T Station Design

I have to say I'm a fan of Boylston, Arlington, State and Aquarium. Boylston for its forlorn charm, Arlington for its compact old-Euro subway feel, and State/Aquarium for their very nice new updates.

My four least favorite stations: Government Center for obvious reasons, Park Street Upper (ugly dark tiles on the walls... wtf??), and a tie between Copley/Kenmore for their incredibly expensive, shoddy-looking "remodels".
 
If we're not limited to current stations, I would pick (1) the original Ashmont, (2) original Harvard, and (3) pre-1949 Dudley.
 
Lechmere is very bad. There's barely any room inside the gated area, and it's a bit hard to get from one side to the other.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
I've always been a fan of Symphony because it's so desolate.
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Not a good thing when you're getting cornered and verbally and physically assaulted by a crazy on a rainy sunday night. Thank god for those incessant T police announcements that get stuck in your head because I booked it and called 617-222-1212. (and thank you for riding the T)
 
I honestly found your stations to be cold and uninviting except North Station , Courthouse and Charles/MGH were my favs , looked nice , open air and modern.... I did not get the chance to ride the Blue line or ride out the entire Green line on my trip , so i'm sure i missed something.
 
Nexis4jersey said:
I honestly found your stations to be cold and uninviting except North Station , Courthouse and Charles/MGH were my favs , looked nice , open air and modern.... I did not get the chance to ride the Blue line or ride out the entire Green line on my trip , so i'm sure i missed something.
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Jersey -- did you get to ride out to Alewife on the Red Line?

Many years ago my youngest brother dubbed it's style "Early Galactic Empire" when he saw it lit-up at night from Alewife Parkway -- of course the years and photon torpedoes have taken their toll
 
Nexis4jersey said:
I honestly found your stations to be cold and uninviting except North Station , Courthouse and Charles/MGH were my favs , looked nice , open air and modern.... I did not get the chance to ride the Blue line or ride out the entire Green line on my trip , so i'm sure i missed something.
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Blue Line stations are, for the most part, all pretty open and newish (they were mostly rebuilt in the 90s). I've always been a fan of then, though they are showing their age and cheap construction (which is only exacerbated by the salty air along the water).

Orange Line stations, at least the ones downtown, really need a face lift.

Park St on the Red Line looked great right after they upgraded the lighting and painted it 7 or 8 years ago but it is already very dirty again.

Green Line stations are all pretty nasty, even after the face lift they got. It just is how they are set up I think that makes them hard to beautify.
 
Downtown Crossing is begging for a major rehab. Or at least a good power-washing with a diluted bleach mixture or industrial degreaser. The grime and smell of stale pee is a bit much, even for me.

Though arguably, walking down my street in L.A. is usually worse. ;)
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Blue Line stations are, for the most part, all pretty open and newish (they were mostly rebuilt in the 90s). I've always been a fan of then, though they are showing their age and cheap construction (which is only exacerbated by the salty air along the water).

Orange Line stations, at least the ones downtown, really need a face lift.

Park St on the Red Line looked great right after they upgraded the lighting and painted it 7 or 8 years ago but it is already very dirty again.

Green Line stations are all pretty nasty, even after the face lift they got. It just is how they are set up I think that makes them hard to beautify.
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Red's got ventilation problems in the tunnel downtown, so that's not helping the grime at Park. Central/Kendall and Broadway/Andrew stay cleaner longer than Park/DTX/SS because of that. It's an unfunded (of course) cap improvement to upgrade the tunnel vents downtown.

Doesn't help when there's a @#$% track fire every other week because they don't pick up the trash that blows into the tunnels between stations.


Orange Line needs some big-deal attention. The 1975-construction concrete bunkers to the north have crumbling platforms, yellowed windows, and seams coming out of alignment everywhere. The 1987-construction bunkers to the south have a lot of disintegrating brick walkways and platform concrete to patch. Tufts MC has water damage on the walls and needs a good power-washing and brightening. And Back Bay has shown the ill effects of the whole station's ventilation problems from the commuter rail side with smoke-blackened everything (although that's supposed to get fixed).


As for Green, what they need to do to keep the grime down is power wash the tunnel walls between stations. The last time that was done was 1977 when they introduced LRV's and found out the more powerful roof-mount fans on the new trolleys kicked up giant brown clouds of dust that had been caked up on the walls since the 1920's. 35+ years is probably long enough between once-overs with the pressure washer on the overnight maint shift, bit-by-bit. The trolleys haul their fair share of surface mud and road salt underground in addition to the usual underground tunnel dust settlement and Back Bay drainage sludge. It's not just for looks...it'll keep the stations cleaner, keep the trolley HVAC systems healthier, and help with long-term maintenance. Ounce of prevention, etc., etc.
 
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Theres all the stations i visited....

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whighlander said:
Jersey -- did you get to ride out to Alewife on the Red Line?

Many years ago my youngest brother dubbed it's style "Early Galactic Empire" when he saw it lit-up at night from Alewife Parkway -- of course the years and photon torpedoes have taken their toll
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I rode the Red line from South Station to Charles/MGH
I rode the Orange line from North Station to Back Bay
I rode the Green line from Copley to North Station
I rode the Silver line from World Trade Center to South Station

vanshnookenraggen said:
Blue Line stations are, for the most part, all pretty open and newish (they were mostly rebuilt in the 90s). I've always been a fan of then, though they are showing their age and cheap construction (which is only exacerbated by the salty air along the water).

Orange Line stations, at least the ones downtown, really need a face lift.

Park St on the Red Line looked great right after they upgraded the lighting and painted it 7 or 8 years ago but it is already very dirty again.

Green Line stations are all pretty nasty, even after the face lift they got. It just is how they are set up I think that makes them hard to beautify.
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Unfortnatly the Blue line was closed due to renovations being done at State street , so to catch the blue line i would have to go to Airport... The Orange line gave me the coldest impresses and the Tunnels themselves...the tracks aren't divided by a wall a bit of a shocker for me. Same with the Red line tunnels.... The Green line didn't really bother me , but the screech heading into one of the stations was unbearable...
 
Based on a guess, I think the newer Blue line stations would be more to your liking. You should have ridden to Kendall - crossing the Charles River on the Longfellow bridge is a highlight of the Red line.

Personally, I prefer stations that are easy to access, easy to transfer, and reasonably clean. Don't care too much about how they look, with one exception: Brutalism. I don't know why people got it in their head that imitating the Soviet Union was a good idea. If there was any justice in the world, all architects who propose "Brutalist" designs would be summarily and "brutally" executed. It is only fair and appropriate.

On a more serious note, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the American disdain towards public works projects comes as a reaction against the Brutalism of the 70s. The style is a paean to exorbitant amounts of concrete and the companies that get paid big, superfluous bucks to lay it. It is soul-crushingly depressing. Boston is, unfortunately, home to some of the most outrageous excesses of Brutalist design (primary example: City Hall).
 
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but you are right, much of the stigma against public housing projects was just how stark and brutal they looked.

People who know architectural history can appreciate it but your average Joe can't and that is a major failing of architecture as a profession.
 
This is not the Brutalism discussion, but the one Brutalist building that people seem to universally admire is the Boston Five Cents Savings Bank extension (most recently Borders Books, soon to be Walgreens megastore)
 
If I might digress for a moment, the problems with public housing are numerous, and stem from being enormously disruptive to and incapable of sustaining "normal" social and economic life, due to the way they are planned and managed. The Brutalism just adds insult to injury.

Now, to tie this back to T stations: many of the newer ones, that happen to be in the Brutalist style, also happen to be the worst at facilitating efficient passenger flow and transfers. The fact that they are also brutally ugly adds insult to injury. Perhaps the resources spent laying massive amount of concrete for people to "admire" while they navigate the cavernous corridors, could have better been spent on having multiple exits/entrances and planning short transfers to buses or other trains.
 
Davis works pretty well - center platform, one fare mezzanine with two street-level entrances a block from each other. It's one of the most recent stations, opening in 1984.
 
Matthew said:
Now, to tie this back to T stations: many of the newer ones, that happen to be in the Brutalist style, also happen to be the worst at facilitating efficient passenger flow and transfers. The fact that they are also brutally ugly adds insult to injury. Perhaps the resources spent laying massive amount of concrete for people to "admire" while they navigate the cavernous corridors, could have better been spent on having multiple exits/entrances and planning short transfers to buses or other trains.
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Not sure I get what you mean. The newer ones I've seen all seem to work pretty well. It's the old tunnels that need expanding.
 
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