Underground station layouts

World Trade Center and Courthouse.

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Courthouse.png
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Courthouse is so hilariously over built. They just wanted something to show off so you forget you're just riding a slow ass bus.
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Outrageous to see it expressed like this. I always thought they should be renting that far end mezzanine space for corporate happy hour-type events, even wedding receptions. You laugh, but the likeliest customers are right here on this board, let's all admit it.

Also, again a very hearty thank you to EGE. I think this layout series is one of my three favorite things on the whole Internet right now.
 
I thought Courthouse was built by Frank McCourt, in anticipation of his planned development.
 
The fully built east end will be a good thing eventually, as it's provisioned for an additional headhouse or two once density justifies. But the huge amount of open space at both ends, and the full-length mezzanine, just don't make any sense. Full mezzanines are only useful at transfer stations where they provide a weather-protected route to exits (that doesn't require walking the full platform of the other line), and where they connect to other things. The Washington Street Concourse at DTX is a perfect example of both.
 
I wish I could find the Boston Globe Article written about Courthouse Station when it opened. Like much of the Boston press, it over emphasized the architecture and importance. I think I remember the article saying something like it was the most beautiful subway station in the world............or close to that. It's VERY nice, but there are hundreds of subway stations around the world that I would put forth before Courthouse. It's not a bad thing to be proud and boastful of our environment here in the Boston area, but I've found numerous occasions where the press seems to take it to a new level. :D
 
Java King said:
I wish I could find the Boston Globe Article written about Courthouse Station when it opened. Like much of the Boston press, it over emphasized the architecture and importance. I think I remember the article saying something like it was the most beautiful subway station in the world............or close to that. It's VERY nice, but there are hundreds of subway stations around the world that I would put forth before Courthouse. It's not a bad thing to be proud and boastful of our environment here in the Boston area, but I've found numerous occasions where the press seems to take it to a new level. :D
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I have to laugh at the concept that it is a "beautiful subway station". It is an over built bus stop.
 
Those two stops are just aching for LRT conversion, or at least a combo LRT/bus tunnel like Seattle's.
 
Courthouse Station interior shot I took last year-ish.
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As best as the fire alarm diagram and anecdotal reports bear, both loops at Maverick are still intact. The spur from the inbound track is a short section of tunnel built along with the station in 1924, probably as a provision for a proposed extension to Chelsea.

Maverick.png
 
Neon said:
Courthouse Station interior shot I took last year-ish. View attachment 4738
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The only way this station would make any sense is if it was under the convention center, there was small vendors here, and the Silver Line was a Subway Line not even Light Rail. Then maybe the size of the station would make any sense. But yeah we all know how the Seaport neighborhood was designed so well. 🥴
 
guitarguynboston said:
The only way this station would make any sense is if it was under the convention center, there was small vendors here, and the Silver Line was a Subway Line not even Light Rail. Then maybe the size of the station would make any sense. But yeah we all know how the Seaport neighborhood was designed so well. 🥴
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It has to be quite a letdown to first timers who don't understand the Silver Line. You enter Courthouse Station with its grand design and expansive concourse, and it sets all kinds of expectations. Arrive down at the platform level, and poof -- its a frigging bus (and a slow one at that).
 
The EGE said:
As best as the fire alarm diagram and anecdotal reports bear, both loops at Maverick are still intact. The spur from the inbound track is a short section of tunnel built along with the station in 1924, probably as a provision for a proposed extension to Chelsea.

View attachment 4739
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An extension to Chelsea from Maverick planned in 1924; wow, I never knew that. If not for the need for the Blue Line to Logan Airport, it would have made sense.

As for Maverick Station itself, I remember as a kid the old trolley car ramp and portal still open to the outside and used as a pedestrian entrance to the station, and also the loop at the north end of the station still being used by Blue Line cars. Why did they close of the loop? Seems like it served a useful purpose, although I suppose the Orient Heights yard probably replaced the need for it.
 
There's just not much of a need to short-turn trains on the Blue Line, because it's fairly short and Wonderland slugs pretty high on ridership. Orient Heights short-turns haven't been in regular use since 1972 (though there was a single Maverick/Orient Heights run-as-directed train in the 90s). The trailing point crossover west of Maverick and the full crossover at Airport are sufficient for turning trains during construction or disruptions.
 
Charlie_mta said:
An extension to Chelsea from Maverick planned in 1924; wow, I never knew that. If not for the need for the Blue Line to Logan Airport, it would have made sense.

As for Maverick Station itself, I remember as a kid the old trolley car ramp and portal still open to the outside and used as a pedestrian entrance to the station, and also the loop at the north end of the station still being used by Blue Line cars. Why did they close of the loop? Seems like it served a useful purpose, although I suppose the Orient Heights yard probably replaced the need for it.
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Well, don't forget the Boston Revere Beach & Lynn was still doing torrid passenger business during the Roaring 20's...back when Revere Beach was at its all-time economic & tourism apex. That was 'peak' all-time RR decade right there, and also 2 decades before the end of steam when all RR's were still technologically unidirectional tracks and unidirectional rolling stock, before some of those 4+ track mainlines could re-signal themselves to cram 4-5 tracks worth of traffic comfortably on 2-3 tracks and entertain selling off their slack space to side-running rapid transit expansion. Thus, for Boston Transit Commission it was still the base assumption that any/all expansion plans outside of city limits would forever have to be chasing their own homegrown ROW's because nothing owned by the RR's would ever have capacity to give. They were still squarely in "Els everywhere" mentality, and only beginning the fight over extending the Orange Line to Malden on stilts over Main St. because the stone's-throw adjacent Saugus Branch AND Western Route were off-limits.

Obviously within little more than a decade the whole world flipped on its head, and after a 1930's of total bloodletting the still-independent BRB&L was out-of-business by 1940 with the state buying the entire ROW. The Maverick tunnel stub never would've been used at any point further for reaching Chelsea, because some combination of under-utilized RR ROW's would have accomplished exactly the same task. For example: BRB&L to Logan & Wood Island on the current Blue alignment then vulturing some surplus side tracks from the gigantic East Boston cluster of B&M + B&A port freight tracks that used to take up the entirety of Route 1A's width footprint would've accomplished the job at getting them on Chelsea's doorstep. Then take it from there on whatever tunneling or El tricks would've gotten them downtown. The 30's and early-40's were a Crazy Transit Pitch-a-thon of crayon-drawing schemes like that utilizing any/all ROW's (both the availables and not-yet-availables). And then the Alternatives were sifted through and busted down to the famous 1945 expansion map, which rolled up its Blue Line vision into straight-on linear expansion over the whole BRB&L mainline to Lynn.

That Chelsea-leaning tunnel stub thus never would've seen any use unless an extension had been greenlit shovel-ready fast!-fast!-fast! within 5 years tops. Because post-Crash the planning pivot was immediate to seeking synergies with all these underutilized RR ROW's. Keep in mind as well, HRT conversion to Maverick was a top priority almost since the East Boston Tunnel opened in 1901, so that stub-out design was probably sitting on a shelf close to 2 decades before Maverick was actually rebuilt and they thought they would be looking at multi-decade staging of a tunnel + El buildout. The big slowdown came from opposition in Cambridge to doing a Red Line El run-thru into the Eastie tunnel @ Bowdoin, and the multiple plan revisions that eventually let to a Charles Circle reverse-branch junction for either Maverick or downtown that would've been interconnected by other Els to other places later on. It was when Red was shovel-ready in 1912 and Blue was still stymied in conversion politics that all those considerations fell through and they just cleaved the networks off to run their own different-size HRT rolling stock. Had things not ground to a halt in Cambridge and ended up getting the HRT trains to Maverick by no later than the 1910's planning off that Chelsea stub probably would've been a hot topic. As it turned out, the opening delayed to 1924...the giant Crash happened only 5 years later...and the RR's were immediately wiped out starting the huge planning shift from Els to slack RR ROW's.
 
The EGE said:
There's just not much of a need to short-turn trains on the Blue Line, because it's fairly short and Wonderland slugs pretty high on ridership. Orient Heights short-turns haven't been in regular use since 1972 (though there was a single Maverick/Orient Heights run-as-directed train in the 90s). The trailing point crossover west of Maverick and the full crossover at Airport are sufficient for turning trains during construction or disruptions.
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Yeah, and even in Crazy Transit Pitches land where you're crayon-drawing Blue inner-suburban branches, there isn't a mid-line loop site that would really fit the needs of all the headway re-balancing all those branches would induce. Take some of the 'CTP'-thread doodles about Chelsea vs. Salem forks on the north end, Riverside vs. Watertown (or other) forks on the past-Charles/Kenmore end, and the problematic frequency balancing that induces. Maybe Orient Heights Loop to the north lets you crank up frequencies to the west + branches, and maybe you can distend a wide loop around the back of Charles Circle to let the north branches hit all the important transfers before cutting out. Because it would have to be considered a service baseline for any one branch that they get access to Logan + Maverick buses + all downtown subway transfers. But how do you run that much service Charles-OH on 2 mainline tracks, since you can't exactly quad up everything including the cross-Harbor tunnel? It'd have to somehow be denser service than the 3-min. headway ceiling that's more or less the outer limit for our three HRT mains, so it's just not going to happen. And we have the Urban Ring NE quadrant to LRT up for addressing some of this demand via augmentation WAY more cheaply than trying to cram a gravitational singularity of branched services down Blue's gut.

For that reason any Blue expansion plans can go mainline-linear as far out as you want (Salem to north, Newton or whatever to the west), but any branches schemes immediately fail the load-balancing test for variety of previously at-length discussed reasons that don't have any available fixes. Fixes such as mid-line turnbacks done in non-kludgy fashion are also out, since as ^^above^^ "non-kludgy" options don't jibe at all with where maximal demand overlap is on Blue.
 
These are great, thank you for contributing this content.
 
The EGE said:
The fully built east end will be a good thing eventually, as it's provisioned for an additional headhouse or two once density justifies.
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I've read, probably on the Development Projects forum, that when the lot adjacent to the east end of the station (Parcel N, where the skating rink was) is developed, it'll have a headhouse incorporated into it, along with a connection to the parking garage. Supposedly that will also have a connection into the Fan Pier garage, which will be kind of nice since I work in 1 Marina Park Drive. Currently there's just an emergency exit here.
 
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