Gov't Center Station Rebuild

Looks like GC might open five days earlier than expected - an MBTA developer (in their official capacity, it appears) is saying March 21st at 11:45am.
 
metasyntactic said:
Someone on reddit apparently snuck into the construction site and took some pictures inside GC:

https://imgur.com/a/7D430

https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/49ncaw/i_managed_to_sneak_into_the_government_center/
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Awesome. I'm not surprised. There was a giant gap in the fence near the Court/Cambridge/Tremont intersection yesterday afternoon (not one of the vehicle entrances). They've been moving it around so much I'm not surpised it's easy to "sneak" in.
 
Apparently the MBTA is looking for the photographer to question them. I hope they take the tack of "tell us how you snuck in so we can be better about it in the future, and we'll not press charges (and maybe give you a tour of a future project)."
 
nick said:
Riding through the station I'm again struck by the number of columns in the platform. Would it have been feasible to wholesale replace the station roof/plaza floor with new steel that could bear greater loads and subsequently reduce the number of columns? I wonder this for many of the T stations. Arlington is particularly problematic from a passenger flow perspective, as the columns are a few feet from the platform edge and the platform itself is fairly narrow (especially compared to Copley).
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Removing columns seems like a high cost, low payback item to me. What payback do you see? I would rather improve sightlines with video/lighting/materials and improve flow by expanding or connecting in places requiring new construction.
 
The EGE said:
Apparently the MBTA is looking for the photographer to question them. I hope they take the tack of "tell us how you snuck in so we can be better about it in the future, and we'll not press charges (and maybe give you a tour of a future project)."
Click to expand...

There were two transit police cruisers parked outside the vacant construction site when I walked by around 5. Apparently this incident prompted them to tighten security a bit.
 
Didnt know this was going to be lit. This looks great.

station.jpg-large.jpg

http://www.boston.com/news/2016/03/...-date-march/KXdGe1zlhVcwR0cEz0eNNI/story.html
 
Randomgear said:
Dear MBTA graphics department, please don't fix what TAC did right. Their car schemes on the other hand...
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Ouch! Well, at least I credited another Cambridge firm.


p.s.: I've fixed my original comment.
 
Arlington said:
Removing columns seems like a high cost, low payback item to me. What payback do you see? I would rather improve sightlines with video/lighting/materials and improve flow by expanding or connecting in places requiring new construction.
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The payback is that you have an unobstructed Green Line platform to better handle pedestrian flows and peak platform loading. It's more comfortable for customers. No one has built heavy rail stations like this since the mid 20th century because they cramp platforms and are a nuisance. Perhaps I should have clarified that I'm asking about the technical feasibility and not anyone's cost-benefit (after all, we all have our interests and biases).

A smarter way to have rebuilt this station would be to plant development on top to begin closing in City Hall Plaza from Cambridge Street. Sure it would be a complicated site on which to build, but we could have restored some of Cornhill Street in the process and made larger changes to Government Center (like eliminating many of the columns). This corner's value as a component of City Hall Plaza is negligible at best. Plus, some of the station's capital costs or even costs to maintain the station could have been a condition for approval of the development.
 
nick said:
The payback is that you have an unobstructed Green Line platform to better handle pedestrian flows and peak platform loading. It's more comfortable for customers. No one has built heavy rail stations like this since the mid 20th century because they cramp platforms and are a nuisance. Perhaps I should have clarified that I'm asking about the technical feasibility and not anyone's cost-benefit (after all, we all have our interests and biases).
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Technical feasibility is always: "easy, given unlimited budget". Daylight the thing and rebuild. Freeze the earth above it and re-excavate. Excavate slurry walls and span with bridgework.

All kinds of neat techniques exist.

You're asking to free up, what, 40 square feet of space? (10 columns 2'x2'?). Call it 90 square feet (assuming each column is a dead space 3'x3').

Everyone "knows" that by the 1920s the standard was centerline pillars and column-free boarding. Then by the 1960s (BART & WMATA) it was column-free everything. But I can't think of anybody who has ever thought it good to remove columns short of a full replacement (e.g. new Harvard Sq, new WTC)

Each person takes up about 3 square feet. The best/cheapest way to permanently add 90 square feet's worth of un-crowding GC is to permanently shift 30 connecting riders per cycle to some other connecting point. Building Blue @ MGH would probably do that for the same $ as whatever best-case technical solution is at GC.
 
Arlington said:
Technical feasibility is always: "easy, given unlimited budget". Daylight the thing and rebuild. Freeze the earth above it and re-excavate. Excavate slurry walls and span with bridgework.

All kinds of neat techniques exist.

You're asking to free up, what, 40 square feet of space? (10 columns 2'x2'?). Call it 90 square feet (assuming each column is a dead space 3'x3').

Everyone "knows" that by the 1920s the standard was centerline pillars and column-free boarding. Then by the 1960s (BART & WMATA) it was column-free everything. But I can't think of anybody who has ever thought it good to remove columns short of a full replacement (e.g. new Harvard Sq, new WTC)

Each person takes up about 3 square feet. The best/cheapest way to permanently add 90 square feet's worth of un-crowding GC is to permanently shift 30 connecting riders per cycle to some other connecting point. Building Blue @ MGH would probably do that for the same $ as whatever best-case technical solution is at GC.
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No dog in this fight, but in fairness, I don't think eliminating columns is about freeing up square footage that the columns displace--I think it frees up a lot more space in terms of sight-lines, sense of appropriate social proximity, freedom of movement, etc.
 
They did make a deliberate design choice to move the stairs further back from the platform edge - from 3 feet to 10 feet. That vastly mitigates the effect of the columns because that area is no longer difficult to move in.
 
The EGE said:
They did make a deliberate design choice to move the stairs further back from the platform edge - from 3 feet to 10 feet. That vastly mitigates the effect of the columns because that area is no longer difficult to move in.
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That's on the "outbound"/downhill/toward-Haymarket side, yes?

Was anything done on the inbound/toward-ParkSt side?

Im also thinking that raising the platform will help somewhat to mitigate the way that you used to feel pinched between a "wall" of trolley and the columns (by making the trolley's sidewall seem less tall)
 
My brother has just told me that someone had sneaked into the station to take some pics in there, to possibly post them on Facebook. It was on the local news.

Has anyone heard about this?

That said, if he were able to do that, then what if he were a terrorist, planning a massive Boston-Marathon-style bombing?! So much for supposedly tightened security since 09-11! :eek:
 
Jahvon09 said:
My brother has just told me that someone had sneaked into the station to take some pics in there, to possibly post them on Facebook. It was on the local news.

Has anyone heard about this?

That said, if he were able to do that, then what if he were a terrorist, planning a massive Boston-Marathon-style bombing?! So much for supposedly tightened security since 09-11! :eek:
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Look at post #643 from four days ago. :eek:
 
I'm liking this more as it nears completion. Not wildly enthusiastic but I like it. And not just in comparison to the hideous bunker it replaced, but I like it in and of itself. I especially like the colored lighting, gimmicky but what the hell.

I think it's an awkward and geeky design but the space it got plunked into can use some geeky angular clunkiness, especially in glass. It holds its own against the concrete clunkiness of City Hall. I like that it's at such an odd angle to everything else (which I realize was driven largely by platform configurations down below); it should be at an odd angle to everything else, it's an odd space. It adds something to one portion of the plaza, now we just need to add some other things wherever possible.

I do worry about the problem of pigeon shit on the roof.

I realize most folks here dislike or hate it. I'll sit back and await the wave of negativity, knock yourselves out. I think I'm going to like it even more in a year, even if the pigeon shit issue gets really gross. Given the state of the T, even a pigeon shit problem would be apt, a generally good design marred because the most basic consideration was overlooked. (Or maybe I'll get lucky and learn they used some lo-tack glass coating that sheds birdshit really well? Does such a glass exist?)
 
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