To be fair to the healey admin, the north draw project is crucial to north side expansion. That’s not to say the price tag isn’t a hard pill to swallow, but at least they and the congressional representation have worked hard to get that funding secured. With or without a NSRL, that is needed
Very fair point to add. I just find it funny that 4-5 years ago under Baker, so many transit-minded advocates and electeds were pushing for NSRL but it seems nowhere now on the agenda. Disappointed to see it fade at a moment when we should be asking "how do we do this project?" rather than "should we do this project?"
I do think a major reason why we're hearing less about NSRL is that electrification is being viewed more and more as a prerequisite for it. And given the lack of clear electrification plans, it makes more sense to push those first. Both of these projects should be embraced, but it definitely seems like a waste to build ventilation tunnels for NSRL or have it built without them and not be able to run much service.
AFAICT, the spans over Soldier Field Road are part of the GJ Bridge and those will be removed. What will be left is a partial bridge, which is not a bridge. So yes, the bridge will be removed during highway construction. The article makes it seem like it's the river span that will be removed, and that's wrong. But that distinction doesn't matter for what's being discussed.
MassDOT is planning to demolish the southern bridge abutments while it removes the highway viaduct, rebuilds Soldiers Field Road, and rebuilds the Turnpike where the current GJ tracks are located. See pages 16-22 of this April 2023 project task force presentation:
NIMBYs would stop this in 15 minutes, plus environmental issues and maybe even 4F.
The FRA would have some things to say about it too. For example, "what the shrieking bloody f*ck are you people thinking?!"
Why not put it in the median of I-95?
That's probably more expensive than just keeping the line open during construction, save for maybe a week or two at a time.
Ari O has a good comment along the lines of what you're talking about. I'd rather deal with some very disruptive construction phasing if it meant shaving off significant time of the overall project.
You know what two points are closer than those two? North and South stations. I keep thinking that we shouldn’t wait for the Fed to fund the NSRL. The Commonwealth could do it and It should have been built already. It’s a question of will.
The best way to minimize the disruptions is to fully fund the southside maintenance facility at Readville so construction on that can get expedited. Get southside equipment serviced down south, and you don't need to shuffle cars north and south every single day. Amtrak swaps Downeaster sets with Southampton Yard about twice a week. Set a target of only needing to do 2-3 T+Amtrak mega-lashups per week on the hospital train via a now-upgraded Worcester-Ayer route (can be done in a total of 3 hours now instead of the 5-1/2 it used to take) and you've taken the majority of the sting out of a years-long Grand Junction outage.
