Talk:Central subway (Boston)

Subway capitalization

I created this article while exploring sources to try to understand why some users capitalize "subway" so much. Notice that in sources, San Francisco's Central Subway is always capitalized, while Boston's is most often not. In terms of the advice of MOS:CAPS, I interpret that as meaning that SF's new subway has proper name Central Subway, while Boston has an evolving collection of tunnels has that been referred to various ways as the Tremont Street subway, the trolley subway, and the central subway, that allows the operation of the MBTA's Green Line and portions of other lines.

Even trying to find out exactly what "central subway" refers to in the Boston case is tricky, as sources are very thin (see book search). Looking to the MBTA.com site doesn't help much, as they barely mention it (and never capitalize it); they talk about "central subway tunnel", "central subway section", and "congestion in the central subway", but never define a "central subway" or "Central Subway".

Some railfan books, such as Cudahy's later book (see article references), like to cap Subway in lots of cases, with things like "converting the entire trolley subway—the Central Subway, as the Boston trolley subway came to be called—to high-platform operation, as had been done on the East Boston Tunnel in 1924." and "New articulated light rail cars provide service in Boston's Central Subway, now known as the Green Line", in which it's not even clear if he means the service is known as the Green Line or the central subway is known as the Green Line. Cudahy's earlier book uses a very different style, more like our MOS:CAPS in avoiding unnecessary caps, with subway mostly lowercase.

This survey report caps Central Subway, but makes it clear that central subway and Green Line are not the same thing, and that the central subway also has stations on heavy-rail lines, saying, "This included trips on which the Green Line link was entirely in the Central Subway, trips on links with one end at a Green Line surface stop and the other end in the subway, and trips on links between two surface stops. Four Green Line Central Subway stations are shared with heavy rail rapid transit stations, and the Green Line is used as an intermediate link for trips between the Blue and Red Lines, but only a few Green Line stops or stations have bus or commuter rail connections."

So I'm trying to capture more such perspectives in the article. In the meantime, a few editors keep reverting my fixes to try to conform with the advice of MOS:CAPS in other places where the term occurs, especially in Green Line (MBTA) where we had already weeks of hassle over caps in Tremont Street subway and Boylston Street subway after the RM discussion with consensus that those should not be capped. We could do another RM discussion here if someone want to propose capping for "Central Subway", but we should be able to discuss without that. I will bring the user-talk discussion about that back to here. Dicklyon (talk) 16:12, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

MOS:CAPS and reverts

@Pi.1415926535 and Qwirkle: I am copying this here from User_talk:Pi.1415926535#MOS:CAPS, as this is a better place to discuss the content/style issue. Dicklyon (talk) 16:17, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Re: Green Line (MBTA). Pi, please review MOS:CAPS: only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 02:31, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

@Qwirkle: You, too. Why do you guys keep putting back caps where our style is to avoid unnecessary caps? Dicklyon (talk) 02:57, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Given your blatant misrepresentation of the sources, I will await other eyes on the subject.Qwirkle (talk) 22:45, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

My observation is that sources are 50/50, more or less, which does not come close to meeting the criterion in MOS:CAPS. If I misrepresented something, please do point it out. Dicklyon (talk) 00:23, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Let’s start with page one of your google-dredge, shall we? What portion of the references there do you see as proper names? Qwirkle (talk) 00:27, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

You mean Google Book Search? This search gets these 10 on the first page:

• 2008 with "Boston central subway", "central subway system", "central subway area", "capacity in the central subway", "trips in the central subway", etc.

Which, if you actually read the effin’ thing, is referring to all the subway lines, not just the Central Subway. Lower case is entirely appropriate; it is refering to four separate systems in the central area, or if you prefer, Central Area. Qwirkle (talk) 03:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

• 1985 with "connecting the Central Subway system"
• 2009 the Cudahy book that caps "Central Subway" that I mentioned
• [1] false hit from "Grand Central subway station"
• 1965 with "the Central Subway" and "the Central Subway System" (which is the proper name of what?)

See page 444. It is referring to the Green Line; note the mention of PCCs. Qwirkle (talk) 03:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed; refers to the whole system here, not the tunnels. Dicklyon (talk) 20:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

• 1989 on lulu.com, papers from 1988 conference. "the Central Subway" and "the central subway" by different authors (found more complete version here).
• 1997 both "the central subway system" and "the Central Subway System" on the same page

Again, reading the text shows this is two different usages, with the lower case used for all lines in the central area. Qwirkle (talk) 03:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Both clearly refer to the whole system, not just the tunnels or the segments of the line that run in the subway. Dicklyon (talk) 20:25, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

• 2007 "the Central Subway"
• [2] false hit on "Grand Central subway station"
• 1990 hard to tell but the snippet says "the Green Line Central subway" (mixed like this happens, now and then)

So it's 4 capping it like a proper name, 1 "central subway", 1 "Central subway", 2 having it both ways. But don't stop there, because on the second page of 10 hits I see 4:4 and 2 false hits; on the third page 2:2 and bunch of false or can't-tell hits. In my experience, Google must be upweighting the capped uses of search terms, as the first page of hits tends to be more uppercase (and I have no inside info on this, so it's just my perception). In aggregate, that's 10 capping like proper name and 10 not, and that's all I find with that search (with other helper terms besides "Boston" we might find some others, but false hits remain a big issue). That's not close to the threshold of "consistently capitalized in realiable sources". And if you look at what the MBTA uses, it seems crazy to say there's a proper name for something that they only reference as generic. Dicklyon (talk) 01:13, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

In News search, on the other hand, I find only lowercase "central subway" referring to the Boston one, with all instances of "Central Subway" referring to SF's. Dicklyon (talk) 01:19, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Pi.1415926535:. In the original discussion at his talk page, Pi. claims (in his paragraph of personal attacks with refusal to discuss) to be familiar with a great many sources, most of which capitalize Central Subway. But he's not going to reveal them to us here, it seems. I've seen a few 1965 and later sources that say the system "came to be known as the Central Subway" and stuff like that, but not contemporaneous sources like books, newspapers, or magazines actually referring to the system that way. So yes, maybe I'm missing some. Dicklyon (talk) 02:04, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

To complicate things, there are also some sources using caps when referring to the tunnels, not the system. For example, this one from a 1988 conference distinguishes Central Subway tracks from surface lines:

"LRT facility improvements continue to be made. Reconstruction of Central Subway tracks and signaling began in 1985 and will continue through 1989. Surface line rehabilitation also has continued in several locations"

and this 1958 article that makes it clear that Central Subway refers to the tunnels, not the system:

...via elevated structure to North Station, then via subway (known as the Central Subway...

But plenty of others use lowercase, so I'm not finding evidence of the contextual divide that Qwirkle claims explains things. Dicklyon (talk) 02:09, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Notifications

This discussion has been notified at Talk:Green Line (MBTA)#Central subway (Boston). It has also been notified at MOS:CAPS - which is how I have come here. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 22:46, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Comments

As I noted at Talk:Green Line (MBTA)#Central subway (Boston) - my observation is that: if the subway is not sufficiently notable to have its own article, then it is not sufficiently notable in the collective consciousness to be recognised as a proper name and capitalised. To be clear though, the converse does not apply as a matter of course. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 22:41, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Branding

Trolleys Under the Hub (the 1997 book above) says "on August 26, 1965, the MBTA re-designated the Central Subway System as the Green Line System". Neverminding the "System" appended to both, it's clear what the modern designation is. But it's hard to find any mid-20th-century reference to the "Central Subway", in books, magazines, or newspapers. Does anyone know any, besides the one 1965 reference mentioned above? Dicklyon (talk) 02:54, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

About the only mention I find before then is the 1958 article linked above, in which "Central Subway" refers to the subway tunnels, not to the trolley system as a whole. Dicklyon (talk) 14:51, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Green Line article history

I find the first occurence of "central subway" (capped or not) in the Green Line (MBTA) article is this sentence from a 2007 edit:

• However most passengers desiring to continue to Science Park or Lechmere would have changed to a Lechmere signed car from a North Station signed car prior to the emergence from the central subway.

With the exception of comma inserted after However, this use has gone unchallenged and untouched for 13 years, surviving a split and re-merge even. We saw the first capped version added in 2009 in this unsourced bit:

• with the promise that 3 car trains will be in service in conclusion of the station construction on the Central Subway to make it ADA compliant.

Thee closest I can find to that topic is this 2011 Title VI report with lowercase "stations in the Green Line central subway".

Then another, with unsourced definition in 2011.

• Collectively, the Green Line tunnels through Downtown Boston and the Back Bay are sometimes called the Central Subway in planning documents.

No such documents are in evidence. Some years later the 2012 Malikova thesis ref was added, saying only "The Central Subway, defined as Kenmore Station to North Station...".

Nonsense, unless by “in evidence” you mean “bundled up and tied in a ribbon for the most desultory internet searcher”. Here, for instance, we see an extremely authoritative writer in an extremely authoritative publication, from 1965. Qwirkle (talk) 19:10, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that on Hathitrust; I had only seen snippets on Google book search. By "in evidence" I meant cited, or presented in support of the claim about "planning documents"; do more exist? Is this a planning document, or just a presentation of the state of the subways? I notice it uses "Central Subway System" and "Central Subway system" as well as plain "Central Subway", so I guess they're still trying to work out what's a name for what. Dicklyon (talk) 20:00, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Also note that he's using Central Subway System as a synonym for what we now call the Green Line, not, as many others do, as a reference to the tunnels known as the central subway. Are there more sources that would suggest this kind of split, with the proper name of a system versus the generic for the tunnels? Where are they? Dicklyon (talk) 20:04, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

This general lack of sourcing is not good, which is why I keep exploring. It's a bit extreme to claim something is a proper name from just a handful of uses and no actual definition. Dicklyon (talk) 18:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

For a long time (e.g. this 2014 version) the article had cited this news story for the paragraph starting "The Lechmere Viaduct originally connected to the Central Subway via ...", but the cited news article does not use those words, capped or not. This other article from the same month uses lowercase "...these trips help us achieve optimal movement of trains in the congested central subway".

There's also a photo File:Kenmore loop track from outbound platform, January 2012.jpg that was uploaded in 2012 by Pi... with description that includes "central subway" in lowercase: "...allows trains from the C and D branches to loop without continuing into the central subway". I guess that was before he thought it was a proper name? Dicklyon (talk) 18:54, 14 June 2020 (UTC)