When the North Bank bridge was first proposed, and the renders discussed on this board, I noted on here at the time that its south pier was too close to the tracks for future expansion of North Station's railway capacity. "Futuring" seems to be a foreign concept for the MBTA and MassDOT.
Because it's plainly not necessary. Let's reserve two tracks just for Amtrak, so 8 for CR. If turnarounds take 30 minutes, which is very long for peak periods, that would limit North Station to 16 TPH. That's still enough for 15 minute service to Lowell, Fitchburg, and Haverhill, and Beverly, and 30 minutes to Newburyport and Rockport. Even with crazy long peak turnarounds, especially with double-ended electric trains, and 2 tracks reserved for the 5 times per day Downeaster, the existing station capacity is still enough for high-frequency service on every branch that could conceivably warrant it.
There was discussed on here in 2011/1012 the option of demolishing the MGH (formerly the "Spalding") building to provide room for additional berths at North Station, which would have required additional track(s) crossing the Charles River. With the new railroad bridge proposal preserving the existing number of tracks only, that is probably a lost cause,
The bridge replacement is designed to allow use of the two existing tracks at North Station that are currently not in service (11 and 12). The MGH building would be unaffected. The parking would get shaved a bit, however. Engineering plans here.
Then there is even less reason to be worried about expansion.
The project is expanding from 4 to 6 tracks over the Charles, isn't it?
When they did the original NB bridge, they wouldn't have known if A tower would be going or staying tho - this is a bit of a fault of logic.
That's correct. Adding a third span, among other things, enables the use of tracks 11 and 12 resulting in an expansion of North Station capacity.
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I've been saying this upthread, there's gotta be something about this we (many of us) don't understand. Like, are they raising the entire terminal area track bed for sea level change or something? This has always been talked about like a total mega project. Healey and Eng have both recently been citing at as a huge deal. That size workforce is huge.
I think the jobs figure is not referring to jobs working directly on the project itself, but rather jobs created in the general economy due to the economic stimulus from the project.
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From the RFQ:I think @bigpicture7 is correct, that the project must involve quite a bit more than just a bridge.
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North Station was built for 6 platforms to serve 12 tracks, but currently only 5 are built out and one is just a little unused stub. This will complete the sixth platform increasing the number of tracks by 20%.
I've always wondered why they had that extra platform. Kind of crazy that it's taken this long to get a project that will connect that pre-built platform to an actual rail line.
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