Line 4 is diverted, so we walked it
Five and a half miles, eleven stops, one very patient driver. What you see of Port Calder when the streetcar doesn't come.
The number 4 streetcar has been diverted for six weeks while the city replaces the rails on Harbor Row. The shuttle bus takes a route nobody can explain. So, one Tuesday, the two of us walked the line instead, all five and a half miles, from the depot to the lighthouse.
The depot to Mill Lane
The first stretch is warehouses and a smell of bread, which turns out to be Ines Moreau's bakery, which turns out to have been open since four. We bought a currant bun. We were told not to ask what it was called.
Mill Lane to the Corn Exchange
This is the stretch where the city changes. The warehouses give way to row houses, the row houses to the market, and the market to the first of the new apartments, with their balconies nobody seems to use.
The Corn Exchange to the harbor
At the harbor we met the driver of the shuttle bus on his break. He had seen us four times that morning, walking. He asked if we were lost. We said we were doing it on purpose. He said that was worse.
The harbor to the lighthouse
The last mile and a quarter follows the sea wall. There are no stops here, only benches, and on every bench someone waiting for a streetcar that would not come for six weeks. We did not tell them.
It took us three hours and forty minutes. The streetcar takes twenty-two.
