Alewife T Station, Garage, Bus, & Trails

KCasiglio said:
Earnest question, why were Quincy Adams and Braintree able to get funded for major garage work (and Quincy Center rightfully getting demolished) while Alewife languishes?
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Not lack of money, per the 2025 CIP the Braintree/Quincy Adams rehabs got a combined $130m while Alewife alone has gotten $76m for repairs.
 
Is it that the quality of building materials used to build Alewife were sub-par / cheap? I’d expect a structure not too much over 40 years old to be in much better shape than this one is.
 
awood91 said:
Is it that the quality of building materials used to build Alewife were sub-par / cheap? I’d expect a structure not too much over 40 years old to be in much better shape than this one is.
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I'm not sure where I heard this but my understanding is yes, that's a contributing factor and it's shared across all the 1980s built stations on the system. See the Braintree branch and its rebuilt garages, and the general state of Porter/Davis.
 
TheRatmeister said:
I'm not sure where I heard this but my understanding is yes, that's a contributing factor and it's shared across all the 1980s built stations on the system. See the Braintree branch and its rebuilt garages, and the general state of Porter/Davis.
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Likely concrete contaminated with chloride from ocean sand and other high-salt aggregate. Cement standards require low chloride (low salt) sand, because chloride corrodes steel rebar. Contractors are known to cut corners using cheap ocean-derived sand, aggregate, rather than more expensive low-salt sand, aggregate. There is mandatory testing of cement samples during construction, but of course people look the other way for a "gratuity".

Public construction in the 70's, 80's, 90's in Massachusetts is flooded with poor quality concrete.

Also, our concrete parking structures are subjected to a lot of external salt from deicing salt mix. But that exposure is not enough to explain the incredibly fast deterioration of various public parking structures. The condemned MBTA parking structure in Lynn is only 30 years old (1992)!
 
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F-Line to Dudley said:
I never remember Alewife not looking like a decayed bombed-out hellhole. Even when it was only half the age it is now.
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At least, prior to August 2017, one could shake off the deep melancholic funk induced by Alewife's Bucharest 1976 vibes by walking ten minutes to Lanes & Games--the closest thing the Route 128 area had, following the closure of Wal-Lex in 2002, to the lanes showcased in the Big Lebowski, as far as I know--to throw some rocks and enjoy some extremely moderately-priced adult beverages for the Camberville area.

But alas, Dude, you cannot hold back time and market forces (though at the very least Lanes & Games' replacement added 228 housing units and I suppose is fairly TOD given the aforementioned 10-minute walk to the station... and perhaps mitigation from the project helped to refurbish the Alewife wetlands?)

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