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Or smog.

Real brick masonry instead of the Whoop Building pink-ish faux brick panels would have made this a winner.

The way you stated your question - "You guys still hate this project? Lol" - could be taken as mocking those who don't like the building.

Wish they had a few taller buildings in the proposal, but hopefully at least the ever-elusive ped/bike bridge will be built over the Fitchburg Division tracks.

What will happen is people will walk on the adjacent paved path and not on the dirt path. I know that's what I would do.

I like it, except that the pedestrian path shouldn't be dirt. Older people can tripe on tree roots popping up through the dirt, plus it gets muddy and is just all around a tougher surface to walk on for everyone, young and old.

All the more reason then to delete the stub road.

Okay, here are the modifications I would make to the official proposal (see layout below). Add a 10' wide landscaped median by shifting the western part of the westbound lanes 10; to the north, and likewise shift the eastern part of the eastbound lane 10' to the south. The median would also...

Classy to the max!

The overly-shiny look of the renders may be skewing these buildings to appear trashier and more jumbled than they may actually turn out to be. But I have to admit, the way they look in the renders is like a parade of mismatched freaks.

MassDOT has traditionally been auto-centric, but the recently released preliminary designs by MassDOT for the Rutherford Ave and Grounding the McGrath projects are very much multi-modal "complete streets", moreso than this latest offering from DCR.

Another big minus I just noticed about the new design is that there are no islands for pedestrians to pause in the middle of the roadway when crossing the west end of this multi-lane behemoth.

Outstanding points are raised in that discussion, right on and correct. Pedestrians and bicyclists are screwed with the new design, traffic lanes are increased compared to the existing roadways, and urban heat islands are greatly increased with this so-called design.

It should be MassDOT taking these roads over from DCR. Many of these roads are numbered as state routes, plus they are major arterials for through traffic. The only reason these are in DCRs hands is history and tradition, a holdover from the early 1900s when these roads were actual parkways...

Definitely yes. It looks plain, cheap, and unimaginative. In this set of photos, it looks very 70s, in a bad way.

I agree. The existing setup at least has green space interspersed among the roadways. This new design is like one vast expanse of asphalt pavement.

An award winner for the most unimaginative and least context sensitive design, straight out of the AASHTO Green Book. I would put in a landscaped median, just to break up the sea of asphalt.

That didn't deter BERY from planning the Post Office Square tunnel along Essex St. If they felt they could do it, I have confidence it can be done:

Wow, I hope this underpass elimination design sticks. The preliminary designs have bounced back and forth the last several years like a ping pong ball; first without underpasses, then underpasses added back in because MassDOT was fretting about casino traffic, now the underpasses, thankfully...

I still think about some kind of LRV line using that abandoned tunnel and station, maybe as an extension of the Fairmont Line converted to LRV. I still remember seeing the abandoned Broadway (upper) station in the early 1960s. Oh well. don't want to derail the thread.