Early in the last decade, I worked with a team of engineers and contractors to develop a plan to install a monorail system connecting from North Station to South Station and over to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. We thought it could operate as a quiet, energy-efficient system with stops at International Place, Faneuil Hall, and Haymarket. It would provide a seven-minute ride between North Station and the Convention Center. Best of all, it could be privately financed and operated under a form of franchise agreement with either the state Department of Transportation or the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

In your Oct. 4 editorial “Navigating our transportation future,” you referred to the notion of “an aerial tramway or gondola system to move people not under the city, as with a subway, or on its streets, as with buses or cars, but above it,” and to a current plan to bring it about.


We met with city and state environmental and transportation officials; unfortunately, it was an idea whose time had not yet come. In particular, there was concern about introducing a structure into the air space above the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway so shortly after the old Central Artery was being demolished. There was also concern that demand might not be sufficient to cover the costs of construction, maintenance, and operations, but that was well before the boom in development that has taken place in the Seaport District.

Perhaps those concerns could be addressed today. It is possible to think about how such a system could work, and one or two stops could be added between the Convention Center and South Station. It is also possible to think that there would be plenty of demand for a fast, one-seat ride between the Seaport and our two main train stations.


Edward J. Corcoran

Quincy

The writer was a deputy transportation secretary in the 1990s, and has since worked in transportation and real estate, including efforts on developing new transit facilities at Yawkey, Wonderland, and Woodland stations.