Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

"entryway" ramp to east Somerville station (behind Cataldo ambulance building). Man, I wish they would relocate this Cataldo building so they could put something more useful to a transit station here.

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D-line (and E-line split) from the brickbottom side
 

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datadyne007 said:
Pour one out for Lechmere tonight, guys. Moving on to greener pastures after 98 years of loyal service.

Now the countdown to GLX officially begins. 11 months to go!
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Man I sure hope eventually they put a station connector (stairs/elevator + enclosed bridge over the highway) on the south side of monsignor highway. Having 90% of commuters cross the highway after arriving to the new Lechmere everyday is a recipe for disaster
 
ryblogs said:
Man I sure hope eventually they put a station connector (stairs/elevator + enclosed bridge over the highway) on the south side of monsignor highway. Having 90% of commuters cross the highway after arriving to the new Lechmere everyday is a recipe for disaster
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How feasible would a robust road diet be here? I'd like to think it's workable in a post-GLX world.
 
datadyne007 said:
Pour one out for Lechmere tonight, guys. Moving on to greener pastures after 98 years of loyal service.

Now the countdown to GLX officially begins. 11 months to go!
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Yes and no, 11 months until new Lechmere, the rest of GLX is still slated for December 2021.

ryblogs said:
Man I sure hope eventually they put a station connector (stairs/elevator + enclosed bridge over the highway) on the south side of monsignor highway. Having 90% of commuters cross the highway after arriving to the new Lechmere everyday is a recipe for disaster
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Why are 90% of people crossing the road?? The busway is moving too if that's what you mean. And the highway is getting a road diet as we speak, there's a new protected cycle track spotted this week.

Pedestrian overpasses are bad city design. They're a symptom of a failed roadway system, and only serve to make cars go faster, deactivate the ground level, and make pedestrians feel less welcome. More pedestrians slowing down cars is okay. Same reason we should ditch pedestrian overpasses on Soldiers Field Rd and put in some real intersections.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
Yes and no, 11 months until new Lechmere, the rest of GLX is still slated for December 2021.


Why are 90% of people crossing the road?? The busway is moving too if that's what you mean. And the highway is getting a road diet as we speak, there's a new protected cycle track spotted this week.

Pedestrian overpasses are bad city design. They're a symptom of a failed roadway system, and only serve to make cars go faster, deactivate the ground level, and make pedestrians feel less welcome. More pedestrians slowing down cars is okay. Same reason we should ditch pedestrian overpasses on Soldiers Field Rd and put in some real intersections.
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I'm assuming a large fraction of people arriving at Lechmere are going to hop off and walk towards Kendall. Or, if hopping on at Lechmere , are walking in from the east Cambridge neighborhood
 
ryblogs said:
I'm assuming a large fraction of people arriving at Lechmere are going to hop off and walk towards Kendall. Or, if hopping on at Lechmere , are walking in from the east Cambridge neighborhood
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The plan to redesign the First Street intersection is pretty robust.

I’d bet that the majority of Lechmere departures and arrivals are going from/to bus transfers. That may change as GLX comes online, depending on how the bus network evolves.
 
George_Apley said:
The plan to redesign the First Street intersection is pretty robust.

I’d bet that the majority of Lechmere departures and arrivals are going from/to bus transfers. That may change as GLX comes online, depending on how the bus network evolves.
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Lechmere's been heavily-weighted to transfers from Day 1. That is, in large part, why GLX has been an ongoing proposal for 75 years. The 69, 87, and 88 used to be run-thru subway branches to Brattle Loop straight in from Haymarket portal, when there was nothing but the Canal St. surface station @ North Station and street-running from there on out. Lechmere + the Viaduct's 1922 opening turned those routes into outer transfers behind fare control. The 80 was also a prepayment transfer, albeit at Sullivan in its streetcar days not being moved to Lechmere until post-bustitution. The last 123 years of growth on this corridor have been predicated on short-hop transfers to rapid transit. It's why you will probably see that new island platform in the sky getting buff utilization simply for making Union/Medford backwards transfers...and supersized utilization hopping across the island if/when the Urban Ring gets plugged in. Reversing back outbound at a Lechmere transfer is old hat for a half-dozen plus generations of this corridor's commuters.

Lechmere, 1922 (with BERy agents stationed on the transfer platform):
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George_Apley said:
I’d bet that the majority of Lechmere departures and arrivals are going from/to bus transfers. That may change as GLX comes online, depending on how the bus network evolves.
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I’m really interested in how this will work. With the exception of the majority of the 69, most of those Lechmere bus routes have some significant overlap with the proposed GLX. The 80 is almost entirely redundant, the 87 is mostly redundant up to Union (mostly, because it’ll serve local traffic between Lechmere and Union), and the 88 is redundant up to about Lowell St./Somerville Junction.

I’m curious how Lechmere will function has a transfer hub in the future. Will most people heading to places beyond the redundant spots want to transfer at Lechmere and take the local buses all the way? Or will it make sense to take the Green Line further out and transfer? With the exception of maybe the 69 to Harvard (Though you could go to Union and catch the 86), it seems like it would make more sense to ride the GLX further before transferring to a bus to Clarendon Hill, Davis, Arlington Center, etc.? Right now, buses get crowded at Lechmere. And traffic often crawls for the early portions of those routes.
 
Lrfox said:
I’m really interested in how this will work. With the exception of the majority of the 69, most of those Lechmere bus routes have some significant overlap with the proposed GLX. The 80 is almost entirely redundant, the 87 is mostly redundant up to Union (mostly, because it’ll serve local traffic between Lechmere and Union), and the 88 is redundant up to about Lowell St./Somerville Junction.

I’m curious how Lechmere will function has a transfer hub in the future. Will most people heading to places beyond the redundant spots want to transfer at Lechmere and take the local buses all the way? Or will it make sense to take the Green Line further out and transfer? With the exception of maybe the 69 to Harvard (Though you could go to Union and catch the 86), it seems like it would make more sense to ride the GLX further before transferring to a bus to Clarendon Hill, Davis, Arlington Center, etc.? Right now, buses get crowded at Lechmere. And traffic often crawls for the early portions of those routes.
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Hard to say, because the Better Bus initiative is going to be majorly redrawing the routes all across the corridor after College Ave. opens to reflect the sea change in mode shifting and reassign local resources to where they're most needed. There isn't any prelim study data released on that yet because it's still early and the data collection effort is enormous, but that's going to be a major existential debate subject to lots of crucial community meetings when the time comes. Deep-diving into demand trends, gap analysis for possible re-routes and new service flavors, efficiency analysis (will be a bonanza for North-region bus lane striping), and so on. Nevermind just Lechmere & Union...all of the Davis Sq. buses are going to feel the gravitational effects of College Ave. too and will need refactoring of their baseline demand. Plus Mystic Valley Parkway Station mandates a big scale-up in diverging Medford routes + practically screams at top of its lungs for radial Alewife-MVP-Wellington-Chelsea BRT on Route 16. Plus also coming to grips with ancillary factors like what McGrath grounding and the ensuing density re-seeding of its replacement boulevard is going to do for intra-Somerville demand on the GLX trunk and its diverging buses.

It's mega change to the multimodal ecosystem out there. Which is, in a nutshell, another reason why this project is so highly-rated to begin with. The coattails across all forms of transit are unbelievably huge.
 
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Goodbye Lechmere Station. By the way, did anybody went to see it? I know I did and I found out that 3716 the car I rode during the day on the E-branch to Lechmere was used on the last run of the e-branch coupled to 3812.
 
Now that Lechmere's shut down, looks like workers were engaged in some initial prep work today

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etik said:
Now that Lechmere's shut down, looks like workers were engaged in some initial prep work today

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Rumour has it the catenary comes down pretty much immediately so the real work can get going, apparently the tracks and Lechmere are getting ripped out next week and for the time being they're going to pave over the area
 
After a couple years of wear n tear those green beams on the new extension are going to look like theyve been there forever.

At least the structural supports are concrete..
 
stick n move said:
After a couple years of wear n tear those green beams on the new extension are going to look like theyve been there forever.

At least the structural supports are concrete..
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Concrete viaduct would have been better. At least we can live thru the years when they look nice
 
stick n move said:
After a couple years of wear n tear those green beams on the new extension are going to look like theyve been there forever.

At least the structural supports are concrete..
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Can’t they just sand down and repaint the beams?
 
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