In English class, we had a short end-of-the-year assignment to write a “rant,” and I decided to make mine about the Silver Line Waterfront and its inefficiencies. It wasn’t supposed to be an evidence-based piece, so I don’t really back up my complaints, but I figured it would be fun to put up here. Enjoy!

My family had just gotten back from a week-long trip to Portugal. All we wanted to do was go home.

But the Silver Line had other ideas.

We always prefer using public transportation to get to the airport, mainly because it’s cheap. But the Silver Line, branded as a fast rapid transit service, is little more than a glorified bus with many problems. It seemed great when it was brand-new, but Boston soon realized that its fancy new line was just a phony.

At the cold, miserable Terminal E stop, the clock said the next bus was arriving in one minute—great! But that minute came and went. A crowd was starting to form with no sign of the bus. Finally, after ten minutes, the vehicle arrived, and it was packed.

We squeezed on with the other sardines, and our can started to head onto the highway. The crowded, trafficked highway. Did I mention it was the evening rush?

So after twenty minutes of crawling through the dark musty Ted Williams Tunnel, we finally managed to escape into the outside world. At least now it would be a smooth ride to South Station. Oh wait, we had to double back on ourselves first with the most inefficient loop ever. “Congress Street @ World Trade Center Station,” anyone?

At Silver Line Way, one poor rider struggled to escape the soul-crushing crowd to get out of the bus, then the bus failed to make the conversion to electric power (of course). After the driver got out to fix the problem, we were finally able to head to South Station at a heart-pounding 10 miles per hour. And what was that passing our sardine can on the left? Why, it was an SL2 to the Design Center, completely empty! Every 15 minute service to an industrial wasteland—great use of resources.

A few people were waiting at each of the overblown underground stations, but they were denied entry onto our bus because it was so crowded. I guess they would have to wait for the next empty SL2 to arrive. After several aching minutes of crawling through the bus tunnel, we finally pulled into the South Station bus stop, with a massive exodus of people leaving the bus to get to the Red Line. I’m sure the vehicle’s return run to the airport would be just as insane as our trip.

This is the state of the “rapid transit” Silver Line Waterfront.

Fix it.