Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

A bit off topic, but on the topic of Gilman Square, does anyone else feel the naming for this station could have been better?
Somerville is actively placemaking and trying to ensure neighborhoods are readily identifiable. Even the Magoun Square stop is not exactly adjacent to the station entrance.

I think East Somerville is the more surprising missing name- Brickbottom or Cobble Hill was the natural name. Hot-take: Curtatone is retiring- think he wants a Curtatone Square Station at McGrath/Washington when the overpass comes down? 🤔
 
I've definitely seen a Gilman Square sign, and in my experience people know where it is. Somerville Junction is only meaningful to rail nerds.

Little red sign in the park, same city design as the Teele Square and Wilson Square signs. It's been gone for a couple years, but bet it gets re-erected by year's end for the grand opening.
 
I like the use of Gillman Sq. as the name. You could call it "winter hill" but that's a pretty big area and the station also serves Highland ave/prospect hill etc.
I also would have gone for Brickbottom over East somerville.
 
Speaking as an ex- East Somerville resident, in local parlance that name means: "Broadway & surrounding streets all points east of McGrath to the City Line". With the I-93 Chinese wall clearly demarcating it from Assembly on the north side, and the severest downslope of the hill demarcating it on the south side. Washington St. itself is very very fringey for that nomenclature. That's all pretty clearly "Brickbottom" or "Cobble Hill".

But East Somerville is definitely used in real estate listings because the residential rental market is thoroughly uniform throughout the whole area. And it's also got some degree of traction in ethnic signaling, as the Brazilian/Portugese-speaking population of Somerville most heavily concentrates there. For political naming purposes, the station being anointed as such is practically a monument to how crazy-rich landlords + brokers are about to get off the impending gentrification tsunami.
 
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They are using some crack-healing techniques on the Lechemere/MOS viaduct That I had never seen before: Installing would appear to be stainless pressure nipples about 4 inches apart all along what must’ve been a real or potential crack and then apparently injecting something.

(Or maybe these are nuts on bolts securing some kind of backing on the other side of the bridge ?)

Elsewhere you will also see more traditional methods of concrete
cutting or chipping weak concrete down until you get to clean underlying rebar (They don’t seem to have added the new concrete back yet so there are lots of places to see fresh holes and fresh scours). At these points, the walls look surprisingly thin

The weakest sections seem to be about 5’ up from the bottom of the arches, where the vertical-wall-with arch-shaped-base meets the “real load bearing arch” at the bottom

Another observation: all the vertical concrete seems to me (based on the depth of those holes and scours) To be about half as thick as you might imagine. Does anyone else see that?

I don’t have real numbers,just a feel like the vertical concrete is 6” thick but should be 12” or is 9” but should be 18” — maybe “tall” concrete thickness vertically matters more? Or maybe that’s why a structure robust enough for 1910 trolleys Was so much in danger of falling short of 2020 LRV’s(and future Longer consists)?
 
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They are using some crack-healing techniques on the Lechemere/MOS viaduct That I had never seen before: Installing would appear to be stainless pressure nipples about 4 inches apart all along what must’ve been a real or potential crack and then apparently injecting something.

(Or maybe these are nuts on bolts securing some kind of backing on the other side of the bridge ?)

Elsewhere you will also see more traditional methods of concrete
cutting or chipping weak concrete down until you get to clean underlying rebar (They don’t seem to have added the new concrete back yet so there are lots of places to see fresh holes and fresh scours). At these points, the walls look surprisingly thin

The weakest sections seem to be about 5’ up from the bottom of the arches, where the vertical-wall-with arch-shaped-base meets the “real load bearing arch” at the bottom

Another observation: all the vertical concrete seems to me (based on the depth of those holes and scours) To be about half as thick as you might imagine. Does anyone else see that?

I don’t have real numbers,just a feel like the vertical concrete is 6” thick but should be 12” or is 9” but should be 18” — maybe “tall” concrete thickness vertically matters more? Or maybe that’s why a structure robust enough for 1910 trolleys Was so much in danger of falling short of 2020 LRV’s(and future Longer consists)?
Not much info on the MBTA project website. The current repairs will extend the life of the structure, but I would think, as with any bridge, eventually it will have to be replaced. Maybe when/if they do, a facadectomy type project could be done that preserves the faces of the columns and constructs new load bearing structures inside of those, and totally new reinforced concrete arches.
 
I live in Gilman Square and can attest that the active members of the neighborhood see the station as a catalyst for the area's identity. A very brief history:

- Somerville's first ever neighborhood plan, as a part of their Somerville by Design process, was done for Gilman Square. The reason being that, circa 2013, the area was seen as a clean slate with no strong neighborhood identity or advocacy. (Compare that to Union, Davis or even Ball). The city saw it as the easiest way to experiment with the neighborhood planning process and then take lessons learned to the other neighborhoods. You can see all those plans at somervillbydesign.com.

- After that neighborhood plan was done (with the a random and rotating assortment of community members at numerous charrettes), I and other neighbors created a new Gilman Square Neighborhood Association to redress the lack of consistent and unified community feedback that went into creating that plan.

- A separate though kissing cousin neighborhood association exists for Winter Hill--as does a separate planning document.

- Now, granted, associations and plans don't make a neighborhood. But politically active community members and city officials recognize the neighborhoods as distinct though with a bleeding edge. The heart of of Winter Hill is the vacant Star Market lot on Broadway. The heart of Gilman Square is the vacant Homans building lot on Medford St a quarter mile to the south.

The expectation is that the station and subsequent development will do on a more modest scale to Gilman what it did to Assembly: If you build it, they will brand.
 
I'm in East and was here for the station naming slap-fight. In general, there is a lot of antipathy in East toward Brickbottom. It's seen as a bunch of out-of-touch elitists living in their designer "artist lofts" that don't really live in the neighborhood, yet they always try to speak for all of us. By and large, Brickbottom has different priorities and different desires than the rest of East - it's one apartment building in an industrial park, full of old white artists, and isn't representative of the race-and-class diverse neighborhood. (At least that's the prevailing sentiment, not sure I personally agree or feel that strongly.)

Cobble Hill might have worked, but with the Cobble Hill development being staunchly anti-urban and anti-development for years, we're pretty sick of those assholes too.

Basically, the part of the neighborhood people actually live in demanded to be seen this time, thus the rename.
 
I had the sense the Brickbottom name was conceived as referring to the former neighborhood that the artists' co-op was also named for, but of course that's not how people interpreted it.
 
I had the sense the Brickbottom name was conceived as referring to the former neighborhood that the artists' co-op was also named for, but of course that's not how people interpreted it.
I've only lived in East Somerville for 6 years. Didn't grow up here. I always just assumed that it only went as far south as Washington st. and as far west as McGrath highway, meaning the station isn't in East Somerville but does straddle Brickbottom and the inner belt.
I guess it's named after the community it'll serve the most as not much people live in the neighborhood it's actually in. Give it 20 years tho.
Also Brickbottom is an interesting name. I presume there must have been a brick production facility there at some point.
Speaking of the East Somerville station, does anyone know if the main entrance will be on Joy st. or on Washington behind Cataldo?
 
Stopped by some of the project sites a few days ago and took some good pictures.



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1: Looking inbound along O'Brien Highway just south of Lechemere station. A hi-rail truck and crew is installing catenary poles on the viaduct. I waved at them. They waved back. Please excuse any squished cars; I took this (and other wide-angle shots) with my phone's "panorama" setting.


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2: The old Lechemere yard has been almost entirely obliterated now. Trolley rails are barely visible now. Soon, not even a pole will remain to remind riders of what used to be.

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3: Looking inbound, the new Lechemere takes shape beside the old.

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4: Looking outbound from the McGrath highway along the Union Square branch. Drainage, ballasting, track laying and catenary pole installation are complete, and the project is reaching an exciting new phase: Electrical installation. A few hi-rail trucks are visible in the background doing just that (?)
 
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5: !!! Again, looking at the Union Square branch from McGrath. Is that...a catenary support? Wow, they grow up so fast, don't they. New project phase, here we come.

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6: Same location, as an inbound Fitchburg Line train crawls towards North Station. The project ain't over until the speed restrictions on adjacent tracks are lifted.

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7: Again taken from McGrath looking toward the Union Square ROW, this time looking at an enormous pile of ties. Not sure if this is for one or both branches of the extension.
 
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8: Cross St. Bridge, looking inbound. East Somerville station is visible in the far distance. This is another place where track hasn't been laid yet, probably to allow construction equipment to access the ROW.

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9: From the route 28 bridge, looking inbound again. The community path ramp is visible at the right, climbing up to meet cross St. It appears that at a lot of road bridges, the community path will rise up on an incline to meet the street bridging the ROW at grade. Hope your bike has good brakes.
 
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Thank you, @Wash , in a particular way for your careful descriptive captions!

On #7 is the question whether the ties are for both branches?

I'd add at #8 that you can see the new connection (leftmost track at center-left) from the Lowell Line to the Inner Belt track that connects over to the new Sullivan Sidings.
 
I've only lived in East Somerville for 6 years. Didn't grow up here. I always just assumed that it only went as far south as Washington st. and as far west as McGrath highway, meaning the station isn't in East Somerville but does straddle Brickbottom and the inner belt.
I guess it's named after the community it'll serve the most as not much people live in the neighborhood it's actually in. Give it 20 years tho.
Also Brickbottom is an interesting name. I presume there must have been a brick production facility there at some point.
Speaking of the East Somerville station, does anyone know if the main entrance will be on Joy st. or on Washington behind Cataldo?

I agree with all of this. East Somerville is not a good choice for this station. Whatever associations people have with the name Brickbottom today, it would be completely redefined within a few years of the station opening. East Somerville is a well defined community centered on Broadway nearly a mile away. There is going to be a whole new neighborhood built here that has no connection or relation to East Somerville.
 
I was on a walk across McGrath Hwy in Somerville and I looked down onto the Union Square spur tracks and I noticed there is a split in the tracks rising up to the elevated section where it splits with the Medford branch. Is there a configuration there where it is either single-tracked or the tracks rise differently?
 

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