Maroon Z

It’s not limited to driving either. The Arlington train station is not in Arlington, it’s in the middle of downtown. Harvard Square is not a square, it’s more like a pentagon. There are four different green line train routes, and they’re labeled B for Boston College, C for Cleveland Circle, D for… Riverside, and E for… Heath Street. The Silver line is listed on the train map but is entirely run on buses which have to be connected and disconnected from power lines every time you go through the route. The Blue line goes to (and I’m not joking) Wonderland. The two red lines are labeled for their southern points: Braintree line goes to Braintree, and the Ashmont line goes to… Mattapan. To be fair, the train itself stops in Ashmont and you continue to Mattapan on a trolley, but that doesn't make it better. South Station and North Station are 1 mile apart and the easiest way to get from one to the other is just to walk it because otherwise you have to travel through 4 or 5 train stops on two different lines. But make sure you memorize the route because there's a good chance your gps will lose signal in the Financial district because it can't get through the buildings. In Boston Commons there are two train stops within line of sight of each other, on the same street, and one of them screams. To get to the trains at Porter Square, you have to ride down escalators 105 feet below street level, or you could just take the 3 flights of stairs totaling 199 steps (presumably because the engineers had something against nice even numbers). The North End is south of East Boston. Castle Island is part of the mainland.

No matter where you're going or how you're getting there, it takes 45 minutes (no wrong turns) or an hour and a half (one wrong turn). It doesn't matter if you're going one stop on a train; it will take 45 minutes. If it's summer, there's a better than 50% chance you'll be in the train car that lost it's AC; if it's winter, you're guaranteed to be in the car where the heat has it up to 80 degrees and the inside of your winter coat will be a sauna. Check the Red Sox schedule before you go south of the river, or you'll be trapped in the waves of baseball fans flooding the streets and days will go by before you're found again. And just... don't go outside on September 1.