Greenbush gang

BC High horde finds the train cheaper, quieter, faster than the bus

Scott Calnan, age 13, starts each morning with a carefully calibrated social mission. He boards a 6:37 Greenbush train at its first station stop in his hometown of Scituate, climbing to the top of a two-decker car. There, Calnan finds an empty table that will seat six or more, and pulls a cellphone from his pocket. ‘‘Hey. I’m in the second to last car,’’ he tells his friend Liam, who is waiting at the next stop. ‘‘On the top.’’

When the train stops in North Scituate, Liam and two other boys climb on up.

Then Calnan puts out the second call, to Cohasset, directing more waiting friends to the day's designated car.

By 7 a.m., the table of boys in maroon shirts and khaki pants is covered with open textbooks and breakfast remnants.

For more than a decade, the people of Scituate, Cohasset, and especially Hingham debated whether commuters would, or should, avail themselves of a revived Greenbush commuter rail line. It occurred to few, if any, that some of those commuters would be students - that the commuter train would double as a school bus on rails.

A growing body of Boston College High School students who live on the South Shore ride the Greenbush train to school. On any given weekday, in any car, teenagers with lacrosse sticks and backpacks can nearly outnumber the business people with briefcases and coffee cups.

Craig Dias, transportation and customer service manager for the MBTA, estimates that close to 100 students began riding the Greenbush line to BC High in the past year.

The train is much cheaper and faster than a school bus. BC High officials give their blessing to the arrangement. And students say it's a much better ride.

"The bus is horrible," said Liam Ross-Fitzgibbons of Scituate, a BC High junior. "It's loud, it's crowded, and you get to school too late."

Chris Collins, a sophomore from Hingham, agreed. "The train beats the bus when it comes to time and personal space," he said. "The only tricky part is getting to the train on time."

In the mornings, sleepy students can be found clustered on the train that arrives at the UMass/JFK stop at 7:30. On a recent morning, Ross-Fitzgibbons and a friend occupied a small table in the lower half of the car in which Calnan and his friends also rode. They studied while listening to music on headphones, surrounded by adults who settled into a hushed commute.

It was a different story upstairs. By the time the train passed through Weymouth, the car's upper level was beginning to look and sound like a school cafeteria. A dozen or more seventh-graders had commandeered two tables and three rows of seats and were hanging over seat backs to share pens, candy, and opinions on everything from sports to teachers.

Some managed to study, with the help of iPods to block out their friends' voices. One read "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles, while several others passed around a newspaper.

Calnan prepared for an algebra test, with the help of his friend Ryan Seitter of Scituate. It was a luxury of sorts; he said he could never do homework when he rode the bus.

"The train is so much quieter," he said. "It's a smoother ride, too. And shorter. The bus took an hour and a half." The train commute is about 50 minutes. The Greenbush line stops in Scituate, Cohasset, Hingham, Weymouth, and Quincy before it reaches the JFK/UMass stop in Dorchester, where it's a short walk to BC High.

During the ride, students honor their own Greenbush protocol, and that includes protecting their personal space. There is an unwritten rule that allows only two people to sit in a three-seater and one person to sit in a two-seater, according to Collins. Occasionally, he said, adult commuters mess up the arrangement.

"One time some big guy in an overcoat sat with me in a two-seater," Collins said. "It was creepy and obnoxious."

Fares and payment methods for the train vary, but overall the cost is only about half that of the school bus. Collins's mother encouraged him to board at East Weymouth since that zone allows students to buy a monthly pass for $20. In the MBTA zones from West Hingham to Scituate, student passes are not available and fares run from $2.60 to $3.35 a trip.

By comparison, the school bus for students traveling from Scituate, Cohasset, Hingham, Hull, and Weymouth costs $1,900 per year, per boy.

Calnan and his friends are part of BC High's first-ever seventh-grade class. The school's new middle school, called the Arrupe Division, was created around the same time the resurrected Greenbush line began running again last fall, after a 48-year hiatus.

It was a fortuitous coincidence, although it took a while for the young students to make the switch from bus to train. It took a while to convince suburban parents that Greenbush was a safe and sensible choice.

Susan Doherty of Hingham, whose eighth-grade son, Max, boards at the Nantasket Junction stop, said she was against the train initially.

"When he first asked, I automatically said 'no way, not until you're in high school,' " she said. But her husband argued that it was a "direct shot" to the JFK/UMass station, and she relented. Once "some of the Hingham dads I know started spotting him," she said, she felt more comfortable letting her son join the Greenbush crew.

Colin Quinn of Scituate said, "At first my parents didn't want me riding the train. Now they get mad if I take the bus."

Adult commuters seem undaunted by the horde of teens aboard the train. But assistant conductor Loretta Conlon said youths require more time and patience than typical passengers.

"I can zoom through a car of adults in no time," she said. "The kids never have their money or their tickets ready." But she's willing to give them some slack. "Then again," she said, "they're new to this. And they're pretty young."

The boys are mostly well-behaved in the mornings, she said. In the afternoons, though, they're "all keyed up" and therefore more likely to "yell and throw things" and wander from car to car.

"We're definitely getting used to each other," she said as she waited while one boy rifled through his backpack for his ticket.

If serious problems arise, Dias said, the MBTA will go directly to the BC High administration. "We have a great relationship with them," he said.

Patrick Ruff, vice principal of student affairs for BC High, estimates that 600 students ride either the subway or commuter rail to school, and said the school is thrilled that Greenbush is a hit with the boys.

"We've felt very comfortable recommending it to parents," he said. "And it's great for the boys. It teaches them to be a little more responsible and a little more resourceful. If they miss a train, they have to figure out what to do."

When the train pulls into JFK/UMass, the boys gather their things and flood the doorways and platforms. Then the maroon-shirted throng moves toward the campus, a few hundred yards away. The train, suddenly eerily quiet, picks up speed and heads toward South Station.

Kathleen McKenna can be reached at kmck66@comcast.net.