An Orange Line Runs Through It

Bostonist has found that biking around the city is much more convenient that other vehicular travel. Boston may be a walking city, but when you’re looking to get from Central Square to Centre St., the bike ride is only about 20 minutes, it’ll take you that long in a car with no traffic, and a bit longer if you’re taking the subway or busses. The Southwest Corridor park is one of our favorite ways to get from JP to Back Bay, especially with a designated bikeway (two sidewalks: one for bikes, one for pedestrians). Like Adrian Walker in today’s Globe column, we’ve noticed that the park is in less than tip-top shape. He tells us that they once had a team of 24 working on it, which is now down to only three, and the funding for maintenance is all but non-existent.

Signs, once indicating which path is for which type of traveler, have gone missing from many signposts. During the summer months the grass often grows tall and trash and debris pile up, prequently only near a trashcan. Sure, there are some problems with maintenance of the park, but public art installations, recreational facilities, and green space still function well. Like Walker, Bostonist is disappointed that there are plans to cut funding for the park – and increase funding for other parks.

The offhand remark made at the end of the column is what took us by surprise. Mr. Walker suggests that there should be busses from Roxbury and JP to take people to the new big dig parks. We realize he was just going for a razz on the funding plan, but he dissed the entire Orange Line. We can hop on at Stony Brook and off at Haymarket to grab an afternoon walk down the Rose Kennedy Greenway or change at State (if we’re lazy), get off at Aquarium, and grab an MBTA boat to Spectacle Island (if you ask nice we can instruct you on the Silver Line too, but it's like three transfers to get on a boat at Seaport). Bostonist feels it is appropriate to note that residents of Jamaica Plain “Wake up the Earth” every year and celebrate, on the SW Corridor park, the triumph over a 12 lane highway, the relocation of rapid transit underground, and the creation of the park itself. So here's our offhand remark to end the post: Spectacle Island was a great little idea - soil from the big dig to root trees in on the island. But can we get some of it back? The new green spaces aren’t deep enough for the promised trees.

Photo of the picturesque Southwest Cooridor looks better on the website than it does in person.