Assembly Square Orange Line Station Discussion

The contract to build the station should be awarded at the October 5 MBTA board meeting.

http://www.thesomervillenews.com/archives/18691

(resurrecting a very old thread, but it's relevant)

Wal Mart is opening a grocery store (not a full-blown wal-mart) in the old circuit city building. This adds to the need of having this station! Does anyone know when Ikea will be built? As of right now, it's still an empty lot (or rather a field full of weeds)

I was surprised to notice this week (first week back to regular commuting since May) that they finally leveled off the remaining buildings to be demo'd. The last time I went by, perhaps a month ago, it had been the same as it had been for a year, pretty much. They have more fences up and appear to be grading out roads now. Looks like decent work is finally moving forward for the development. Didn't see any work where the Ikea will be though (not yet anyways).

There must have been a delay in relocating the business that was in the remaining building. There had appeared to be activity inside the building much longer than the others that were demolished prior to this.

octr202 wrote:There must have been a delay in relocating the business that was in the remaining building. There had appeared to be activity inside the building much longer than the others that were demolished prior to this.

It definitely was active, but there were two remaining buildings. As I recall, they didn't demo the empty one until they demo'd the one which was occupied most recently.

Contract awarded to build the station yesterday
http://www.thesomervillenews.com/archives/19565

rethcir wrote:Why does this work block the use of the tracks? Can't they keep one track open at a time while they work on the other platform?

Also, does anyone know if this project is going to take away the express track (and as such any hope of a sensible modern express service to wakefield/reading)? The way the T does things, I'm guessing yes.

I very much doubt it cuts the express track. They're gonna need that thing to test the 01400 cars, and breaking it probably impacts the signal system at more than the cost of laterally shifting 300 feet of tracks around platforms with no changes to the wiring, track circuits, etc. and no need to install new crossovers. What they can do if they choose is just build 1 island platform for the mainline tracks and leave the express track off to the side with no platform. That way they wouldn't have to touch the express or outbound tracks at all and would only need to shift the inbound track over. If there's a future need for using it and building the extra platform a la Community College and Sullivan, the empty ballast of the former freight sidings on the other side (currently used as a gravel access road between a couple small maintenance yards) offers enough room to shift the CR tracks + the express track over and get them back on-alignment in time for the Mystic bridge incline. Plenty of room to do as they please; the whole area used to be nothing but B&M yard tracks from Sutherland St. all the way to the river bank. The little-used park on the river side of the tracks didn't go in until sometime in the last 20 years.


Track shifting on the inbound side probably explains some of the temp bustitutions. Unlike the Savin Hill demo/rebuild where everything moved regularly on slow orders through the duration this does require touching at least 1 if not more of the tracks to fit in the platforms.

Check out page 37 of the 2009 Blue Book (http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/docum ... 202009.pdf).

Based on the crossover layout in that diagram, you could run inbound and outbound service using the center and easternmost tracks (current outbound and test track). At Sullivan and Comm College, you'd have to have both directions sharing one island platform, but it's physically possible. That could in theory allow for much service to operate while construction fouls the current inbound (westernmost) track, assuming they would simply bump out the inbound track to allow for an island platform. You'd no doubt have plenty of weekend/evening closures, but that seems like it would allow two tracks open past the worksite for weekday service to be maintained in both directions.

Obviously, I imagine the crossovers would probably need some work to handle daily revenue service like that, but seems less challenging that trying to bustitute the entire OL from Sullivan north. Thoughts, anyone?

They'll be showing the plans to the public next Tuesday.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/som ... embly.html

''Assembly required as Somerville project gets under way''

A stimulus-funded road is finally going somewhere in Somerville.

City and state officials held a groundbreaking today for Assembly Row, a massive, $1.5 billion mixed-use project that will transform 45 barren acres along the Mystic River.

About $125 million from taxpayer sources will pay for an MBTA station and major infrastructure including an access road to the new neighborhood of apartments, offices, hotel, stores, restaurants and cinema.

http://bostonherald.com/business/real_e ... ition=also

Over the past couple weeks they erected a new temporary ROW fence along the Orange Line, bumped out a couple hundred feet to allow construction staging and access. A couple days they removed the old fence. So construction is ready to go.

Also, they've been working on commuter rail platform at Oak Grove. I'm wondering if they'll use the rehabbed express platform at Wellington as a terminus for a shifted Orange Line service, and then leave Malden and Oak Grove with nothing but buses and commuter rail?

BostonUrbEx wrote:Also, they've been working on commuter rail platform at Oak Grove. I'm wondering if they'll use the rehabbed express platform at Wellington as a terminus for a shifted Orange Line service, and then leave Malden and Oak Grove with nothing but buses and commuter rail?

I haven't been there in 2 weeks, but I assumed that all that equipment was just being stored there so they could construct the bike area. Is it more obvious now what it's for?

Universal Hub reports : http://www.universalhub.com/2012/orange ... -years-per

''Orange Line riders north of Boston to face two years of periodic weekend, night bus service
By adamg - 5/24/12 - 10:32 am
South End Patch reports on impending bustitution north of the city to let the MBTA build the new Assembly Square stop in peace. There's no set schedule yet for the "diversions," but the T says what will start out as sporadic shutdowns will grow more frequent as the station progresses.''

Sporadic shutdowns? Can't they just schedule the shutdowns so that 1. they have a plan they can stick to, and 2. riders will know what's going on so that they can plan accordingly?

It was nice to see the site prep when I road by on the Rockport line. Is there a construction-phase plan out there?