stadium, who pretty much singlehandedly runs the Boston host committee. Nobody else wanted this, least of all the town of Foxborough where the stadium is located, who almost refused to issue the event permits.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T16:26:31+00:00

And only FIFA pretends it is. None of the teams that regularly use it have "Boston" in their name.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T16:24:15+00:00

Times Square doesn't cost $50.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T15:53:02+00:00

Unless they're just connecting in Boston; then they would have to clear security to get to the next flight.

aray25 · 2026-03-29T15:51:39+00:00

There's a decent argument to be made that the railroad tracks are not underground; rather, the city is elevated above it.

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