Longfellow Bridge update

jass said:
Exactly, especially because its the only place they can add a 3rd track without spending billions in digging costs.
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You'll even see them shifting tracks out of the current MBTA "reservation" ...during construction, they'll actually be running trains where you would in a 3 track world:

http://app1.massdot.state.ma.us/Cha...ongfellow/EA/AppendixH_ProposedConditions.pdf

Also, the doc above has all the details about how they tie the sidewalks and things into local circulation.
 
mass88 said:
Hopefully they improve the lighting on this bridge. The Longfellow and Mass Ave bridges are terrible.
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I was just thinking this. Are lamp posts going to be moved from the outside and placed along the rail corridor? If so, that may leave the sidewalks darker than the street. ~ 24 feet horizontally from light source at closest point on upstream side, and ~ 19 feet horizontally from light source at downstream side. I wonder if some sidewalk level lighting might be a good plan?
 
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Digital_Islandboy said:
I was just thinking this. Are lamp posts going to be moved from the outside and placed along the rail corridor? If so, that may leave the sidewalks darker than the street. ~ 24 feet horizontally from light source at closest point on upstream side, and ~ 19 feet horizontally from light source at downstream side. I wonder if some sidewalk level lighting might be a good plan?
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the fantastic doc linked above shows faux-gas lamp light poles on the sidewalk side and new lights mounted on the towers
 
whighlander said:
There solution - spend $300 million dollars and worsen the traffic while only slightly improving the pedestrian experience
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The traffic on the bridge doesn't warrant 4 travel lanes anymore. The same was true for the new 3 lane configuration on the BU/Cottage Farm Bridge which somehow managed to survive years of construction with only 2 lanes open. It's better to not have excess capacity on certain urban thoroughfares in order to avoid induced demand. Though I desperately wish the roadway to Kendal Square could be narrowed as well to accommodate a break down or reversing stub for the Red Line as part of this project.
 
Has this project stalled or something? No work has been done on the Longfellow since at least the beginning of the summer. The arches on the central spans have been cleaned and painted, and some of the arches over Storrow have been partially cleaned. All the stone footings have been power-washed EXCEPT for the two in the middle (sculpture preservation worries?). Anyway, anyone have any ideas why work on the bridge has ceased?
 
It went out to bid as a design-build. I've been told this is odd because the state had the new bridge something like 90% designed. Seems like the state is afraid of what they'll find (in terms of needing to replace structural steel) so they made it a design-build which puts more risk on the contractor and allows the state to say "See, we didn't go over budget" even though all the bids will now be considerably higher (i.e., in a design build the budget is kind of defined by the bid).

The three finalists were named a couple weeks ago. They were Kiewit; JF White/Skanska; and a third joint-venture who I can't think of.

The project should be awarded sometime this fall/winter.
 
The project went out to bid as a Design/Build. Contractor bid walk-thrus are to be scheduled sometime soon, if not already. Part of the reason behind design/build, was so that contractors could propose their own sequenceing for moving (relocating, altering, etc.) traffic and tracks during construction. Each contractor will be responible for thier design, based on how they sequence the project and how they relocate (alter, modify, etc) important components during construction (all under Mass Trans supervision, of course).
 
Construction contract awarded to a consortium of contractors. Cost $250M plus. Three year schedule starting this summer. No vehicle traffic from Boston to Cambridge during that period.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...iWt2KmmWpxB5vmOaM/story.html?p1=Well_BG_Links

longfellow.jpg
 
Finally! but thank goodness i have to get off at Kendall for work. If this is like the speed restrictions they had in place when it was unsound, this is going to suck for a while (for other people). But it's really good to see this move forward.
 
I'll be very interested to see the traffic impact from this.
 
One sidewalk for all the bikes and pedestrians going both directions - that's not going to be fun for anyone. Especially since, on days when the Red Line is closed, there will be many more bikes and peds than usual.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Park. No crossovers near Charles for turning trains, so service has to terminate at Kendall and Park during those weekend closures.
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A shame, since it's less than a 15-minute walk between Kendall and Charles, and could be faster to walk than to take the bus.
 
But they are building a temporary track on the bridge for this construction, and reversing the direction of an existing track. Isn't a temporary crossover likely to be needed?
 
Why is there no temporary fence shown between the temporary track and the one lane road?

I secretly hope there won't be any fence. Photo op of a lifetime. But I realize that's pretty much impossible for that to ever happen...
 
I was wondering that too. Presumably the third rail is on the side away from the single lane of car traffic, but still...
 
Ron Newman said:
But they are building a temporary track on the bridge for this construction, and reversing the direction of an existing track. Isn't a temporary crossover likely to be needed?
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No. They're just going to "lane-shift" it all onto the new alignment. New switches or introducing any potential conflicting movements across a switch would've made an already painfully slow trip across the temp tracks twice as bad.


Now...they could keep Charles open if they installed a new set of crossovers on the El portion just east of the platform. But the T isn't keen on spending money for that because they'd be a near-duplicate of the westerly Park crossovers, and the Longfellow isn't their project or their money. But who knows...if downtown gets unbearable enough with the slow orders and weekend shutdowns on Red coinciding with the GC closure on Green/Blue they could easily cave to pressure and throw down some Charles crossovers with one weekend's work to ease the complaining.

The best thing they could do long-term is to have crossovers on both sides of Charles when the Longfellow construction is completed so a service disruption in the tunnel on either side of the river doesn't leave the two cities totally severed by the river.
 
Could someone clarify for me so I don't have to go back and read everything?

They were going to "replace" the bridge, right? Like, totally gut and redo? This is a "repair", no?

Meaning, will this have to be redone at some point in the near future?
 
JohnAKeith said:
Could someone clarify for me so I don't have to go back and read everything?

They were going to "replace" the bridge, right? Like, totally gut and redo? This is a "repair", no?

Meaning, will this have to be redone at some point in the near future?
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Only if 75 years from now is your definition of "near future". :confused:

It's as sweeping a rehab as you can do to the original structure. The thing's never had a road deck replacement since it opened 107 years ago, and the only repair projects that have ever been undertaken on it was a minor rehab in 1959 (64 years ago), the aesthetic restoration to the granite salt-and-pepper towers 11 years ago, and the stall-for-time emergency patching they've been doing the last 5 years to keep it from falling over. Otherwise it is literally all original construction, including the road deck.

The rehab's the same general thing they did to BU Bridge: strip it down to the bare original superstructure, rehab and strengthen the underskeleton including the pilings and other areas sealed off from the outside world underneath the deck since 1906, do a full preservation of the historically sensitive features, seismically retrofit, and then lay a 100% new road deck on top of it. The only surviving parts of the original will be the pilings, truss skeleton, the granite facade, and the aesthetic bits. Everything you ride over will be a totally new surface.


And no, if they packed the towers full of TNT, blew it up, and built a totally new totally different modern bridge in its place it wouldn't affect the timing of the next rehab. Everything, right down to the prefabbiest-of-prefab MassHighway bridges, needs a significant re-decking every 35-50 years and a major superstructure replacement every 50-75 years. "Like-new" is no different from "all-new" in this case.
 
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