Transit history/trivia quiz

The answer is Broadway. From 1930 to 1953, buses used left-hand doors to serve the island platform of the surface station. In 1953, the last streetcar line (route 9) using the station was converted to bus. The MTA reversed the direction of traffic through the station at that time, with buses operating on the left. They crossed to/from the correct lane just west of the station. This continued until the late 1980s, when the station was renovated and the surface platform removed.

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How many MBTA stations can you enter from a non-transportation building (i.e, not including parking garages) without going outside? Arbitrarily defined as "still within walls and a roof, but not just retail within the station"; that is, neither the Tufts Medical Center entrance being under the Floating Hospital, nor the Dominos at Roxbury Crossing having a door into the station lobby, count. I can think of five, but there may be more.
 
The EGE said:
How many MBTA stations can you enter from a non-transportation building (i.e, not including parking garages) without going outside? Arbitrarily defined as "still within walls and a roof, but not just retail within the station"; that is, neither the Tufts Medical Center entrance being under the Floating Hospital, nor the Dominos at Roxbury Crossing having a door into the station lobby, count. I can think of five, but there may be more.
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Operational entrances or historical entrances still there but blocked?
 
One could maybe argue that South Station isn't a "non-transportation building", but of course it also has office space in it (and is about to get a lot more). But you can also access South Station from the Federal Reserve building if you work there.
Kendall outbound used to be accessible from the Marriott hotel lobby without going outside; don't know if it still will be after the rebuild is done.
Park Street, via the Winter Street Concourse to DTX (which also connects into at least one largish office building).
 
Back Bay, North Station, Prudential, and DTX were four of my five. I'll also accept South Station thanks to the Federal Reserve Building entrance. Getting to Park Street from Roche Bros/Macys/101 Arch requires entering fare control at DTX first, so I didn't count it. There's still one lesser-known entrance remaining.


JeffDowntown said:
Operational entrances or historical entrances still there but blocked?
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I was thinking operational. I'm curious what historical entrances we can remember; off the topic of my head I can think of Boylston (Little Building), State (Exchange Building), and Kendall/MIT (as mentioned).
 
Not quite transit, but still piqued my curiosity. There are 17 ventilation structures serving the Big Dig and the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels. These include 13 ventilation buildings (numbered 1-15 with 2 gaps, just to keep us on our toes), 1 air intake structure, and 3 fan chambers (somewhat smaller than ventilation buildings). All 17 are easily visible from public roads/parks; all but 1 are easily identifiable. How many can you find?

Note: searching on Google Maps is fine, but please don't actually research it - the answers aren't terribly difficult to find.
 
Big Dig tunnel:
Surface Rd and Sudbury St, inside the building with Boston Public Market in it
North wing of the Intercontinental Hotel
Dewey Square Plaza (intake)
125 Summer St
Next to the (closed) main platform entrance of South Station (I think)
Surface Rd and Essex St
Next to the Chinatown Gate

Ted Williams Tunnel:
End of Fort Point Channel behind the USPS facility
Summer St across from the convention center
Seafood Way and Fid Kennedy Ave
Harborside Drive near the Hyatt

Sumner and Callahan Tunnels:
North St above the Callahan south portal
North St between Clark St and Fleet St
Liverpool St opposite Coppersmith Way
London St and Decatur St

I'm missing two, almost certainly in the central part of the Big Dig tunnel.
 
All are correct except for South Station; there was never a major structure there.

Three remain, only one of which is in the Central Artery tunnel. Once they're found, I'll make a post mapping out all of them.
 
The EGE said:
Three remain, only one of which is in the Central Artery tunnel. Once they're found, I'll make a post mapping out all of them.
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Is one of them the ventilation structure now surrounded by One Canal, or is that an MBTA vent building?
 
No, that structure is MBTA only. (Fun fact, prior to One Canal being built, there was a Green Line signal on one side - an artifact from the temporarily incline used during construction of the "superstation".)
 
You're correct - the near building is a substation, the far building MBTA ventilation. Neither is CA/T ventilation, though.
 
Been wondering about this since I was a kid: in this video, what is/was the high-level platform (?) immediately preceding the outbound Green Line platform at the old elevated North Station? (Video courtesy of the GBH Archives, platform visible from about 0:12 to 0:30) https://fb.watch/g_B87u6Zz4/

I have a vague memory of someone telling me it was part of the old Orange Line platforms, but I can’t figure out how that would be, at least based on the diagrams I’ve been able to find of the old Main Line El station.
 
Riverside said:
Been wondering about this since I was a kid: in this video, what is/was the high-level platform (?) immediately preceding the outbound Green Line platform at the old elevated North Station? (Video courtesy of the GBH Archives, platform visible from about 0:12 to 0:30) https://fb.watch/g_B87u6Zz4/

I have a vague memory of someone telling me it was part of the old Orange Line platforms, but I can’t figure out how that would be, at least based on the diagrams I’ve been able to find of the old Main Line El station.
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If you mean the section above and parallel to Causeway Street, it looks like that's the remnants of the walkway that led to the old Garden. The green side wall is partially missing, making it look like a high-level platform. I don't know if there was a direct connection from the elevated Orange Line station to the Garden, but the one in the picture survived a good while after the OL was buried. There's no way it could be part of the OL platform proper, the platform was parallel to Canal Street, and the inbound track was between the island platform and where this structure was.

The other elevated structure, to the right of where the train is before the turn onto Causeway, is the temporary elevated the Green Line used in the last years of the Causeway Street Elevated, shifting over to the former Orange Line alignment out of the portal.
 
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Riverside said:
Been wondering about this since I was a kid: in this video, what is/was the high-level platform (?) immediately preceding the outbound Green Line platform at the old elevated North Station? (Video courtesy of the GBH Archives, platform visible from about 0:12 to 0:30) https://fb.watch/g_B87u6Zz4/

I have a vague memory of someone telling me it was part of the old Orange Line platforms, but I can’t figure out how that would be, at least based on the diagrams I’ve been able to find of the old Main Line El station.
Click to expand...
The high platform at the east end of the old Green Line el station (at North Station) was the stub northern end of the Atlantic Avenue elevated line, which was part of what is today called the Orange Line. The elevated line began as a single stub track alongside this high platform at North Station (with pedestrian access to North Station), then shared the OL elevated line along Causeway Street, then branched off at Commercial Street, continuing on Atlantic Ave (as a double track elevated) to South Station, then continuing further south to tie back into the OL elevated mainline at Washington Street, about where the Mass Pike is now. It was the original N-S Rail Link, connecting North Station with South Station, and today would be very useful to have.
 
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