The Orange Line Thread

F-Line to Dudley said:
Your beef is with Quincy's downtown planners, their indecisiveness, and apparently their lack of zeal for banishing cars from downtown. No amount of false equivalences to other MassDOT projects is going to make in-situ repairs to a particular structure you don't personally care for the T's fault. They're doing their job here. Go get mad at Quincy in the downtown Quincy redev thread over the fact that it's a garage and not something else.
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My beef with Quincy planners is that they put all their eggs in one basket and left themselves wide open to massive failure. Since when do you take the extreme view that thinks that "not building a garage in a busy urban center" is tantamount to "banishing cars from downtown?" Please. That's insulting. You know very well that Quincy wanted to revitalize Quincy Center, and you know very well that you can build a station without a garage without "banishing cars" or anything extreme like that. Heck, they just did it in Assembly Square.

And I will continue to maintain that DOT does take two different attitudes towards deferred maintenance. When it's a sidewalk, they simply don't care. I've had over four years to observe it and they've had over four years to do something about it. I also have it on good authority that this kind of mess would be considered simply unacceptable in any other context.

But yes, we are getting away from the topic... although again, I could note that the same problem applies with Orange Line deferred maintenance...
 
So, speaking of the Orange Line and successful infill stations, how about one at the northern end of River's Edge on the Malden/Medford line?

It is 1.5 miles (8000 feet) from Wellington to Malden Center. Roughly at 4500 feet (north of Wellington) is Malden's Medford Street, connecting across the river and to Medford's Central Street. 3/4 mile station spacing.

Roughly at 3500 feet north of Wellington is the Malden-Medford line.

So I'm thinking the north entrance to the station would be at Medford St and the south would be at the Malden-Medford line.

Today, it is a whole lot of single-level office-warehouse space (which long ago relied on rail service). A few blocks beyond are residential neighborhoods of closely-packed single, duplex and three flat housing.

One day, it should be the same kind of redevelopment that we see elsewhere along the northern Orange Line.

This page from the MBTA system map is helpful, both for seeing how much closer stations are everywhere else and for giving you some sense of it as you trace your finger from Wellington to Malden Ctr.
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedFiles/Schedules_and_Maps/System_Map/MBTA-system_map-5.pdf
 
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I just went to Assembly to check it out and the ponding on the platform is simply horrendous. AECOM needs to have this addressed. The slab is not properly sloped and no floor drains are present.
 
datadyne007 said:
I just went to Assembly to check it out and the ponding on the platform is simply horrendous. AECOM needs to have this addressed. The slab is not properly sloped and no floor drains are present.
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That stinks. Other places (DC, anyway) is good at having the platforms sloped away from the platform edge (so strollers/wheelchairs are ever-so-slightly biased to roll to safety) with drains along the centerline. I would have thought this would be pretty standard in new stations by now.
 
Arlington said:
So, speaking of the Orange Line and successful infill stations, how about one at the northern end of River's Edge on the Malden/Medford line?

It is 1.5 miles (8000 feet) from Wellington to Malden Center. Roughly at 4500 feet (north of Wellington) is Malden's Medford Street, connecting across the river and to Medford's Central Street. 3/4 mile station spacing.

Roughly at 3500 feet north of Wellington is the Malden-Medford line.

So I'm thinking the north entrance to the station would be at Medford St and the south would be at the Malden-Medford line.

Today, it is a whole lot of single-level office-warehouse space (which long ago relied on rail service). A few blocks beyond are residential neighborhoods of closely-packed single, duplex and three flat housing.

One day, it should be the same kind of redevelopment that we see elsewhere along the northern Orange Line.

This page from the MBTA system map is helpful, both for seeing how much closer stations are everywhere else and for giving you some sense of it as you trace your finger from Wellington to Malden Ctr.
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedFiles/Schedules_and_Maps/System_Map/MBTA-system_map-5.pdf
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I agree! Back in April I proposed this:

Proposal - Build an infill Orange Line stop between Malden Center and Wellington, located at Medford St, called "Edgeworth." This stop will give Malden full-build in terms of transportation to/from Boston, but leave it lacking in local transportation.
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I think it would be the last remaining infill on the current Orange Line and could present a good opportunity for TOD.
 
Edgeworth was on the 1945 rapid transit extensions map. Oak Grove wasn't, though.

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Think the omission had to do with freight customers at that location. The currently inactive Track #4 over the Medford St. bridge still feeds the remnant of a siding that sloped down the embankment, crossed Commercial St., and served 2 or 3 customers. That siding and the Medford Branch were going to stay to serve the cluster of Medford/Malden freight customers even if the whole Reading extension were built and displaced commuter rail, which is why all the bridges Medford St.-south were done as 4-trackers.

Land-taking for another elevated station there would've been tough having to straddle 4 tracks at that location. Unlike Malden Ctr. and Oak Grove which stayed inside the ROW's natural footprint by having only 3 tracks, this would've had some property casualties.


I doubt infill's going to be possible here. That 4th track berth is an active proposal for a Wellington-Malden commuter rail passing siding once they get enough money to backfill a little bit of the old freight siding's embankment to tie the track back into the Haverhill Line after crossing the bridge. If you ever want service increases to Reading or future DMU's out there, that passing track is one of 2 or 3 minor necessities for supporting higher frequencies. So infill's not going to be possible without a lot of land-taking until they actually do take Orange all the way to Reading and can do away with Track 4 altogether at this location.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Edgeworth was on the 1945 rapid transit extensions map. Oak Grove wasn't, though.

Think the omission had to do with freight customers at that location. The currently inactive Track #4 over the Medford St. bridge still feeds the remnant of a siding that sloped down the embankment, crossed Commercial St., and served 2 or 3 customers. That siding and the Medford Branch were going to stay to serve the cluster of Medford/Malden freight customers even if the whole Reading extension were built and displaced commuter rail, which is why all the bridges Medford St.-south were done as 4-trackers.

Land-taking for another elevated station there would've been tough having to straddle 4 tracks at that location. Unlike Malden Ctr. and Oak Grove which stayed inside the ROW's natural footprint by having only 3 tracks, this would've had some property casualties.
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The ROW appears to be 6 tracks wide or more (at least in Google Maps and looking at the bridge abutments in streetview), in part because of the use of embankments and in part because of the sidings that this used to support (one had barely peeled off before you had to start peeling off the next)

They'd have to move the CR tracks out, but I bet you could keep within the ROW for most of the "outward bending" required to spread the tracks for a center platform
 
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T custodial staff sweeping the water away with brooms VV
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Arlington said:
The ROW appears to be 6 tracks wide or more (at least in Google Maps and looking at the bridge abutments in streetview), in part because of the use of embankments and in part because of the sidings that this used to support (one had barely peeled off before you had to start peeling off the next)

They'd have to move the CR tracks out, but I bet you could keep within the ROW for most of the "outward bending" required to spread the tracks for a center platform
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The ROW was never that wide. Pre-Orange Line it busted down to 3 tracks at the old Mystic drawbridge, then 2 tracks after the Medford Branch split off. Go look on Historic Aerials on all the pre-1975 aerial photos and topo maps...the Medford St. bridge is only 3 tracks, not 4.

The Orange Line significantly widened it. West side of the embankment where all the residential is is more or less the historical ROW boundary. East side had almost a mile's worth of new retaining walls constructed north of the bend in Commercial St. to widen it without significantly increasing the embankment's footprint.


Constructing that intensive a set of retaining walls on the west side at this location to support a station, in addition to being a nonstarter with the neighborhood, is going to send the price tag on this infill through the roof. Now the "value-added" of an infill starts approaching tactical nuclear strike-level construction costs. You really have to weigh whether the ridership gain is worth it for that much invasiveness, especially when both buses flanking the side of the bridge--the 97 and 108--each hit Malden Ctr. AND Wellington.

Since the Haymarket-North extension was well-studied for 30 years before it opened, I think the economics of an Edgeworth stop were exhaustively considered back then. And it didn't wash on expense when the extreme bus route duplication between Wellington and MC likely lands it as a bottom-three ridership Orange stop. Does it proportionately project any different today vs. the adjacent stops than it did 40 years ago? Probably not...the ridership's higher across the board, but there's still a proportionately huge boardings crater here vs. Wellington and MC and very fast bus trips flanking this site. Does it proportionately rank any differently on cost/benefit than it did 40 years ago? Yes...it ranks a whole lot worse given what a struggle it'll be to get approval for that much retaining wall construction on the tree-lined west side of the embankment.

And is the neighborhood clamoring for this stop loudly enough to make it worthwhile? No, not really.



There are way better places to spend infill money than this. I know it's a hot redev target, but transit access here is pretty excellent. If transit access isn't a problem, then there are better ways to use a bullet than solutions in search of a problem.
 
Archibald "Harry" Tuttle said:
Some aerial footage of the new Assembly Station
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Nice! I want a drone! :)

I want to know if the two-lane road through the station (under the north headhouse's pedestrian bridge) is built to "Urban Ring" specifications (both in width and alignment). It seems like it could handle Kiss-and-Ride/Taxi or Bus but not both. (if only one, where does the other mode go?)
 
Presented without comment: the many facial expressions of Rich Davey.
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Why cant the roof ever be built a foot longer so it covers you entirely as you walk into the train?
 
It is that way with most of the outdoor platforms throughout the system.
The Green, Red, Orange & Blue Lines. Sucks, but it is what it is.
 
Sunday: Buses replacing Orange Line service between Sullivan and Oak Grove Stations September 14 from start to end of service.

Due to the Assembly Station Project, alternate shuttle buses will replace Orange Line trains in both directions from Sullivan to Oak Grove Stations from start to end of service on Sunday, September 14, 2014. Regular Orange Line trains will resume at the start of service on Monday, September 15, 2014. All shuttle bus stops are accessible for persons with disabilities.
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So Assembly isn't really done yet?
 
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