Waltham Infill and Small Developments

Downtown Streetscape work began this week. Crews so far have placed traffic barrels and cut trees on Moody Street from Burger King (Underwood Park) to Waltham Line and cut trees on Main Street from Newton Street to Townsend Street.
 
The ROW is being landscaped. The proposed boardwalk will run along the river.
 
Waltham's only got about 3 blocks of re-knitting work to do before its Bemis Branch segment is continuously pathed. There's already the Chemistry Station Path between Pine and Newton and the 2nd Charles trestle path behind Cavalry St. So they're done to the Watertown line if they can knit Waltham Ctr. to Pine with this boardwalk work then knit Pine-Cavalry and Cavalry to river together with the other crossing. Should help a lot at scooping up all that density down Newton St. with an easier walk to downtown.


Not a lot of hope of it getting stitched back together anywhere further east to Watertown Sq. The ROW was abandoned piecemeal so it's much more chewed up by private property encroachment on the Watertown side, and state or town don't own any of it outright. H2Otown's focusing all their attention on east-of-the-Square where the only stitch-up job over private property is Mt. Auburn to School St. (everything east of School to Danehy Park Cambridge is all fresh landbanking protection state-owned or under active negotiation for RR-->state purchase). That effort serves much more unique destinations around the malls. West-of-Square leg so closely parallels Pleasant/River St. that it never strays more than 500-800 ft. away from the existing Charles paths west of the last Route 20 crossing. Too redundant to waste energy fashioning anything out of when they've got much bigger dreams about filling the missing gap to Cambridge.
 
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I remember seeing a passenger level map from the 1920s in some planning document years ago that showed the Watertown Branch with very low ridership even back then. It is no wonder they let it grow over. It's a pipe dream of many to bring back transit along this corridor but there are so many other pressing areas that need it more.
 
Amazingly there was still a fright siding (granted it was abandoned) imbedded into the pavement on Pleasant Street near Stop & Shop. Those tracks were ripped out in 2009 during the reconstruction of Pleasant Street. As noted most of the old Watertown Branch ROW has been destroyed. All the tracks have been removed, the siding at Waltham Center has been removed, all the grade crossings have been paved over, A park built between Pine st & Newton St, Towing yard near Calvary Street, Construction company yard at River Street and Watertown Ford & Repton Place developments.
 
Work has started on a new development at Totten Pond Road & Third Avenue. Crews are currently preparing the 3 existing office buildings at 470, 486, 504 Totten Pond Road for demolition and in its place will build a new office and shopping development. A special permit for the 425,000 Square Foot project was approved in 2008 but work is just starting now.
 
matredsoxfan said:
Amazingly there was still a fright siding (granted it was abandoned) imbedded into the pavement on Pleasant Street near Stop & Shop. Those tracks were ripped out in 2009 during the reconstruction of Pleasant Street. As noted most of the old Watertown Branch ROW has been destroyed. All the tracks have been removed, the siding at Waltham Center has been removed, all the grade crossings have been paved over, A park built between Pine st & Newton St, Towing yard near Calvary Street, Construction company yard at River Street and Watertown Ford & Repton Place developments.
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There are still tracks in the parking lot between the BofA ATM and Stop and Shop.

http://goo.gl/maps/yRRW3

And a short piece of track remains right before the former connection at Waltham station, by the entrance to Waltham Mills. Plus some sidings alongside the Mills buildings.
 
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matredsoxfan said:
Just found an article from 2012 about the project with a rendering. Looks nice http://waltham.patch.com/groups/bus...etail-office-totten-pond-road-project-revived
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"Contextual" with the this auto-centric wasteland area. By far the least inviting section of Waltham. I wonder if any of the future employees at this office park will utilize the Alewife Shuttle, or if they will all be expected to drive on 128 to their suburban highway-side office park. [/rant]

At least it's better than if it were somewhere out by the Pike/495.
 
bigeman312 said:
"Contextual" with the this auto-centric wasteland area. By far the least inviting section of Waltham. I wonder if any of the future employees at this office park will utilize the Alewife Shuttle, or if they will all be expected to drive on 128 to their suburban highway-side office park. [/rant]

At least it's better than if it were somewhere out by the Pike/495.
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Bus 70A stops on Totten Pond Road right infront of the development. They have agreed to van pooling and using the Alewife shuttle.
 
matredsoxfan said:
Bus 70A stops on Totten Pond Road right infront of the development. They have agreed to van pooling and using the Alewife shuttle.
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Yes. That's good. I thought the 70A stopped a few blocks away, but whatever. My rant was about the nature of the development though. I acknowledged the public transit options. It too bad this is as anti-urban as it gets. Contextual though. Haha
 
The lot encompassing the old freight house and the abandoned building next door (http://goo.gl/maps/cNcwf) now has fencing all around it. There used to be a sign on the lot touting a new development. Is something finally happening there?
 
saulblum said:
The lot encompassing the old freight house and the abandoned building next door (http://goo.gl/maps/cNcwf) now has fencing all around it. There used to be a sign on the lot touting a new development. Is something finally happening there?
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Was suppose to be the "Station Landing" development but when the economy went south the developer pulled out. The property is now a vacant, posted "X" building. The lot its self is being used by a local landscape contractor.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
I remember seeing a passenger level map from the 1920s in some planning document years ago that showed the Watertown Branch with very low ridership even back then. It is no wonder they let it grow over. It's a pipe dream of many to bring back transit along this corridor but there are so many other pressing areas that need it more.
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The H2O Sq.-Waltham portion has too many damn grade crossings for that to have ever worked as a transit corridor, even if the thing were somehow intact. If they're ever to get rapid transit it it'll have to be a Green Line branch running out of Porter along ex-Fitchburg Tracks 3 & 4 to Beaver St., then the Fitchburg getting re-routed over the Central Mass ROW with the trolleys taking over the current CR tracks. And a separate branch serving Watertown via the landbanked east end of the H2O branch (even if it had to divert to street-running on Arsenal from School St. to the carhouse, which would still be a massive improvement over the old A-line street-running on Galen). Not even any of the BERy-era Crazy Transit Pitches about running a Mattapan-style interurban on the H20 and Lexington Branches off a Red Line extension terminating at the Mt. Auburn/Belmont St. intersection had any notions of trying to fight its way up that crossing gauntlet on the west end. The crossings were just too poorly-aligned around intersections and traffic lights.
 
Crews are painting thermoplastic lines along Winter Street tonight from Rte 128 to West Street. They will also be painting lines soon on the newly paved section around the reservoir. That section will have 2 11 Foot lanes (1 each direction), white fog lines, painted median, left turn lanes. Unknown if any bike accommodations are being added but I did see some markings down that suggest maybe sharrows.
 
Went down Winter Street again yesterday. Signs are up for a bike lane going from Lincoln Line to the Reservoir Woods Office Park and then sharrows for the rest.
 
matredsoxfan said:
Was suppose to be the "Station Landing" development but when the economy went south the developer pulled out. The property is now a vacant, posted "X" building. The lot its self is being used by a local landscape contractor.
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Those buildings were being demolished yesterday and this morning.

The old freight building remains untouched at the moment.
 
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