It’s often noted that the trains which pump through tunnels underneath our feet downtown and barrel over bridges into Cambridge, Quincy, and beyond belong to the most ancient subterranean transit matrix in America. Aside from being a great historical first, the fact that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s earliest forerunner first rolled more than a century ago is sometimes used to rationalize the pitiful physical state of everything from T stations, to tracks, to bridges and the iron tortoises themselves.

More than just a little ink has been spilled by journalists and policy experts explaining the nightmare. It’s a doozy, rife with numbers and statistics that don’t seem to add up: For starters, state lawmakers know how much it will cost to bring things up to speed, but year after year neglect to make the appropriate changes. The rest of us, meanwhile, are expected to simply accept the fact that lines slow down or stop in extreme weather, and that chunks of platform overhangs may crash upon our heads at any minute.