MBTA Construction Projects

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4300th said:
Some pics from last week of Foxboro station:
Foxboro_Line_train_1764_at_Foxboro_station_and_renovations_May_2026_4.jpg

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Thirty-five million dollars, ladies and gentlemen.
 
What is that gray thingy for, that sits on the ground to the left? It looks like a power transformer.
 
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Jahvon09 said:
What is that gray thingy for, that sits on the ground to the left? It looks like a power transformer.
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The plastic thing next to the fence in the last photo? It's a handwashing station for the portapotties.
 
JumboBuc said:
Thirty-five million dollars, ladies and gentlemen.
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Hey, it only cost exactly as much as Natick Center with half the permanent platforms, no vertical access requirements whatsoever, no track re-spacing, no trail access, and no uninterrupted service during construction!

And it still projects more than $10M less than the stalled utterly conventional South Attleboro reno that's likely to jump in costs a couple more times before they actually get around to it!

And there was nothing fishy about the bid process! Nope, nothing whatsoever.


They're WINNING at project management, damnit! 🤡
 
Cool spot! That looks to be the east staircase; I spotted the south one during street construction in 2015. Information is sketchy, but it appears the two were replaced with the current entrances when the Symphony towers were built in the mid-1970s.

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Phase 2 of the Franklin Line Double Track project is now expected to be complete in fall 2026:
We have completed approximately 2 miles of track between Norfolk and Franklin. Crews are currently conducting slope stabilization work along the Mill River in Norfolk to strengthen the ground beneath new track. The remaining 1.5 miles of track will be completed in fall 2026.
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As for Phase 3:
We are in the early phases of development and expect to complete engineering and design work in phases.
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RandomWalk said:
I remain amazed at how a relatively short double track project on a right of way that previously had two tracks can take so long.
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Keolis has the construction contract for it, so they're using in-house track gangs to do it. Every time another maintenance project needs crew members, Franklin DT gets its staff raided to be reassigned elsewhere and so it ends up going idle for weeks/months at a time. And they don't really face a lot of deadline pressure because Phase 2 is the least-impactful part of this overall project for schedules (it's Phase 3 that's the critical one), so they're just taking their sweet time when they have available crews. If it were an outside contractor, they'd be churning right along because there'd be penalty clauses for running late and they'd be chasing more business elsewhere for their crews so there's more internal motivation to get it done already. But it's just not a priority with all that Keolis has on its plate.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Keolis has the construction contract for it, so they're using in-house track gangs to do it. Every time another maintenance project needs crew members, Franklin DT gets its staff raided to be reassigned elsewhere and so it ends up going idle for weeks/months at a time. And they don't really face a lot of deadline pressure because Phase 2 is the least-impactful part of this overall project for schedules (it's Phase 3 that's the critical one), so they're just taking their sweet time when they have available crews. If it were an outside contractor, they'd be churning right along because there'd be penalty clauses for running late and they'd be chasing more business elsewhere for their crews so there's more internal motivation to get it done already. But it's just not a priority with all that Keolis has on its plate.
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This honestly sounds like a very efficient (and cost-effective) way to make non-critical improvements.

If public sector agencies took this same approach -- staff up internal crews that you can dispatch as needed, and give them other non-critical projects to work on when things are slow -- we'd probably be way better off than the current paradigm of hiring external contractors with defined scopes for absolutely everything.
 
JumboBuc said:
This honestly sounds like a very efficient (and cost-effective) way to make non-critical improvements.

If public sector agencies took this same approach -- staff up internal crews that you can dispatch as needed, and give them other non-critical projects to work on when things are slow -- we'd probably be way better off than the current paradigm of hiring external contractors with defined scopes for absolutely everything.
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Good News! I believe this remains a goal of Eng's, to minimize reliance on 3rd party consultants and contractors. I think that building back capacity just takes time, but something like this is a great start - same with more MBTA track gangs on the transit side, engineers, etc. I've definitely seen more MBTA stamps on plans compared to previous years when everything had a contractors name on it.

For a case study, I think the most visible example of how rail maintenance privatization goes wrong I'm aware of in English is Railtrack - a series of infrastructure related rail disasters in the UK had generally been blamed on Railtrack and it's poor management of contractors, loss of institutional know how etc after BR was privatized - it led to the formation of Network Rail, and it taking back basically all maintenance activities in house. I believe these days the only things they contract out are major projects like bridges.

www.heraldscotland.com

Network Rail ends private maintenance

PRIVATE contractors are to stop maintaining the rail network after mounting criticism of falling safety standards and escalating costs.
www.heraldscotland.com www.heraldscotland.com
 
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