For my photo essay, I will be exploring the transportation issues in the city of Boston. The T is almost always having issues, delays, or shutdowns, traffic is a nightmare during the morning and evening rush hours, preference is given to cars at almost every street corner and intersection, all making New England’s flagship “walkable” public transit city anything but navigable by someone without other means of transportation. I have ridden a “standing room only” Red line car at 5pm, and I have also sat on a completely empty one. I have driven through downtown Boston and been both confused and frustrated by the street layout and traffic light/signs. I have walked miles and miles through the city and every step crossing a street seems like it’ll be my last, with cars whizzing by at speeds never imagined possible by the creators of Boston’s concrete grid (or can it even be called that? I don’t think there’s single 90-degree angle anywhere). Any area not designated for housing (another problem in and of itself) or for protected green space is filled with parking for these speeding metal boxes, shrinking sidewalks. All of this is to say that Boston is strategically, if not uniquely, positioned to reimagine itself as the walkable, bike-able city of the future, complete with a fully-functioning public transit system that gives people options for getting around; this future is possible only with campaigning, effort, and investment into Boston’s infrastructure sooner rather than later.
I took the above and below images to illustrate two of these issues, those of car-designed infrastructure and of the mismanaged and underfunded T system. I manipulated these photos by cropping to center the subjects within their surroundings, balancing color channels to make the important aspects of each image stand out, and increasing/decreasing exposure on certain parts of the image to further isolate the subjects.
