Time Travel in Puerto Rico

Let’s call it a coincidence that I was invited to breakfast with transportation gurus Fred Salvucci and Rick Dimino to lift a glass (or, more accurately, a cup of coffee) to the news that the I-90 Allston project was awarded funds by the federal government.?

I am not able to join them because I am in Puerto Rico. My former colleague, Justine Griffin , and I find ourselves honoring an anniversary of sorts. It was 30 years ago that we both began work together under the direction of Puerto Rican government officials and Fred Salvucci to envision a project heretofore unheard of on the magical Caribbean island…an urban rail system.?

Life intervened in the past years and I had not seen the fruition of our collective labors until fortunes allowed a trip designed around Tren Urbano.

Fortified by a lunch of Mofongo and bacaloa, we set out to the Sagrado Corazon station. Along the way, ?we asked a local whether the urban train was appreciated. He said, “Oh yes, students and those who can’t afford cars make good use of it.”

When we arrived at the station, we noticed that the train's logo was the same one that we had evaluated and promoted years ago.?

On the ride to Bayamon, Justine and I marveled to see the train actually stopped at stations whose names like “Hato Ray” were then for merely points on a paper as we sat in a room with local engineers who were working out the alignment.?

In the ?“key messages” ?of the 1990’s, we wrote words like “equality, access and community benefits.”?

But consulting can be a funny thing. One does not always get to see how those words play out in the lives of people. So it truly was remarkable to experience a moment when the passage of time unfolded so positively.?

So here’s to all the visionaries like Fred and Rick and to my colleagues past and present who have the patience to measure their contributions not in days or even years but in the decades yet to come.

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