Aprehensive_Words
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2022
- Messages
- 265
- Reaction score
- 507
While working out something for the God Mode thread over the weekend, I got sidetracked by a realization: If you've been paying attention to some of the permitting activity for some of the various parcels along Route 1A in Revere, you can pick up the scent of two related trends:
If air cargo is going to be a durable part of our economy, despite its climate impacts, thanks to our insatiable demand for travel and things that must be delivered Right Now, and if freight rail seems to have little future in the urban core, let's channel those trends in the least-damaging ways possible.
Brief sketch, starting at the existing air cargo facilities at the base of Runway 33R/4L:
- Massport could be trying to grow Logan in a shadow way, by expanding some airport service activities up there.
- Logistics developers definitely think there's good money to be made by growing there, since it's as close as you can get to the airport and still do large-footprint industrial buildings. See: the huge warehouses that are slated to replace some of the Irving oil terminals in Revere, and the 2019 proposal that got Jim Aloisi & co. worked into a lather about a disused rail line that has no clear future.
If air cargo is going to be a durable part of our economy, despite its climate impacts, thanks to our insatiable demand for travel and things that must be delivered Right Now, and if freight rail seems to have little future in the urban core, let's channel those trends in the least-damaging ways possible.
Brief sketch, starting at the existing air cargo facilities at the base of Runway 33R/4L:
- Elevated tracks taking some space on Harborside Drive and Transportation Way before slipping over the Pike at this low point here
- Elevated above Service Road, slipping back over the expressway at another low point around the East Boston library/Excel Academy
- Dropping down into/taking over the Coughlin Bypass Road before popping back up to elevated next to the CubeSmart building next to the Chelsea Street Bridge before branching:
- Eastie branch:
- Follow that same old, infamous rail line, but at ground level, incorporating flood defenses and maybe a public greenway as outlined in Climate Ready Boston Phase 2.
- Offers sidings/direct connections to the ground floor of anything built along 1A and, presumably, opportunities to send elevated spurs across 1A to things built on the soon-to-be-former oil terminal properties.
- Chelsea branch:
- Dodging the MWRA sewage pumping station, blowing through the derelict former MWRA pumping station to cross Chelsea Creek north of the lift bridge, soon to be as obsolete as the tank farms up-river.
- Turn to run along Eastern Ave to provide direct connections to the second floor of anything built along the creek.