North Station, Charles River Draw, & Tower A

Too bad aesthetics and historical context weren't bigger factors in their selection process. I was lead designer once for a bridge replacement project of an old Baltimore truss bridge, and we built a new Baltimore truss bridge in its place, to address historical preservation issues. Seems that bascule bridges would have been an appropriate nod to the long history of that type of bridge at this site.
 
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Charlie_mta said:
Too bad aesthetics and historical context weren't bigger factors in their selection process. I was lead designer once for a bridge replacement project of an old Baltimore truss bridge, and we built a new Baltimore truss bridge in its place, to address historical preservation issues. Seems that bascule bridges would have been an appropriate nod to the long history of that type of bridge at this site.
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Also notable is that they seem to be demolishing the old Boston & Maine Tower A and replacing it with a new control tower building. I thought that old structure was historic / protected in some way? You'd think at least some homage to the B&M structure would be appropriate after keeping it propped up all these years.
 
Ripping the renders and posting them in the thread so we dont have to keep going back and forth to the link plus theyll show up in google image search, this is an important infrastructure development.








I wish they had provided a render of the new expanded platform area. One major plus of the expansion is it will make a smaller block right up against nashua st to be developed and developers will know exactly how much space they have to work with because its not going to expand beyond these new platforms. So hopefully after the expansion theyll move forward with developing this block. Hopefully theyll develop across the street as well.

 
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stick n move said:
I wish they had provided a render of the new expanded platform area. One major plus of the expansion is it will make a smaller block right up against nashua st to be developed and developers will know exactly how much space they have to work with because its not going to expand beyond these new platforms. So hopefully after the expansion theyll move forward with developing this block. Hopefully theyll develop across the street as well.

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Thanks for posting those.

There will only be a single new island platform (serving tracks 11 and 12); it will be within the profile of the existing opening of the wall visible in that aerial, so not actually reducing developable space by much. The first 100 feet or so of the platform actually exist next to the concourse:

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I always thought the Control Tower A Building was worth preserving and it would make a nice Transit Museum mentioned in another Arch BOS thread. However, the current access via road or pedestrian access is not ideal. However, you can almost reach out and touch it from the new foot bridge that goes from North Point Park over to Charlestown.
 
The EGE said:
Thanks for posting those.

There will only be a single new island platform (serving tracks 11 and 12); it will be within the profile of the existing opening of the wall visible in that aerial, so not actually reducing developable space by much. The first 100 feet or so of the platform actually exist next to the concourse:

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Awesome, thanks for the clarification.
 
I thought there was also a planned bike ped bridge (Big Dig committment keeps on giving) to cross the Charles there too? Is the T not on the hook for that as part of this project?
 
Is this thing going to be taller than the deck of the Zakim? It looks like it from the renders. The bascules have (and would) be much less visually intrusive, but why do these need a covered platform at the top? I could forgive the stairs having them, but I feel like we could at least reduce the amount of structure at their apexes and therefore the visual weight. Hell, even the top cross beam structure may be superfluous - most lift bridges I've seen have free standing lift towers. Why can't we have that?
 
as02143 said:
I thought there was also a planned bike ped bridge (Big Dig committment keeps on giving) to cross the Charles there too? Is the T not on the hook for that as part of this project?
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If a shared use path is included (though from the renders, it doesn't appear as though that is the case), maybe that's one of the reasons they're going to be lift bridges: there's much less of a chance of something going wrong if someone gets caught on a lift bridge when it lifts as opposed to a bascule.
 
It appears to be a lot more complex than it needs to be. It looks like its 3 lift bridges in a row which are staggered to meet the angle of the channel. Wouldnt it make sense just to make one wide bridge? They would need to make it longer than the proposed bridge because it couldnt stagger the way 3 individual bridges could, but it would make up for it in less complexity.

I went googling around to find other current examples being built and the norwalk bridge in ct thats being built has two separate towers. This would at least have a historic look to it vs whatever the hell the above is. Two separate towers behind the zakim would be better than that large mass proposed imo.

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https://www.bridgeweb.com/Construction-begins-of-US-railway-lift-bridge/9095
 
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.
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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?
 
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Yea It looks like thats the same one theyre using. It definitely makes sense for continuation of service during construction and ease of maintenance to have 3 separate structures. I wonder why they have the extra roof structures on the proposed bridge, must be because of ice and snow. It definitely makes it look a lot more cluttered and ugly.
 
bigpicture7 said:
Also notable is that they seem to be demolishing the old Boston & Maine Tower A and replacing it with a new control tower building. I thought that old structure was historic / protected in some way? You'd think at least some homage to the B&M structure would be appropriate after keeping it propped up all these years.
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Not only does Tower A have widespread asbestos, it's also at the end of its useful lifespan. Re-use would have required all of the visible exterior to be removed/destroyed just to be able to sandblast the steel.

I believe the plan is to at least preserve and display the cast stone "Boston & Maine Railroad Signal Tower A" sign on or around the proposed Tower A.
 
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