South Station

Template:Amtrak station South Station, located at Atlantic Avenue and Summer Street, in Boston, Massachusetts is a major intermodal transportation hub. Its facilities include:

Red Line
Alewife Yard Alewife Davis Porter Stadium closed 1967 Eliot Street Yard Harvard/Brattle 1979-1983 Bennett Street Portal Harvard Harvard pre-1981 Harvard/Holyoke 1981-1983 Central Kendall/MIT Longfellow Bridge incline Charles River Charles/MGH Park Street Winter Street Concourse Downtown Crossing South Station I-90 Cabot Yard Broadway Andrew JFK/UMass I-93 / US 1 / Route 3 Savin Hill Fields Corner Shawmut Ashmont Codman Yard Ashmont–Mattapan High-Speed Line Ashmont–Mattapan High-Speed Line Cedar Grove Butler Milton Central Avenue Valley Road Capen Street Mattapan Yard Mattapan Neponset River North Quincy Wollaston Quincy Center Quincy Adams Greenbush Line Braintree Caddigan Yard Old Colony Lines

• the northern terminus of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor train service, including Acela Express high-speed trains and Regional local trains. There is also a daily Amtrak overnight train to Chicago - the Lake Shore Limited.
• a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) commuter rail terminus.
• a station stop on the Boston subway's Red Line.
• the eastern terminus of Phase 2 of the Silver Line, with direct service to all Logan Airport terminals and to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
• Boston's main inter-city bus terminal.
• local bus service.
• parking garage.
• staffed ticket windows.
• a food court and waiting area.
• public art, including a sculpture built of railroad car couplers and a model of the planet Jupiter, part of the Museum of Science's scale model of the solar system

Amtrak and Commuter Rail trains at South Station; the two share platforms. Behind is the long-distance bus terminal.

Note: Several MBTA commuter rail lines plus Amtrak's Downeaster service to Maine originate from North Station, about 1-1/4 miles around the Boston peninsula from South Station. No direct link exists between the two stations although MBTA subway connections exist; see MBTA Commuter Rail and North-South Rail Link.

History

South Station is over 105 years old.

Pre-opening

When the railroads serving Boston were first laid out and built, each one stopped at its own terminal. The four terminals serving the south-side railroads were as follows:

• The New York and New England Railroad crossed the Fort Point Channel from South Boston, just south of the present Summer Street Bridge, and terminated just east of Dewey Square (right at the north end of today's South Station).
• The Old Colony Railroad had a long passenger terminal on the east side of South Street, stretching from Kneeland Street south to Harvard Street. This site is now part of the South Bay Interchange, near the South Station bus terminal.
• The Boston and Albany Railroad's passenger terminal was in the block bounded by Kneeland Street, Beach Street, Albany Street (now Surface Artery) and Lincoln Street. This later became a freight house, and is now a block in Chinatown; the passenger terminal was moved to the west side of Utica Street, from Kneeland Street south to a bit past Harvard Street, now part of the South Bay Interchange.
• The Boston and Providence Railroad continued straight where it now merges with the Boston and Albany, terminating at Park Square, with the passenger terminal on the south side of Providence Street from Columbus Avenue west about 2/3 of the way to Berkeley Street.

South Station combined the four terminals in one spot (a union station).

Opening and beyond

A view of the Atlantic Avenue Elevated in front of South Station; the elevated station was at far right

South Station opened as South Union Station on January 1, 1899 at a cost of $3.6 million (1899 dollars). It became the busiest station in the country by 1910. A station on the Atlantic Avenue Elevated served the station from 1901 to 1938; what is now the Red Line subway was extended from Park Street to South Station in 1913. The train shed was replaced in a 1930 renovation. While the station handled 125,000 passengers each day during World War II, after the war passenger rail declined in the U.S. In 1959, the Old Colony Railroad, which served the South Shore and Cape Cod, stopped passenger service. The New Haven Railroad went bankrupt in 1961. South Station was sold to the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) in 1965. Portions of the station were demolished and the land was used to build the Boston South Postal Annex and the Stone and Webster building.

File:4a11367u.jpg

Looking north at the merge of the two approaches, with the two pairs of tracks approaching the lower-level loop at right; the terminal is in the background

The never-used lower-level loop platforms

In the original configuration, two tracks came off each approach to join into a four-track line and then run under the main platforms in a two-track loop. These tracks were never put into service, and later became a parking lot and bowling alley for employees.[1]

In 1978, the BRA sold what was left of the station, now on the National Register of Historic Places, to the MBTA, though the BRA retained air rights over the station. Funding was obtained for a major renovation of the station that was completed in 1989. A total of 13 tracks became available, all with high level platforms and some capable of handling 12 car trains. Piers were installed for the eventual construction of an office building and bus station above the tracks. After some delays, an inter-city bus terminal opened in October 1995, replacing one on top of the I-93 Dewey Square Tunnel diagonally across from the station between Summer Street and Congress Street. The new bus terminal has been called “the best bus facility in the country” and has direct ramp connections to I-93 and the Massachusetts Turnpike. The renovations, including the bus terminal, cost $195 million (2001 dollars).

The Red Line subway platforms were extended to allow 6 car trains in 1985 and renovated again in 2005, as part of the Silver Line Phase 2 project.

Ridership

Ridership has grown considerably, in part due to the reopening of Old Colony commuter rail service and the electrification of the Amtrak Northeast Corridor from New Haven to Boston, which allowed high speed Acela service.

South Station Ridership (passengers/year)

Service	1975	1990	2001
Intercity rail	537,000	839,000	1,060,000
Commuter rail	2,774,000	12,000,000	18,000,000
Intercity Bus	n/a	n/a	3,000,000

Future

Planned system improvements should result in additional passenger traffic. Construction is underway on a commuter rail line to Greenbush. Silver Line Phase 3 would build a tunnel connecting South Station with the Silver Line Phase I BRT service to Dudley Square, Roxbury. Current plans also include commuter rail service to Fall River and New Bedford Massachusetts, and to T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island. There are still plans to construct an office tower above the track platforms. A relocation of the adjacent Boston South Postal Annex might allow additional expansion.

Attractions

• Boston South Postal Annex, with a post office that is almost never closed (there is a passageway to it at the foot of Track 13).
• Boston's financial district including the Federal Reserve Bank Building.
• the Children's Museum.
• the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, about a 15 minute walk east, or one can take the Silver Line to the World Trade Center stop.
• Boston's Chinatown
• Rowes Wharf ferry terminal, several blocks north of the station.
• Tufts University medical campus and hospital

Accessibility

• South Station is wheelchair accessible, but finding the elevator to the subway can be a bit tricky - it's in the corridor behind the information booth.
• Other Amtrak stations on the Northeast Corridor are generally accessible.
• Some MBTA commuter rail stations have no wheelchair access and many of those that do have short elevated platforms that only serve one or two cars, on the outbound end of the train. See MBTA accessibility.

External links

• Amtrak - Boston South Station
• French & Fowler, The Renovation of Boston’s South Station, 2003
• Proposed South Station office tower
• South Station web site, with event listings

References

• Various Sanborn maps