MBTA to run less frequent service during winter storms

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/11/04/mbta_redraws_winter_storm_schedule_vows_for_better_year/

and http://mbta.com/winter/

Also, did anyone go to the meeting Wednesday evening regarding the weekend north redline shutdowns?

Whee

Comments

letting my train geek flag fly...

[ceo]

The tunnel is actually bored between Harvard and Davis, and cut-and-cover (under the bike path) from there to Alewife. Pulling the replacement rail all the way in from the Longfellow Bridge is going to be amusing; they'll have weld up much shorter sections than is usually done on surface railroads.

Re: letting my train geek flag fly...

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Anyone know why they didn't include a construction portal when they built Alewife? There's an underground yard that stores 6 trains past the end of the platform, so they could have built a truck ramp down to it.

Re: letting my train geek flag fly...

[tober.livejournal.com]

There is literally no place between Kendall and Alewife where there are tracks at ground level and really no way that an above-ground yard (this is really what you're asking about - just a hole in the ground by which the tunnel can be accessed, of which there are a considerable number for emergency egress, is really not useful for bringing in supplies and equipment) could have been readily constructed. If the original planners of the Northwest Extension had had their way and the red line terminated at route 128 (this would probably have been in Lexington or Bedford) then most of the Alewife to 128 segment would have been above-ground and there would have been a number of places where materials could be brought in by truck and placed onto work cars and carried into the subway. As things stand, though, the underground yard beyond Alewife is a dead-end.

Historical note: Before the Northwest Extension, there was a yard near Harvard known as Eliot Yard. Nothing remains of it today, the place where it was is part of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government now.

Re: letting my train geek flag fly...

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

I was suggesting a construction access truck ramp down to the underground yard at Alewife.

They certainly built a lot of ramps and did a lot of digging when they built Alewife, including those two huge double helix ramps which hardly ever get used. So one more ramp wouldn't have been a big deal.

I believe by the time Alewife was designed, the plans to extend the Red Line further were dead.