City Hall Plaza Revamp | Government Center

Last time I was in the cancer garden on the plaza, I was noticing the "SUBWAY EGRESS" hatch and very large grate. Someone took a Google photo sphere there.

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Looking down into the grate reveals a rectangular concrete room exactly that size, with a single access door I believe was on the gazebo side. The pit is only accessible by ladder - so not exactly an ideal emergency exit in case of a fire. The door perhaps ties into whatever access hallways run between the stairs and the actual tunnel?
 
Holy shit its the blue line extension to MGH!
 
awesome! anything visually cool down in that abandoned green-line tunnel (signage, tiles, whatever)?
 
It saddens me that this many people are so ignorant of their own city. That is the ACTIVE Green Line tunnel. If anything it contains the loop tracks that go back north. That Reddit thread is a shit show too. The abandoned tunnel is on the southeast side of the plaza. If only someone had made a map of it...
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
It saddens me that this many people are so ignorant of their own city. That is the ACTIVE Green Line tunnel. If anything it contains the loop tracks that go back north. That Reddit thread is a shit show too. The abandoned tunnel is on the southeast side of the plaza. If only someone had made a map of it...
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The have demolished a tunnel which is clearly NOT an active green line tunnel because, you know, the green line is still running. Can you be more clear about what you think they have destroyed?
 
@vanshnookenraggen I think most people in a City Hall Plaza discussion are aware of the existence of the Brattle Loop. What is being disassembled is some sort of large secondary tunnel on top of the GL, which seems to also veer off with access towards JFK. Obviously a train is not going through this tiny door, right?
C-Town_Jeff said:
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MjolnirMan said:
@vanshnookenraggen I think most people in a City Hall Plaza discussion are aware of the existence of the Brattle Loop. What is being disassembled is some sort of large secondary tunnel on top of the GL, which seems to also veer off with access towards JFK. Obviously a train is not going through this tiny door, right?
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I think my biggest issue was with the engineer who claimed to be working on the project. However, after I replied to him on Reddit, they changed their initial post. I'm not so sure people know the distinction between the GL and the other structures down there. Or maybe we do here, but Reddit is a larger cesspool.
 
It does look like those tunnels could plausibly be a sort of ventilation plenum for the Green Line south/westbound tunnel, like the reddit engineer suggested. It's just surprising since there doesn't seem to be any obvious powered fan systems, and it's not clear why they're demolishing it if it's needed for ventilation.

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vanshnookenraggen said:
I think my biggest issue was with the engineer who claimed to be working on the project. However, after I replied to him on Reddit, they changed their initial post. I'm not so sure people know the distinction between the GL and the other structures down there. Or maybe we do here, but Reddit is a larger cesspool.
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You've had some pretty angry posts this week in another thread also and on Reddit???? Is everything ok?
 
fattony said:
The have demolished a tunnel which is clearly NOT an active green line tunnel because, you know, the green line is still running. Can you be more clear about what you think they have destroyed?
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Yes, and the upper level tunnel tapered down and formed the base to the and its ceiling followed the slope of the stairway as it got closer to Congress St. The tunnels from the JFK building were preserved and they appear to be building vaults in place of the tunnel where the smaller side tunnels to the JFK intersected it, so my guess is that they were some sort of emergency egress for the JFK building.
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^Is that a remote-control demolition robot? Pretty cool.
 
Here are some more pics taken in December, as they were removing the tunnel.
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This picture I posted upthread from openrailway map shows its clearly the active green line tunnel. It must have had a second access tunnel on top of the main GL train tunnel, but you can see it lines up exactly with the picture below. You can also see the other GL tunnel that passes under the corner of the jfk building is exposed now too in a picture above. The second picture down in post 515 shows that now that the above tunnel is demolished whats left matches up in height to the other train tunnel next to it, so whats left now is the roof of the GL tunnel below.

 
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