So a few weeks back our friend Bill Forry over at the Dorchester Reporter put out this great piece about the folks who maintain the Ashmont/Mattapan trolley line. With all the anti MBTA sentiment that’s being tossed about it was a welcomed perspective. Of course I, like a lot of my fellow Dot Rats, have a special place in my heart for these wonderful old trolleys. They are a little slice of home…a little thread in that comfy old blanket we call Dorchester. Unfortunately, as the MBTA continues to receive greater scrutiny of it’s operations, our love of these charming trolleys is of little value if the riders can’t quantify the practicality of the line.

Over the years I’ve heard many reverent stories about family hopping on a trolley and cruising just about anywhere in Dorchester and Roxbury as they tended to their daily lives. My mother till this day does not have her drivers license and she’s completely fine with that. She is truly the product of a streetcar culture.

As we all know, the bulk of our nation’s streetcars faded away long ago. Quite simply we turned to buses and the reasoning behind that is still debated today.

Sure, you can argue that buses provide a more flexible platform to move people around the city and taking streetcars off of Dot and Neponset avenues eased congestion with the proliferation of the automobile. But, it begs other questions…

Are buses as clean to run in thickly settled areas? Do buses provide us a as healthy ROI (Return on Investment) – I don’t see any buses built in 1945 carrying people on a transit system anywhere in the world. If we had trolleys with their own “right of way” like the old #29 Blue Hill Ave line (seen below) that wouldn’t cause street congestion…..why did we get rid of them?

My hope is that we do not make the same mistake we have in the past. Our governor’s efforts to create new efficiency is just more of the same thinly veiled privatization banter he learned from his mentor. His timing was impeccable on the heels of last year’s terrible winter….what’s not is the facts coming back from Keolis. Makes me wonder if Chuck looking at the ridership numbers from the Swampscott stop on the commuter rail…

The “Save the Mattapan Line!” Facebook group has been gaining traction after Universal Hub put out a quick blurb about it a month back. There’s been some healthy debate over there. One young man in particular has been making waves with his take on the weight restriction argument of the line. Have a peek….