MBTA Dark Territory

As a certain kind of geographer, I probably spend more time thinking about trains than actually riding them, though I am grateful every time I get a chance to do the latter (well, almost every time). I enjoy all three major scales (gages) -- local subways and trolleys, regional commuter rail, and national interstate rail. Of course, the national rail would be even better if I lived in some other nation, but Amtrak does its best, and despite terrible coffee and occasionally rude fellow passengers, I have enjoyed quite a few jaunts to NYC or DC, grateful to be following the general fall-line path of I-95 without being on it! 

In 2025, the New Bedford/Fall River extension finally opened. Long overdue for my friend and geography colleague who has been living in Fairhaven for most of his tenure at BSU, but just in time for me! We have had a weekend house in Fairhaven for about a decade, and recently made it our only home after an arduous year of renovations and property transactions. Just at the MBTA opened a train from Boston to Bridgewater soon after we moved to that town, it extended that line to the vicinity of our new home shortly after our full-time arrival on the South Coast.

A few geographic peculiarities accompany this development. First, the trains go to both Fall River and New Bedford -- there is a split between the two at East Taunton, with shuttles making up for the resulting infrequent direct service. The shuttles are trains, not busses, so this is a good solution, though it takes some getting used to and some very careful attention to announcements at that East Taunton platform.

Second is that a new station was built across the street from the Middleboro-Lakeville station. The old station is still operating, but ONLY -- as far as I can tell -- as part of the very infrequent service from Boston to Cape Cod.

The map below is about the third oddity, the one that inspired this post. When I drive from New Bedford to Bridgewater, I follow Route 18, a.k.a. Bedford Street, a.k.a. the old, very straight toll road to Boston (which gave rise to the tollhouse cookie, but that's another story). So in my mental map, the train ride would also be a straight line. On the real map and in real life, however, there is a zig and a zag, with the aforementioned Middleboro (Middleborough) station bing almost due east of the East Taunton station.

That eastward jog takes passengera across the northern edge of Massasoit State Park and -- it seems -- into a parallel universe of some kind, into which cellular networks do not reach. The main advantages of commuter rail are related to reduced emissions, vehicle wear-and-tear, and traffic stress. But the ability to work online while traveling is another benefit. Each MBTA train comes with a completely useless internet server, so I always connect my laptop to the interwebs through telephone hotspot.

The 5G network almost always fails between these stations, however, reminding me of two films: Under Siege 2: Dark Territory and The Bridgewater Triangle. I saw the former during my first visit to the Amazon, where the Portuguese dubbed version was helpful language practice. The plot revolves around and evil genius knowing that a train would be out of radio contact as it passed through a certain mountainous area. I saw the latter when it debuted in Dartmouth. It recounts the generally spooky folklore of our region -- the MBTA Dark Territory is right in the middle of the famous triangle.