Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

Do people share my "read" of Javier's pictures (below) of the Broadway Bridge's new footings (Ball Sq) namely:
that there'll be 3 tracks on the CR side (1 GL and 2 LL) and only 1 track on the "GL side" of the pier?
Why would they choose to be so asymmetrical? Is it ease of construction? (that by building a 3-track span they could accommodate the CR tracks wherever they happened to be in their relocation?)
Javier said:
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Wow, what a project. Reminds me of the expressway/turnpike construction in the Boston area in the 1950's and 60's.
 
Arlington said:
Do people share my "read" of Javier's pictures (below) of the Broadway Bridge's new footings (Ball Sq) namely:
that there'll be 3 tracks on the CR side (1 GL and 2 LL) and only 1 track on the "GL side" of the pier?
Why would they choose to be so asymmetrical? Is it ease of construction? (that by building a 3-track span they could accommodate the CR tracks wherever they happened to be in their relocation?)
Click to expand...
My guess is that the tracks are diverging in this location as they approach the station, so there's more room for the pier there than between the GLX tracks and the Lowell Line tracks.
 
Wow, this is sweet. Might be a dumb question but is the entire ROW wide enough for quad track on both branches? or is the CR going to drop down to a single track in certain sections?
 
sneijder said:
Wow, this is sweet. Might be a dumb question but is the entire ROW wide enough for quad track on both branches? or is the CR going to drop down to a single track in certain sections?
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Quad track for each?

AFAIK, two tracks for the CR and two tracks for the GLX.

Why would the CR drop down to a single track? Or do you mean, single track for each direction? That's the plan right now.
 
Is construction going to keep going on this? I know Boston and Cambridge have announced upcoming mandated construction stoppages, but I don't know that Somerville has.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
State project; the individual municipalities have no say. That's strictly an MBTA call.
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The "purely outdoors" construction (no enclosed anything) has got to be helpful.

Has anyone else heard (the rumor that) some cities (globally) are taking advantage of the lack of commuters to do more road and rail work?
 
Arlington said:
Has anyone else heard (the rumor that) some cities (globally) are taking advantage of the lack of commuters to do more road and rail work?
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I just received a call from Somerville announcing weekend closures of School Street (where the high school and GLX projects meet) will now be collapsed into week-long closures in March and April... all due to low traffic because of COVID-19.
 
Historical note: the stairs on both sides of that last image were for the Somerville Junction station.
Cool information “The EGE”
 
George_Apley said:
I still think "Somerville Junction" is a better name for the Lowell Street station than "Magoun Square".
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It's been too long since that name was in popular vernacular, as the name "Somerville Junction" didn't ever really have carryover coattails onto the neighborhood that grew up around the stop. It was always strictly a RR placemarker. The Somerville Jct. stop was discontinued in 1958 in the bloodbath of drastic B&M service cuts, the depot building being demolished sometime after 1947. Hasn't even been a major diverging point for train traffic since the Fitchburg Cutoff was severed in 1981, and the last freight train through the junction to the old MaxPak factory was in 2005. We're almost 3 generations removed from when it was last a wayfinding namecheck for anyone except northside commuter rail crews for whom it's still a named NH Mainline interlocking. Magoun is the nearest surface-transit point of interest, so it makes absolute sense even with it being 1200 ft. from ground-zero Magoun that it use that name for wayfinding.

Ball Square Station isn't in ground-zero Ball Sq. either, but we aren't going by B&M "North Somerville" (also lasting till '58) station naming nomenclature instead. That old placemarker is similarly meaningless to anyone who came of age in the last 60 years.
 
Ball Square Station is about as close as you can get to ground-zero Ball Square without being in the middle of the intersection.
 
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