Home > Silver Line (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority)

The Silver Line is planned to be built in three stages; only stage I has been completed as of November, 2004. The Silver Line runs between Dudley Square , Roxbury, and downtown Boston (with free transfer connections at Downtown Crossing and Boylston Street , although these connections are intended to be temporary. Phase II of the Silver Line will actually institute a separate tunnel from South Station to Boston's World Trade Center and 1/2 mile further east to Silver Line Way. (This section was originally referred to as the South Boston Piers Transitway.) This section is scheduled to open in December, 2004. When dual-mode bus es are delivered in 2005, service will be extended on three new routes: to terminals of Logan Airport (via the Ted Williams Tunnel), to the Boston Convention Center and down "D" Street and to the Marine Industrial Park . Phase II of the Silver Line is expected to open later in 2004. Phase III comprises the connection of the two halves of the Silver Line via an underground busway from Boylston station on the Green Line to South Station. It has not been funded yet and is not expected to be completed until after 2010. At this time, three possible routings are being debated.

In addition to the Silver Line, BRT is being considered as a means of implementing the Urban Ring Project and providing improved cross-town service.

In MBTA nomenclature, BRT lines are named by colors, not by number. This system is intended to equate BRT lines with subway lines as equivalent services. There are historical reasons for this equation. The Silver Line is the result of a court order mandating restoration of local service after the Washington Street Elevated portion of the Orange Line was demolished and the Orange Line was re-routed onto the Southwest Corridor right-of-way. Proposals to build a new subway line under Washington Street or a new trolley line along Washington Street were deemed impractical (for the same reasons that the Orange Line was moved), requiring an innovative solution -- BRT.

Detractors of Silver Line service insist that BRT is still a bus, not a high-speed transit line, and provides equivalent quality and speed to other buses. Logically, it is therefore undeserving of the dignity of equality with Boston's subway lines. These groups sometimes refer to the Silver Line as the "#49 bus" -- this being the bus line with an identical routing that the Silver Line replaced.

Silver Line buses are wheelchair lift equipped. See MBTA accessibilityMassachusetts Bay Transportation Authority accessibility As is true for most mass transit systems, much of the Boston subway and commuter rail lines were built before wheelchair access was a requirement. Fortunately, the Boston system underwent significan.

External link: MBTA's allaboutsilverline.com