The planned footbridge at New Bedford station is a textbook example of scope creep, and in particular how poor design can spend a lot of money without actual benefit. There's a 4,200-foot gap between road crossings of Route 18 near the station, with an
existing pedestrian bridge near the middle. That bridge is a classic 50s cage design, too steep to be accessible.
The
conceptual station design in 2009 called for keeping the existing footbridge. In fact, there would not have been any accessible route for pedestrians to reach the station!
In 2019, with the MBTA getting better at accessibility,
the redesigned station added a new footbridge. Two simple truss spans (much like bike trail bridges across the state) over Route 18, with shorter girder spans providing an almost level path to the platform (since the parking lot slopes up from Route 18 to the platform). Estimated cost was $10.5 million - not cheap, but it's almost 500 feet of bridge, half of it over an active highway.
Yesterday, the MBTA board approved a
$21.3 million contract for the footbridge. What made it cost more? Well, now it's a single-span tied arch, with a plaza at the west end instead of a simple ramp. At the station end, we now have two elevators and a big set of stairs. So it's double the cost, and worse for accessibility because you have to take an elevator then make your way up the sloped parking lot - and if the elevators are broken, too bad.
At no point in this process has there been any effort to add missing curb ramps and other basic accessibility features on Purchase Street (where the footbridge connects on the west). Nor has there been any to make the existing Hillman Street bridge (the most direct route to the downtown core) accessible for pedestrians.
