Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

as02143 said:
It's wild because the route 96 gets quite a bit of boardings on the Winthrop/George area because that's where everyone lives. The College Ave corridor has mostly the institutional uses, which will be well served by the new GLX station, but, of all the areas of South Medford, skipping Hillside --- after deciding not to build a station in the current iteration of the project, seems like rubbing salt in the wound from that battle.

For reference, the 2018 route profile from the Better Bus Project. Note how diminished the ridership is once you get to the stops around Tufts' facilities.

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Yeah, agreed that it leaves the Hillside community with a bad taste in their mouth - all the more reason they should start doing the extension to Mystic Valley Pkwy the second the College Ave branch is done.

At least most of Winthrop St and this part of S. Medford is within the 1/2 catchment area (albeit as the crow flies) of the new College Ave station. Seems like the transit planning trade-off choice here is flexing more bus service to the rest of Medford in order to get them to this new rapid transit connection.
 
lainpimicaja said:
Yeah, agreed that it leaves the Hillside community with a bad taste in their mouth - all the more reason they should start doing the extension to Mystic Valley Pkwy the second the College Ave branch is done.

At least most of Winthrop St and this part of S. Medford is within the 1/2 catchment area (albeit as the crow flies) of the new College Ave station. Seems like the transit planning trade-off choice here is flexing more bus service to the rest of Medford in order to get them to this new rapid transit connection.
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The extension to Mystic Valley Parkway doesn't address the desire of the neighborhood either. They wanted the station at Winthrop right in the center of the residential neighborhood closest to the commercial strip. Now, with the way that the GLX is designed, they'll have two stations at the literal edges of the neighborhood serving the institution (Tufts) that the neighborhood generally hates because Tufts doesn't pay its fair share in taxes nor is it a particularly good neighbor, and the other serving regional commuters.

This thing of taking the bus off the main residential drag through the densest part of the neighborhood in order to make riders walk farther is a bad bad idea and doesn't serve Medford well at all. There's a particularly deep well of middle-class privileged angst about the GLX not going to the center of the neighborhood to tap into, so, if I were the T, I'd tread very carefully.
 
Old Lechmere coming down…

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Jahvon09 said:
I was about to say that they should leave that there as a landmark. :)
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They could have, except it was physically in the way of tying through First Street from the Kendall Sq area all the way into Cambridge Crossing, providing an important visual and functional linkage between Cambridge Crossing and the rest of the city.
 
Charlie_mta said:
They could have, except it was physically in the way of tying through First Street from the Kendall Sq area all the way into Cambridge Crossing, providing an important visual and functional linkage between Cambridge Crossing and the rest of the city.
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When will the first street connection be complete?
 
as02143 said:
The extension to Mystic Valley Parkway doesn't address the desire of the neighborhood either. They wanted the station at Winthrop right in the center of the residential neighborhood closest to the commercial strip. Now, with the way that the GLX is designed, they'll have two stations at the literal edges of the neighborhood serving the institution (Tufts) that the neighborhood generally hates because Tufts doesn't pay its fair share in taxes nor is it a particularly good neighbor, and the other serving regional commuters.

This thing of taking the bus off the main residential drag through the densest part of the neighborhood in order to make riders walk farther is a bad bad idea and doesn't serve Medford well at all. There's a particularly deep well of middle-class privileged angst about the GLX not going to the center of the neighborhood to tap into, so, if I were the T, I'd tread very carefully.
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In a perfect world seems like it would make sense to have a station at Winthrop street along with the Tufts and MVP stations. Not sure how that would affect ops, but with the residential density surrounding a potential Winthrop station, it seems to me like station spacing would be justified, even tho the Tufts-Winthrop distance would be the shortest on the extension. Not sure how feasible it would be to build an infill station there in the future after MVP is built, or if that could be pre-provisioned for when building the extension to MVP.
 
In a modern, post-ADA, world, I don’t think a Winthrop stop would be workable. In the old days, when a stop could be created with some asphalt, paint, and a single staircase, it could have fit.

The lot at the corner of Winthrop and Charnwood was vacant until about 10 years ago. It would have made a convenient spot for a head house.
 
Wasn't the Winthrop Street station removed from the GLX plans because of issues with station siting? Or was there another reason that the stop was taken out of the plans?
 
RandomWalk said:
In a modern, post-ADA, world, I don’t think a Winthrop stop would be workable. In the old days, when a stop could be created with some asphalt, paint, and a single staircase, it could have fit.

The lot at the corner of Winthrop and Charnwood was vacant until about 10 years ago. It would have made a convenient spot for a head house.
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Forgive my ignorance by why not a Magoun Sq. style station at Winthrop? Assuming the ROW would fit it, which I think it would since i believe the ROW is 4 tracks all the way out to MVP.
 
themissinglink said:
Wasn't the Winthrop Street station removed from the GLX plans because of issues with station siting? Or was there another reason that the stop was taken out of the plans?
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Land acquisition issues. And general opposition. Since it was a marginal-ridership stop to begin with, it got cut very early.
 
Today the old pedestrian tunnel is meeting its fate (5/27):
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Interestingly (and pardon my limited zoom capability), the mode of demolition was for a large metal wrecking ball to be repeatedly lifted up and dropped onto the roof of the tunnel. Each time this happened, the ground shook with such reverberation that I could feel the new Lechmere platform vibrate. Here's an action shot:
olm-d-2.jpg
 
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