Well, I like it. The problem is, there are no really great commutes to the Navy Yard, unless you drive. The shuttle is okay, but at the end of the day, it’s just another bus, and you to have to take another form of transportation to get to it. So from Somerville, for example, you’d have to take a bus (or possibly walk, depending on where you live) to Sullivan Square to get the shuttle, or take the subway (again, depending) to North Station. From someplace like Allston-Brighton, you’re looking at even longer commute. I wouldn’t recommend it, in fact. I think you’ll discover that most of your colleagues there at the Navy Yard actually drive.
I suppose you could live in Charlestown, but I’m kind of down on it – it’s not that lively. You could consider living in the North End and walking over. The North End is livelier than Charlestown, though it could be considered as being lively in the wrong way.
Oh I know. I was just implying that Boston’s “culture” basically consists of a bunch of BU and BC frat guys destined for jobs at Fidelity or Rt 128 tech companies drinking in one of Boston’s 500,000 Irish bars complete with Celtic folk band.
I have to agree with Laughing Lagomorph. My experience as a 20-something living in Boston was that everyone was either from there or went to college there and took jobs in the area after college. I had some friends there already when I moved there and met new ones, but I always felt like “Rob’s friend from high school” or “Jims friend from business school”. Basically it can be tough making friends when everyone already has their core group of people they’ve know through high school, college and afterwards.
I lived in Boston for seven years. I actually found people pretty friendly and helpful, but nobody’s going to ask you how your day is going. I got used to people not saying anything to me when I was at the checkout line at Shaw’s, and being jostled during rush hour on the Red Line. But no big whoop.
If you’re working in Charlestown you might consider living in Somerville, or Malden, or Medford. Another misconception is that the T subway line is the only/best way to get around. The bus system is pretty expansive and if you can find a route that takes you direct from home to work, you’ve golden.
I have a friend who works for MGH, but he’s a lawyer and his office is near the Longwood campus. Big plus for you if you ever get sick - they obviously have great benefits!
???
How’re they going to get it there? Bulldoze a path down Route 28 from Lechmere?
Boston once had a great opportunity to run subway lines or maintain commuter rails when they got rid of a lot of industrial rail in the area, but it all got cut up into bigger backyards and public parks. You can see the places where the trains used to go, marked out in extended property lines and the like, with isolated train stations now turned into stores or senior centers or closed-up buildings all over the place. But you’d never be able to reclaim the land all those tracks ran on without exerting Eminent Domain in a BIG and offensive way.
I worked in Navy Yard for a while. Taking the shuttle was a pain in the ass, but I got used to it. Combined with my orange line journey, it was a fairly sucky hour commute every day. And I hated the neighborhood – there’s just nothing there. Good thing MGH has an excellent cafeteria.
What tracks? I worked in that area for about ten years. There ain’t no tracks!
I absolutely, positively guarantee there aren’t any tracks past Lechemere to Twin City Plaza – a district filled with little narrow streets and squashed-together housing. There are train tracks by Twin City, but they run the wrong way, and are still being used by commercial trains.
They may be planning this, but they’ll have to do a lot of work to put those rails in
Looking at a map of Somerville, I see rail tracks on the other side of 28, behind those old industruial buildings that are being rehabbed. but there’s no connection between Lechmere and those tracks (are those commuter rail tracks? are they being used?) The article talks about moving the Lechmere station to the other side of the street, and maybe that’s why – but it’s still a lot of bulldozing and building, because not even the map shows any tracks back there between Lecghmere and the existing rails.
But at least they wouldn’t have to bulldoze a neighborhood. OTOH, it’d be quite a walk to Twin City Plaza from any possible stop.
2018 more likely and cost overruns will make the project come in at $18 billion dollars and even more after the lawsuits for people getting crushed by the train among other things.
Hey i don’t want strangers talking to me on the street anyway.
I think I noticed the unfriendliness when I was working. The companies I worked for tended to have a lot of young people in their 20s and they tended to be very clannish. A friend of mine from Maine who started about the same time noticed it too, saying “back home I knew a hundred people and had 100 friends. Here you know 100 people and have like 3 friends.” I especially noticed this when I started working in NY. The company I worked for had new hire training for like 200 people from all over the country - NY, LA, Boston, Chicago, everywhere. The Boston people never hung out with anyone else and were widely regarded as a bunch of D-bags.