Search results

Sure wish they'd do that at Sullivan, so you don't have to walk under an underpass and up a driveway to get to the entrance. It's like the designers had no idea East Somerville existed.

It's a similar situation at Magoun Square; the long walkway is so the tracks have enough distance to come back together before the bridge. Same at Medford/Tufts, it's why the station entrance is on Boston Ave instead of the College Ave bridge.

I would like to call for a nationwide ban on the phrases "on track" or "derailed" when referring to rail or transit projects.

With regard to the project to JFK St, I'm really glad they're getting rid of the parking on Memorial Drive westbound. That's always struck me as insanely dangerous.

You're going to lose heat during a blackout anyway. I'm contemplating adding solar and converting to full electric, but one of my biggest hesitations is no longer having a functioning stove and water heater during outages. We almost never lose power, however.

And there's a handy sign with the times the commuter rail goes by.

The narrator states that they're now having every E train deadhead out to Union and back. Which of course means the Lechmere Viaduct is open for business again; originally they were testing with a couple of vehicles they'd trucked over to the maintenance facility. It does raise the question of...

I can't quite tell from the photos, but isn't that the same elevator that was there already? (And aren't they going to have to add another one now?)

I think you've hit on the real problem with Wellington Circle, which is that Fellsway (and MVP to a lesser extent) splits into two widely-separated roadways, making the whole thing much more complicated than it has to be. If you make them single roadways it can be a simple (if large) signalized...

In the early planning phases, they were making noises about serving Ball and Magoun Squares via a single station at Cedar St. Which would have been incredibly inconvenient for anyone who didn't live on Cedar St, and the idea was quickly dropped. Excellent photos, thank you for doing this!

A shared-use path at least from West Medford to the MVP station would be a really useful thing. It's just over a quarter mile, but by existing roads it's almost twice the distance. Probably have to build a separate bridge for it though.

I vaguely remember F-Line saying that the only low-clearance bridge on the system that can't be modified to allow for catenary is the Memorial Drive bridge over the Grand Junction, which isn't used in revenue service.

Too much to hope that the Sullivan Square upgrades would include a new headhouse on the East Somerville side.

I'm confused by the video you linked to... you can't put a one-piece prefab bridge down across the locks, because boats still have to get through. A crossing via the AED would have to involve walkways on top of the lock gates like the Charles River Dam, which are 1 person wide with sharp bends...

They'd have to have some sort of ventilation, for fires, but the NSRL does presuppose electrification. For one thing, the grades required on the approaches are too steep for diesel-hauled trains.

And having said that, yes, we should be talking about the shambling reanimated corpse of the Red-Blue Connector on this thread. A thing I found particularly interesting is that they ruled out using a TBM because they'd have to grout the hell out of the soil in front of it and it would cause just...

Quite a while back, F-Line claimed that the center tracks of the North Station storage yard, in between the running tracks as they curve west to ascend to Science Park, were intentionally designed to provide for a future riverfront branch. I think he's flat-out wrong on this, the ramps for the...

Everything I've been hearing lately is that Medford Street will be fully reopened to traffic.

Possibly peak-hour Lowell-Boston expresses would be too disruptive of the rest of the schedule. I'm purely speculating here.

The Fast 14 approach only works for replacing the span on existing abutments. Widening the ROW requires replacing at least one abutment.