Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

[tangent]

No. They are separate contracts that have been underway for some time now. Construction of the rail line and construction of the stations are their own line items, and the primary areas of contractor corruption. The wall/culvert contracts that have not been canceled because they're tied in with the drainage fixes, and can't just go under work stoppage while the disrupted ground and culverts aren't stitched back together into fully-functioning state. The majority of the $700M "sunk cost" itemization comes from these un-cancelable environmental contracts that must happen whether the rest of the project goes forward or not.

It's fair criticism as to why these water management projects had to get lumped in with GLX in the first place, but that ship sailed long ago. But no one can just go "fuck drainage" and make all that go away. EPA's going to have one very big beef with Magoun Sq.-area properties being left to flood forever because a job that was started was never finished.

My point was that the issues of the retaining walls, widening the ROW, drainage aren't even under the station budget.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Yes, need to completely scrap the stations and make them functionally equivalent to D line stops with no stations, no elevators, no indoor area at all... riders cross the tracks to get to the other side, just ramps for ADA compliance, and simple enclosures or bare bones roof to keep riders dry.

Otherwise if the underlying requirements don't change then we are probably talking about a waste of money on redesign work for some nominal savings which would have been better spent just moving forward as designed with new bids.

It's like you haven't been reading this thread at all and are trying to create your own facts through belligerent repetition. Why waste your own time with effort so unsatisfying, let alone waste ours?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

My point was that the issues of the retaining walls, widening the ROW, drainage aren't even under the station budget.

Correct. They are not related in any way, shape or form. So why does it fucking matter?


Oh, right...belligerent repetition creates its own reality.

 

[tangent]

Correct. They are not related in any way, shape or form. So why does it fucking matter?


Oh, right...belligerent repetition creates its own reality.

Seriously look in a mirror.

It matters because you and others have brought up these requirements as if they have something do with the station costs.

 

[tangent]

It's like you haven't been reading this thread at all and are trying to create your own facts through belligerent repetition. Why waste your own time with effort so unsatisfying, let alone waste ours?

Funny, that is pretty much your role here... I mean after the number of words you have spent repeating all your specious arguments it is so obvious why it costs $60 million dollars to somehow magically transport people 35 feet down into a ditch so they can wait for a trolley.

 

[datadyne007]

Funny, that is pretty much your role here... I mean after the number of words you have spent repeating all your specious arguments it is so obvious why it costs $60 million dollars to somehow magically transport people 35 feet down into a ditch so they can wait for a trolley.

Please tell us right now what qualifies you to assess the cost of stations and make claims that the stations should cost $X. Are you in the AEC industry? Are you a cost estimator? Are you affiliated with MAAB and understand accessibility requirements? Are you in the transit industry?

 

[WormtownNative]

Funny, that is pretty much your role here... I mean after the number of words you have spent repeating all your specious arguments it is so obvious why it costs $60 million dollars to somehow magically transport people 35 feet down into a ditch so they can wait for a trolley.

And your role is to obviously go off on a lunatic tangent, isn't it?

If I wanted this stupidity I would've read the comment section on Facebook. I don't have a single iron in the fire towards GLX - I live in Worcester, this isn't going to affect me other than taxes. But look, the studies have proven it's needed, so just build it already with the stations and other projects out for re-bid.

Quite frankly, I came to ArchBoston to read about transit, infrastructure, and economic developments and occasionally remind people that Worcester isn't completely stale. I didn't come here for an argument I could find in a dive bar where old curmudgeons do nothing but complain about everything.

[/rant]

To the mods and admins, I apologize for my rant. Feel free to delete if you need to. I just needed to vent this because I'm tired of this argument. F-Line knows his stuff, and will forget more than I will likely ever know, and tangent is keeping the "it costs too much" tirade going because he can. I for one am getting sick of it, and I suspect others here are as well.

That's all I have to contribute.

 

[The EGE]

The D Line is an utterly terrible comparison - and if it's your idea of good transit, try riding it at rush hour. It's not even possible to get on many trains east of Reservoir between 7 and 9 am. Suffers from persistent signal issues, frequent bunching and irregular headways, poor travel times. The D Line as it is would not be legal to build today, and many of the stations would be required to be much more like GLX stations.

Fenway has a substantially longer accessible than non-accessible route between bus and rail. Over 1100 feet for someone in a wheelchair to get from a southbound 47 or CT2 to a D train. That's not legal to build today. You'd be building elevators to the platforms, and a dedicated pedestrian crossing at the bus stop. Brookline Village, Reservoir, Newton Highlands, and Riverside also have questionably legal transfer issues.

Pedestrian grade crossings (i.e, those not at gate-protected street crossings) fundamentally aren't safe. You can get away with them on light rail than runs every 15 or 30 minutes, or commuter rail if there's good visibility. If you're at street level or out in the boonies where there are a myriad of safe exit options. You can't when there's a train every six minutes at rush hour (or less - especially if ridership ends up requiring two branchlines to be routed to Medford). All it takes is one person to slip on ice, or have their wheelchair stall, with poor visiblity -and suddenly the T is up to their knees in lawsuits because someone died because of cost-cutting. People die on the commuter rail when they cut across tracks because there isn't a pedestrian bridge; people have died crossing the Green Line too. The MBTA will not build new pedestrian grade crossings for this reason - they have not since 1998. Flat out refuse to. Wouldn't do it in Salem two years ago because there was no way they could properly protect pedestrians on a blind curve. At Longwood, where Olmstead diehards would have deep-sixed a pedestrian bridge, they spent extra to build an ADA route to the inbound platform from the park just to offer an alternate route.

Every single stop except Reservoir either requires crossing the tracks to get to one of the platforms, or a substantial detour (500 feet or more) to reach the next overpass. Reservoir requires it to get from the outbound platform to buses. It's dangerous. It's bad for operations - trains have to slow down significantly more when entering stations. It doesn't meet fire code - at half the stations, a train in the station blocks the only accessible exits. That's outright illegal to build new.

Because drainage wasn't settled properly in 1959, the Fenway portal has flooding problems. The 1996 flood severely damaged the Green Line tunnel; some of the aftereffects are still felt today. (There are recurring signal problems which the operations folks believe are from 1996 water damage.) Guess what - even to build bare platforms, you still need proper drainage, which results in half or more of the costs of many station projects. EPA and MEPA will laugh you all the way to a rejected EIS if you don't fix drainage issues.

So when you say you want to build the D Line, what you're saying is that you want a substandard, unsafe, flooded, and illegal transit line that doesn't well serve passengers with disabilities. it was state of the art in 1959, but in 2016 it's a poor substitute for a modern light rail line.

The D line has substantially sized heated shelters at every stop. Multiple fare machines, electronic signage. Those cost money. Build that bare minimum, and what're you left with? Some steel and glass boxes with a couple faregates. Guess what, Boston is actually pretty good at building glass and steel boxes at reasonable prices. So you can spend 80% of the current price building minimal stations and 20% completely redoing the design process, or you can spend the same amount for high-quality, attractive, accessible stations that will properly accommodate riders will pay state and local dividends in real estate value.

I've detailed upthread why you can't just make the GLX POP. The short version: You have to convert all the surface stops to POP to make that work. That means fare machines and validators (with utility costs, and likely ADA requirements as well) at every single stop.

 

[The EGE]

That the GLX stations average over 60 million is a problem. Not on the order of magnitude of the contractors gouging, or that the state has repeatedly put off a legal commitment to the people of Somerville, but it is a problem.

The problem is not the design of the stations. The problem is that stations of this design are being estimated to cost this much. That's a symptom of the unethical contractors, of the generally ridiculous cost of transit construction in this country, and of the state dragging its feet so long on GLX that it flat-out costs more than it would have a decade ago. Those are all issues that need to e fixed, and maybe the first will reduce the station cost some. But it's a false flag to blame those planning the GLX stations, when the issues lie at a state level and a national level.

 

[citylover94]

+1 Thank you for that explanation I was trying to get that across but you did a much better job than I ever could of.

Also if people crossing the tracks at rush hour is a problem on the D line imagine how bad it would be at stations that are predicted to receive at least 4 times as much ridership. The green line extension is predicted to get the same number of riders per mile as the Blue Line if that doesn't show to everyone that it is ridiculous to expect its design to match that of systems or lines that receive 1/4 less ridership then I don't know what will even aside from cutting costs as explained by EGE the safety of the customers and operations is severely compromised.

 

[Matthew]

First, I will agree that we don't want to build another "D" branch. Access to platforms is of supreme importance, skimping on elevators and egresses is a bad idea. ADA compliance is not only a legal mandate, it's a moral mandate.

However, this following statement is completely insane and a good demonstration of the closed-minded attitude of the Boston-area transit world:

Pedestrian grade crossings (i.e, those not at gate-protected street crossings) fundamentally aren't safe. You can get away with them on light rail than runs every 15 or 30 minutes

Excuse me? So, it's okay for road designers to force me to cross paths at-grade with 40 ton, 18-wheel trucks going 40+ mph, driven by teenagers with attitude problems (e.g. on Brighton Ave). But you think that it's not okay for me to cross paths with light rail vehicles, which are basically glorified large buses, driven by trained operators following signals?

So I guess that for all those years I rode the "B" branch I should be dead by now. Or maybe it's actually not a problem.

I call this attitude by the MBTA (and you're right, they do seem to be afraid of crossings with light rail) a form of irrational "rail-fear". The same engineers who wouldn't even think twice to force me to cross heavy truck traffic are extremely afraid of light rail vehicles. Because they are trains ... unusual, scary objects that are not normally encountered on the American streetscape!

If the Green Line were suddenly converted into BRT (a stupid idea, but anyway), then all of these objections to grade-crossings would suddenly mysteriously vanish! Why? Because buses with rubber tyres are a familiar object to engineers. The "rail-fear" does not apply.

Get over it (and to the MBTA also: get over it). The Green Line is not some dangerous species. It does not require enormous fences like a commuter rail train. It's a light rail tramway, similar to those found all over the world.

Paris T3 carries over 100,000 passengers per day:

Did they surround it with giant fences and completely grade-separated crossings? Of course not. Because the French don't suffer from irrational "rail-fear".

How about the Dutch:

No signals at all on these old narrow streets (except for managing the single track sections). Even I thought this might be going too far. But hey, it works. And those trains come every couple of minutes.

Madrid:

Munich:

What don't you see? Huge fences nor grade-separation. Why not? Because sensible engineers who are familiar with tramways are not afraid of grade-crossings with trams. Because the entire point of tram systems is to closely interface with the riding public, making access as easy as possible. Otherwise you basically end up with a subway... like the GLX.

So looping around to the starting point: I agree that the GLX should have proper elevators, escalators, and multiple egresses. And that it's pound-foolish to cut those out. But the Green Line is a tram-train. It can behave like a tram, and it can behave like a train. And it's utterly foolish of the MBTA to try and pretend that the Green Line only behaves like a commuter train. And to claim that pedestrian grade-crossings are impossible to create safely is the height of "Boston exceptionalism" hubris. Especially when Boston's own Park Street has a pedestrian grade crossing at the single busiest point in the entire system! Underground!

Before you respond, think to yourself: if the vehicles were running on rubber tyres (e.g. trucks or buses), would you be writing the same?

 

[Matthew]

To the mods and admins, I apologize for my rant. Feel free to delete if you need to. I just needed to vent this because I'm tired of this argument. F-Line knows his stuff, and will forget more than I will likely ever know,

I just want to point out that F-Line is only human and he does make mistakes. And if you've followed the forum for a while you may have noticed that whenever winstonoboogie has corrected those mistakes, F-Line has thrown a temper-tantrum on the thread.

Let's not get into hero-worship here, okay?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I just want to point out that F-Line is only human and he does make mistakes. And if you've followed the forum for a while you may have noticed that whenever winstonoboogie has corrected those mistakes, F-Line has thrown a temper-tantrum on the thread.

Let's not get into hero-worship here, okay?

This is pretty a pretty ballsy statement coming 5 minutes after firing off a tough-guy retort to EGE painting broad brushes such as this:

However, this following statement is completely insane and a good demonstration of the closed-minded attitude of the Boston-area transit world:

Don't let all that recent world travel go straight to your head, now.


I don't need anyone's defending, but if you're going to be dragging posting histories far, far off-topic into this to cloak yourself in sanctimony I don't think you want to be encouraging a board search trip down memory lane to some of your more memorable AB tantrums and unprovoked personal attacks.

 

[WormtownNative]

Normally I would suggest employing one of these:

But it appears we've already derailed and gone pretty far off the tracks.

 

[bigeman312]

To be on the tracks or off the tracks. That is the question.

 

[tangent]

I'd be happy to discuss what it should cost to build one of these stations based on a reasonable set of requirements and cost comparisons with similar projects, but some seem more interested to justify an unsustainable status quo and make unprovoked personal attacks rather than discuss.

 

[citylover94]

Tangent the reality is that there are no comparable light rail systems in the United States to compare it too. Not a single other light rail line and most heavy rail rapid transit doesn't see the number of passengers on a per mile basis that this extension will see. It doesn't make sense to compare to Europe as the way they plan and build LRT and rail in general is better and cheaper than here and in the rest of North America it doesn't make sense to compare it to the systems in Mexico as far as I can tell correct me if I am wrong and the Canadian systems that see as heavy use per mile are in Calgary and Edmonton and those are both much smaller cities with a different style of development than Boston.

Correct me if I am wrong but I just don't see a project anywhere in North America that is truly comparable.

ADA requirements are non-negotiable to a large extent and most of what is being done is being driven by those requirements. With new construction it is very rare for a variance to be granted and it is not fair to expect people who may be vision, hearing impaired, or of limited mobility to have to worry about crossing tracks when it is just as easy to do a center platform with grade separated entry from above or beside the station.

As far as faregates go at this point I would say don't issue a change order and force a redesign because to remove those means changing passenger flow because people will approach the station in a slightly different manner and also means adding validation stations to prove you paid. That means hours of work by a design team. If you want to pay that extra few million dollars for each and every station to be redesigned be my guest write a check but I don't think it is worth it at this point.

Designers and engineers have to be paid for work like that and that is several weeks worth of design changes to go through each station and do those changes.

Also never forget what the Spanish say is the key to a cheap project. Build it fast. Don't drag your feet and moan about it being expensive do it quick and do it well and you will get a cheaper and good quality end result. This rule never seems to be followed in the US though which is part of our infrastructure cost inflation issue.

 

[bigeman312]

I wish this thread was still called "Green Line to Medford to start in 2011"

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I'd be happy to discuss what it should cost to build one of these stations based on a reasonable set of requirements and cost comparisons with similar projects, but some seem more interested to justify an unsustainable status quo and make unprovoked personal attacks rather than discuss.

Work within the constraints Randomgear laid out, because he knows what change orders will do to a project. Change orders are the #1 way contractors run up the costs on any given project, so in a re-bid where that 50% corruption bloat comes off the books you still have to be hyper-vigilant about change orders to keep it in-budget. Since this project is at final design today, even the tiniest things can ding the project for change order fees. Which quickly pile up until the "cheaper" changes you did rearranging stuff aren't cheaper at all. And can quickly become more expensive. It's not necessarily logical, because you look at the revision and see "Look, I eliminated unnecessary stuff and it wasn't that big a change". But on any major civil engineering project it's the change count itself that drives the cost. It's how the industry makes its profits; bid within means, count on chefs stirring the pot and racking up change orders. It's WAY more above-board than the shit Skanska pulled withholding info, because ball's in the contractee's court on how many changes they order.

So, if you're going to cut features, they have to be omissions not design changes. i.e. Steel or concrete thing outright vanishes, not reworked. Stuff like:

• Eliminate plaza landscaping.
• Change the headhouse materials from glass to corrugated steel. Or painted cinder blocks or whatever. As long as it involves nothing load-bearing, because load-bearing change = change order.
• If a second egress can be outright cut without shifting or re-centering the platform, that's game. They did that on Gov't Center when the Blue level was originally supposed to have its former #2 egress reinstated to a new mini-headhouse on Cambridge St. with 1-2 minimal Charlie gates; that was outright cut with the stairs/shafting becoming an emergency exit instead.
• No interior space at all for vendors, standing room, etc. inside the headhouse...just a covering for the Charlie gates and stairs/elevator sitting on the same load-bearing concrete slab as before. e.g. Like the redone Copley outbound headhouse that's just a covering, nothing more.

It's a very, very limited range of cuts that doesn't give you much wiggle room at all beyond pure aesthetics of the headhouses. And aesthetics like glass really are pennies on the dollar vs. structural costs. So you'd be hard-pressed to squeeze a dozen $M off all 8 stations fishing for omissions that can be done without change orders. And I'm not sure any of the stations have second egresses up from the platform that are deletable, so that one potential higher-sum cut may not be in-play at all.




This stuff is all going to be a losing game of attrition with the change orders:

• Switchback ramps, not elevators. This will cost more...guaranteed.
• Open track-level access. Pretty much impossible anywhere because all station sitings are either up on a bridge or down in a cut, but that ends up a complete design scrapping. You'd have to relocate retaining walls and do side platforms vs. the up/down + center platforms. Whole new station's worth of change orders. "D Line-style" stations will cost you more. Up to twice as much more, all because of the rip-it-up-and-start-again that racks up dozens of change order dings.
• Anything involving touching the retaining walls. Not only is that a change order, it's a re-EIS'ing.
• Carhouse relocation. Like it or not, they're pretty much stuck with the MS Walker parcel because either of the two other sites the Brickbottomites rejected would require a different-shaped yard, different-shaped building, and totally different track access. Total redesign of one of the things that was already--sans contractor corruption--starting to worryingly bloat.
• Changing the car storage. Per reply to Arlington's post the service out here is a rough mirror equivalent to what Reservoir carhouse supplies, and trying to do sleight-of-hand tricks means taking on bloat from general Green Line state-of-repair. Substituting mini-yards like Lechmere on each branch instead of the consolidated facility is going to warp everything structurally at ends of the line...especially on the Union Branch. And require more land acquisition.
• Cutting stations wholesale. Track and retaining wall alignment changes if you do that. And if you just leave it with empty space for a station to infill later, it's going to cost more later to revisit.

You get the picture. Penny-wise becomes pound-foolish when you itemize the number of change orders self-contained in the umbrella of each 'macro'-level change. Because...sure, you're moving one wall. But 5 load-bearing things need redesign because of that one shifted wall, so you're really getting dinged for 5 change orders. That's how something like deleting elevators and going to switchback ramps ends up real no-foolin' more expensive than if you changed nothing at all.




Also...


Don't forget there's a revenue component here.

• This D Line comparison that everything can go perfectly fine with onboard PoP doesn't take into account that 5000-10,000 riders per stop is a whole different universe from 1500-3500 riders spread unevenly out to Riverside. That's a huge dwell penalty to have people fumbling for their Charlies at every door. You wouldn't ever think to do that at Broadway or Aquarium, because it's going to cause ridership attrition to snarl boarding that severely. Well...that's the type of ridership we're talking. Even Fenway handles its D-high 3500 daily boardings very poorly at crush when the extra inspectors are scanning tickets on the ground to disperse the Fenway crowds.

• With higher ridership comes more ADA responsibility. Somerville isn't all hipsters and Tufts students. Somerville Elder Services is right down the street from Union. There are medical offices and a large dialysis clinic at Ball Sq. The Medford-leaning side has more longtime homeowners. A lot of the Brazilian community has multiple generations living under one roof. There are several schools on the route. Can't make it too tough on them to get down in the pit, another point against switchback ramps and for elevators. And you can't remove baseline-spec weather protection shelters, especially on the way down. Tracked water at the top of the stairs because the headhouse got busted down to nothing leads to slippery stairs; so does shorting the platform overhang. What you can get away with at a bus stop (or trolley stop with bus-like ridership) with minimalist shelter doesn't fly with this kind of ridership projected across every demographic.

• The Community Path. For one, the path just rides the top of the retaining wall the whole way down to Washington St. so not a penny gets saved construction-wise. Unless you think saving a $10,000 crosswalk here and there is going to make a difference (not even sure path egresses are GLX budget or Somerville DPW budget). But also figure that's a big source of where the ridership is expected to come from around the station catchments.
• In general, beware the cuts that lower farebox recovery. If the one-time capital "savings" end up less than what another 0.5% off the top of daily ridership will amortize over the course of 5, 10, 15, 20 years...congratulations, you just lit money on fire. So beware the trap where you start gambling on maybe a little less ridership becomes OK for balancing the books on feature cuts that might only save a few dozen $M. At those scales you really, really need to check the math because the amortization-over-time can quickly swing the balance in the wrong direction. PoP vs. faregates and dwell time attrition vs. projected ridership really comes into play with this one. If it takes an average of 2 minutes longer to board the train at peak periods, and the schedule has to be thinned out as a result, more ridership/revenue gets lost than the cost of a relatively simple Charlie gate. Hell...this is why they might even want to think about installing some gates outdoors in a outdoor cage at D/Fenway once all the new towers go up around there. That station is going to be nearing a tipping point where all-doors PoP is going to get overwhelmed too often at surge crowds.

In total, it's a very constrained environment. I seriously doubt there's more than an absolute most of few dozen $M in feature parings with the stations that won't trigger change order attrition. Maybe a full audit of the carhouse turns up a little bit more, but nothing revolutionary. Sum total, it's a couple % off the top where 50% can be attributed to the fucked bidding process, corrupt contractors, and state officials who left loopholes big enough to cram a billion dollars through. This stuff about feature cuts is so infinitessimally small in the total picture it's a distraction from the real issue: re-bidding this thing at initial projections, not bullshit Skanska highway robbery projections.


Fix the process failure and then maybe some light trims will make a meaningful % difference. But only because the stakes are so much lower...because those change orders limit your net-savings options so very severely. But it's doing it ass-backwards to start there. As long as the elephant is in the room in the form of that bidding loophole, it is cutting nose to spite face to get all worked up about station features. They're a drop in the bucket. That's why we say they don't matter.


Fight the real enemy first.

 

[tangent]

Are we talking about change orders? I thought they dropped the design team and the plan is for new bids for the stations. So they are either moving forward with designs as-is or we are talking about a complete redesign, which I agree is probably not worthwhile unless you can achieve something like a 4x cost savings.

But what were the design costs to begin with? Can someone find those numbers?

From what I heard on the radio this morning Pollack is calling on stakeholders (ie Somerville, private developers) to step forward with money for GLX. At this point that means no redesign, as-is with the remaining parts of the project to be bid out hopefully at less than what has been estimated.

The question then becomes what happens if Somerville doesn't come up with money. We can probably table this entire discussion about station redesign until that point, but I have a feeling Somerville is going to come back and say no and play a high stakes and ultimately futile game of chicken with the governor. At which point there needs to be a plan B otherwise this project is going further down the rabbit hole of endless delays.