I-90 Interchange Improvement Project & West Station | Allston

[JumboBuc]

Globe: Mass. Pike to be rebuilt at ground level, Soldiers Field Road elevated in giant Allston project

After years of debate, state transportation officials Thursday announced the final design on the biggest highway project in Boston in a generation: rebuilding the Massachusetts Turnpike at ground level in Allston and elevating a section of Soldiers Field Road along the Charles River onto a new viaduct above the highway.

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[393b40]

WTF... I don't really get what this accomplishes at all. This feels like the most complicated of options.

 

[datadyne007]

WTF... I don't really get what this accomplishes at all. This feels like the most complicated of options.

Reduces the elevated lanes to 4 instead of 8 (narrower viaduct) and provides a generous bike & walking path.

 

[North Shore]

I'm still trying to make sense of this.

The whole point of grounding the Pike was in part to minimize maintenance concerns with regard to a viaduct. But now we're creating a new viaduct (granted it's decidedly narrower) that will require some amount of additional maintenance over a side by side Pike/SFR setup.

And what does this do for snow removal operations?

 

[jass]

They're adding a 3rd and fourth railroad track, right?

 

[Equilibria]

I'm still trying to make sense of this.

The whole point of grounding the Pike was in part to minimize maintenance concerns with regard to a viaduct. But now we're creating a new viaduct (granted it's decidedly narrower) that will require some amount of additional maintenance over a side by side Pike/SFR setup.

And what does this do for snow removal operations?

It's less than half of the bridge, to be fair. One viaduct instead of two, and probably both directions of SFR fit in less than half the width of an interstate once you count shoulders.

 

[datadyne007]

Why is this thread in Development Projects?

The development project thread should be Allston Landing.

 

[kingofsheeba]

Why even demolish the overpass if you're going to build another elevated one? That render just looks kinda silly and more prone to collapse later on down.

 

[tangent]

All to avoid filling in ten feet more of the Charles... we need to stop treating wetlands and waterways like sacred cows. There could have been some offsetting remediation for ten or twenty million and it still would have saved a hundred million and turned out better.

Forget it, wait until I90 falls down... how much longer is the useful life of the existing viaduct? Unless Harvard is paying a billion dollars to make this happen, then they can wait 30 years.

 

[mass88]

8 years? Seriously?

 

[FK4]

Seems like a decent plan overall. We get a wider park. Now we just need to make the state demand connections from Comm Ave across the Pike.

 

[Gameguy326]

I love that we're grounding I-90. Can someone explain to me why we're elevating Soldier's? Are we double-decking the two highways now the whole way?

 

[odurandina]

Holy Christ.

Narrow the river 14' and build this right.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Cambridge will never allow filling in the Charles River 10 feet (or probably more). That proposal was killed in the early 1960's when the original Pike design had both the Pike and SFR on the ground, side by side. It wasn't allowed then, and since NIMBYism has gotten all the more virulent since then, it won't happen now. Cambridge NIMBYs are some of the most ferocious.

 

[Proposition Joe]

get rid of solider's field road

 

[jass]

get rid of solider's field road

-Reduce highway to 2 lanes each way
-Use money saved to build massive regional transportation center at Riverside with 3,000 car garage and connection to 4 rail lines

 

[mass88]

-Reduce highway to 2 lanes each way
-Use money saved to build massive regional transportation center at Riverside with 3,000 car garage and connection to 4 rail lines

That's a non-starter.

 

[bosdevelopment]

-Reduce highway to 2 lanes each way
-Use money saved to build massive regional transportation center at Riverside with 3,000 car garage and connection to 4 rail lines

Most out-of-touch comment of 2019 candidate right here folks.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

They're adding a 3rd and fourth railroad track, right?

All design alts. for the project, including this one, reserve 4 tracks from western project limits to the point where Worcester Line and Grand Junction split off, and then it's 2 x 2 for each line (Worcester busts down to 2 anyway to slip under Comm Ave., and the GJ was formerly 2 tracks so capacity is reserved).

 

[CSTH]

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether this is the optimal layout...

...its mystifying to me that a structure like this would be 'designed' with a purely utilitarian form.

Would we let the city or state build a new office building in Boston without an ounce of architectural value? Of course not (they've actually built some nice ones recently).

Would we let them build a new bridge *across* the charles that looked like this? Of course not - so why would we build a new structure next to the charles that is so ugly and soulless?

A little design could go a long way here. Right now this looks like a the fucking LA river culvert.

Why not make it a series of shallow arches, echoing the abutments of the BU bridge next door..and the river & western bridges upstream? Put some black screening in the spans to disguise and muffle the traffic a bit (allowing for egress and ventilation as necessary). And put a granite veneer on the lower retaining wall, so it looks like the old seawall downstream on back street?

This project could actually define a nice little space in bend of the river here...but at least as rendered here it seems destined to be just another unpleasant highway armpit.