North Station, Charles River Draw, & Tower A

[Steve H]

Can anyone shed additional light on the fate of the ped/bike bridge? The CIP mentions it explicitly, but there’s no mention of any ped/bike infrastructure on the project website or in the May 2023 presentation.

This is a tremendous gap in the north/south cycling network And needs too be bridged! it’s so frustrating too read posts from five years ago about how this project was about to begun… and they’re still only at 75% Design complete!!

 

[Stlin]

So what about this project is going to cost an arm and a leg? They've submitted a grant request for construction funding in the amount of 672 million. that's insane - the MEGA grant program only pays up to 60% of a project. With another 20% eligible for other federal sources and the usual 20% local match, this is a $1.1 Billion dollar build for... 3 small, standard movable bridges, new approach structures, an extra platform and about 1.5 miles worth of track and signal rehabilitation. It doesn't seem it adds up, even with the complexity of the terminal district. That's more than enough to pay to build Red-Blue, and is about what it cost to build all of SCR phase 1.

 

[stefal]

So what about this project is going to cost an arm and a leg? They've submitted a grant request for construction funding in the amount of 672 million. that's insane - the MEGA grant program only pays up to 60% of a project. With another 20% eligible for other federal sources and the usual 20% local match, this is a $1.1 Billion dollar build for... 3 small, standard movable bridges, new approach structures, an extra platform and about 1.5 miles worth of track and signal rehabilitation. It doesn't seem it adds up, even with the complexity of the terminal district. That's more than enough to pay to build Red-Blue, and is about what it cost to build all of SCR phase 1.

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In case anyone needs a reference point, the Leonard Zakim Bridge, a moderately complex feat of engineering and construction, cost $175m in 2023 dollars (CPI adjusted, not construction-specific, so likely, higher, but not 10x higher)..

I think it's partly that the state is running out of qualified bidders, and our qualified bidders are running out of labor, but that doesn't fully answer the question at hand.

 

[bigpicture7]

So what about this project is going to cost an arm and a leg? They've submitted a grant request for construction funding in the amount of 672 million. that's insane - the MEGA grant program only pays up to 60% of a project. With another 20% eligible for other federal sources and the usual 20% local match, this is a $1.1 Billion dollar build for... 3 small, standard movable bridges, new approach structures, an extra platform and about 1.5 miles worth of track and signal rehabilitation. It doesn't seem it adds up, even with the complexity of the terminal district. That's more than enough to pay to build Red-Blue, and is about what it cost to build all of SCR phase 1.

Even with how crazy Mass. infrastructure costs have inflated lately, those figures just make no sense. It states this is for the drawbridge replacement AND "north station renovation" project. I am aware of the signal and track work accompanying the bridge work, but I am not familiar with the term "north station renovation" used to refer to those existing projects -- is there a chance that we are not aware of the full scope of what this is referring to? The only thing that comes to mind that could push costs into this territory is if this includes full electrification of the terminal district. Could it possibly be that they are striving for that with this fed. request? I mean, coincidentally would be the time to do it in a sane and logical world...

 

[bigpicture7]

Ok, a little more digging: none of the several articles or press releases (that I can see) that came out this week provide any sort of meaningful description of the scope of this MEGA grant proposal.

However, two encouraging things:
- streetsblog mentioned that they have requested a copy of the grant application materials:

StreetsblogMASS has requested copies of the state's grant application materials, which typically offer more detail about the state's plans. We plan to follow up with more details when we receive those documents.

- AND, encouragingly, the just-released CIP (on page 61) includes a statement on electrifying the "the section of the Newburyport/Rockport Line from North Station to Beverly" (among other electrification related things). So the question is: how much of the terminal district gets electrified within that scope, and are aspects of it potentially bundled in with this MEGA grant request?

I am waiting for someone more knowledgable (ahem, @F-Line to Dudley ) to quash my dreams with a cold dose of reality here, but from the limited glimpses of what are in the realm of possible, it seems that some electrification infrastructure could be included in the massive grant request, perhaps accounting, in part, for its heft.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Ok, a little more digging: none of the several articles or press releases (that I can see) that came out this week provide any sort of meaningful description of the scope of this MEGA grant proposal.

However, two encouraging things:
- streetsblog mentioned that they have requested a copy of the grant application materials:

​

- AND, encouragingly, the just-released CIP (on page 61) includes a statement on electrifying the "the section of the Newburyport/Rockport Line from North Station to Beverly" (among other electrification related things). So the question is: how much of the terminal district gets electrified within that scope, and are aspects of it potentially bundled in with this MEGA grant request?

I am waiting for someone more knowledgable (ahem, @F-Line to Dudley ) to quash my dreams with a cold dose of reality here, but from the limited glimpses of what are in the realm of possible, it seems that some electrification infrastructure could be included in the massive grant request, perhaps accounting, in part, for its heft.

If it's the stupid crippled BEMU plan, none of the Terminal District would be electrified except for the layover yard at Boston Engine Terminal. The discontinuous electrification proposal leaves everything inbound of Revere un-wired.

 

[as02143]

I believe the "why three bridges" is so that they can maintain 2 bridges (4 tracks) worth of access to North Station at any given time - build one bridge, demolish one bridge. it's not exactly going to be feasible to say no Northside CR service whatsoever for however long it takes to replace all 4/6 tracks. Plus, no redundancy in that case if something with one bridge does eventually fail.

Also, looking at this again side by side with the existing bascules, it actually looks substantially shorter than the bridge it's replacing, with a corresponding narrowing of the navigation channel. It probably doesn't make much of a difference what with the locks downstream and the Charles river dam upstream, but it is notable - have to imagine it's because it's cheaper to just have smaller lift segments. I do imagine it's a relatively lightly used channel but I am surprised that any reduction in width/span was in the cards.
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Also: after further research, it looks like this new design is basically something off the shelf from something the Freight RRs have been deploying lots of. This is a picture of a bridge that Conrail built in 2016 down in NJ - I think it's a safe bet to assume wed be getting 3 of a very similar bridge.
View attachment 39564
https://www.modjeski.com/projects/vertical-lift/paulsboro-railroad-bridge-replacement/
To quote Union Pacific when they built a very similar bridge where the options were lift, swing or bascule, "[The] Vertical lift bridge alternative was chosen due to the low cost and minimal time required for track outages."

Edit: in terms of North side electrification, looking at the Conrail Bridge I just posted, it doesn't exactly look like theres any room at all in the design to be even able to accommodate catenary lines? Without even more height, It'd just get crushed between the deck and the superstructure. I know the T has a dream of battery trains allowing them to deal with unelectrified bridges, but come on - if that proves a failure what are they going to do in the north side terminal district?

I'm not sure that the structures will be shorter - those two images have very different perspectives. Even assuming fairly positively for the future structures, it would appear to eventually be about the same height by roughly estimating for the vanishing points of the renders/photo.

That being said, I really like bascule bridges and will be sad that they're designing for lift bridges. There's a certain design and physics elegance to the bascule style that I never get with the fairly squat lift structures.

 

[Stlin]

I'm not sure that the structures will be shorter - those two images have very different perspectives. Even assuming fairly positively for the future structures, it would appear to eventually be about the same height by roughly estimating for the vanishing points of the renders/photo.

That being said, I really like bascule bridges and will be sad that they're designing for lift bridges. There's a certain design and physics elegance to the bascule style that I never get with the fairly squat lift structures.

In this specific post, I believe that i wasn't referring to thr height being shorter, but rather the span length and how it impacts the navigable channel. While they've eliminated the skew, that navigation channel still looks narrower than the 65ft provided by the currently 118ft long bridges. I'll withhold judgment until the EIS or something resembling a technical plan comes out.

Either way, I'm still boggled by the cost of this thing. Back in 2019, this was a 100M design build. In 2020 that became a 45M design only contract, and In 2023 the CIP says 571M, the federal permitting dashboard says 876M. I may have been a bit hasty and sloppy with the grant math since I see now it's a combined application to MEGA and INFRA, but at a minimum, lets take the number off the perrmits. I really want to know what amount of scope creep results in a 8-9x-ing of the project. There's very little that I think should cause a good project to be walked back and restarted, but this may already be a good candidate.

https://www.permits.performance.gov/permitting-project/dot-projects/north-station-draw-one-bridge-replacement-project-ea#

 

[bigpicture7]

If it's the stupid crippled BEMU plan, none of the Terminal District would be electrified except for the layover yard at Boston Engine Terminal. The discontinuous electrification proposal leaves everything inbound of Revere un-wired.

Fair enough, but there's a statement in this CIP that is unclear whether it is independent of that BEMU approach (p. 61):
"The T remains committed to the first phase of Regional Rail Transformation to deliver electrified service to the Providence/Stoughton and Fairmount Lines, and the Environmental Justice Corridor (the section of the Newburyport/Rockport Line from North Station to Beverly). Projects supporting these initiatives include the EJ Corridor Electrification Conceptual Design (P0934a), Future Rolling Stock (P0918), among others..."

I tried looking up "P0934a" and/or "EJ corridor electrification" and there's basically nothing on the web. The only place it seems to be mentioned (publicly visible) seems to be other parts within this CIP itself.
On Page 174 of the same document, for P0934a it states:
"Conceptual design of power systems, substation, signal upgrades, track improvements, and associated modifications for environmental permitting, as well as other critical path activities for the electrification of the Environmental Justice Corridor."

It is vague, but seems hard to imagine that nothing inbound of Revere gets electrified if this were to come to fruition, when the EJ Corridor is defined as "North Station to Beverly" in this document.