by F-line to Dudley via Park
There are no plans to continue it from where it currently dead-ends at the Charles River Bridge and dumps onto the small riverfront dirt/gravel path. Charles bridge isn't in suitable shape for continuing a poke over to Fremont St. and is blocked off by fencing. Obviously MassHighway deleted the Route 128 overpass from the add-a-lane project after abandonment to save cash, but they explicitly left the new retaining walls compatible with coming back and surgically re-adding rail bridge + side/center median abutments if ever needed. City of Needham has no plans whatsoever to do a trail on the TV Place side, because end of active tail track (slack tail storage for work equipment) is the Webster St. grade crossing and a path just pinging 1500 ft. from single-family residential Webster to the commercial strip on Gould is useless.
The more consequential path leg for Newton & NEBC redev is the one that's going to be built next on the 1.4 mi. former freight spur that forks off behind the radio tower on Tower Rd. (halfway between the proposed Needham St. and Upper Falls stops). That one crosses Needham St., crosses the Charles on its own bridge, then winds through the middle of the whole Highland-Kendrick block of NEBC parallel to 2nd/4th Ave.'s. That's the one that serves the bulk of NEBC access and gets the most utilization from all that office space, as well as serving as interconnection to both riverbanks' dirt paths and connecting to start of vast Cutler Park Reservation when it reaches the Kendrick end.
So the only path encroachment that Newton needs is the 1500 ft. between the Eliot trail head to start of the Tower spur. Official City statement is that: 1) Green Line trumps trail if they can't have both, because they'll still have the whole of the Tower spur trail; 2) 1500+ ft. of rail-with-trail between Eliot-Tower is much-preferred (see renders from presentation) if they can swing it; 3) retaining the secondary Upper Falls trail head on rail-with-trail is much-preferred if they can swing it, but surplus-to-requirement if they can't because the spur path is the one that counts.
For the encroachers...the substation building blocking the junction is an MBTA 600V DC feeder that's hooked directly up to the NStar sub next door. The lumber yard behind the junction that was formerly the last freight customer parks all over what used to be their siding (a.k.a. main track), and the building next door put a row of parking spaces there. All that's revokable. Rest to the Charles is accounted for path surveying, and from behind Upper Falls depot to Tower spur originally fanned out into 3+ tracks because of the thicket of siding switches at the Tower spur and the 2 separate sidings that went to the former mill on Oak St. (very last BCLR customer in 2001). Cruddy little buildings on Fremont St. abutting 128 are earmarked for future razing when NEBC redev fills out back there (see presentation). On the TV Place side, looks like the Wingate planted a few shrubs in its back garden over the property line...but other than that the complete 85 ft. ROW property width on Google is completely unencroached from Webster end-of-active track to 128. Gould-Webster block is completely built-up with fenced-in single-family residences, so there's no mechanism for any additional encroachment.
The more consequential path leg for Newton & NEBC redev is the one that's going to be built next on the 1.4 mi. former freight spur that forks off behind the radio tower on Tower Rd. (halfway between the proposed Needham St. and Upper Falls stops). That one crosses Needham St., crosses the Charles on its own bridge, then winds through the middle of the whole Highland-Kendrick block of NEBC parallel to 2nd/4th Ave.'s. That's the one that serves the bulk of NEBC access and gets the most utilization from all that office space, as well as serving as interconnection to both riverbanks' dirt paths and connecting to start of vast Cutler Park Reservation when it reaches the Kendrick end.
So the only path encroachment that Newton needs is the 1500 ft. between the Eliot trail head to start of the Tower spur. Official City statement is that: 1) Green Line trumps trail if they can't have both, because they'll still have the whole of the Tower spur trail; 2) 1500+ ft. of rail-with-trail between Eliot-Tower is much-preferred (see renders from presentation) if they can swing it; 3) retaining the secondary Upper Falls trail head on rail-with-trail is much-preferred if they can swing it, but surplus-to-requirement if they can't because the spur path is the one that counts.
For the encroachers...the substation building blocking the junction is an MBTA 600V DC feeder that's hooked directly up to the NStar sub next door. The lumber yard behind the junction that was formerly the last freight customer parks all over what used to be their siding (a.k.a. main track), and the building next door put a row of parking spaces there. All that's revokable. Rest to the Charles is accounted for path surveying, and from behind Upper Falls depot to Tower spur originally fanned out into 3+ tracks because of the thicket of siding switches at the Tower spur and the 2 separate sidings that went to the former mill on Oak St. (very last BCLR customer in 2001). Cruddy little buildings on Fremont St. abutting 128 are earmarked for future razing when NEBC redev fills out back there (see presentation). On the TV Place side, looks like the Wingate planted a few shrubs in its back garden over the property line...but other than that the complete 85 ft. ROW property width on Google is completely unencroached from Webster end-of-active track to 128. Gould-Webster block is completely built-up with fenced-in single-family residences, so there's no mechanism for any additional encroachment.