Hey, there! Log in / Register
The new Government Center station hasn't even opened yet and already it's broken
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Today is a bad day to read
Today is a bad day to read MBTA news.
Fixed.
If this were the old MBTA
taxpayers would be footing the bill afterwards. Glad the inspectors are on the job and getting this resolved.
DePaola said the project's
DePaola said the project's contractor, Barletta Heavy Division, is fully responsible for workmanship issues and should cover the cost of replacing the panes, which will be done in batches.
The use of should and not will is worrisome...
agreed
To me, this is warranty work, or if the warranty hasn't kicked in, plain old fix it work.
The funiest thing I have
The funiest thing I have heard about the Gov't Center renovation project is that the Design and Construction dept. forgot to include the renovation of the Blue Line platform in the original contract. It had to be added as a change order. How do you forget about a whole platform? No one will b fired for this screw up either.
Intentional?
It would seem strange that it would slip someone's mind considering how large of a project this is. (Dozens of people must have seen the design and contact.) Sometimes planners and politicians alike leave out big ticket items such as this to get the project sounding cheaper and approved on the assumption that once the project starts they aren't going to stop mid-way.
That's pretty much the story of the Big Dig but plenty of smaller projects fit this category too.
Sometimes
Portions get left out of the cost estimates imply they couldn't afford that portion. If the contractors are hungry and come in super low, bits get added onto the project via change order. But this would give the estimator a bad name if they were that far off the bids.
Not Intentional (this time).
You are somehow assuming that the contractor new these windows (which must have been custom made) would fail. That doesn't make sense and if the window seals were going to fail there is no way the installers could have known. You wouldn't be able to tell by looking at the "design". The manufacturer will be on the hook. But we know what you mean and it's called "back-charges" where the bid comes in low and they intend to make more money on top of that by doing work which wasn't in the original contract (for big bucks). "Pretty standard stuff, really."
Glass
At least it's just the glass and not the structure that holds it. They had most of the glass pieces installed over a week span or so, so I don't see this will be delayed very much.
That's what they initally said
about the Hancock Tower (aka the Plywood Palace). Then they found that the glass failures were directly related to a problem with the structure design.
Yes. But it was fixed and
Yes. But it was fixed and covered by insurance and probably is what made the John Hancock bldg so famous. Remember watching that on the news - area taped off, sheets of glass falling in the street. Boarded up skyscraper!
Same glass supplier as the John Hancock Tower, by any chance?
The ole
Plywood Palace!
GLX and this, same day too!
Gotta love it, this state never ceases to amaze me with its breathtaking incompetence. World class, baby!
Since they were disclosed at
Since they were disclosed at the same meeting, it isn't a surprise they were the same day....
Unbelievable. Can Boston do
Unbelievable. Can Boston do anything correctly or efficiently? The CTA in Chicago was able to renovate the entire southern portion of a line in 5 months. This included an entirely new track bed, elevators in 3 stations, and rehabbing 8 stations. THIS ONLY TOOK THEM 5 MONTHS. How, in our infinite Bostonian wisdom does it take 2 years to renovate 1 station? They're not even laying new track! They only have to focus on 1 station and they can't get it right the first time.
Soaring housing costs, too many college kids, dysfunctional municipal government, crappy weather, and an archaic horribly run transit system. Why do people like living here? I sure don't anymore.
Yeah but
have you actually lived anywhere else? There's tons of places that suck way worse than Boston does. Something's going to annoy you everywhere you live.
Any bets on how soon the
Any bets on how soon the station will start leaking? It sure didn't take long at North Station after it was redone.
As far as leaking from track level
that will be highly unlikely. Green Line North Station was new excavation, which is not the case here.
I'd say that the most likely source of leaking will be from above, given the fragility of the steel and glass tower that constitutes the new headhouse.
Speaking of above...
Has anyone pointed out what a disaster this is going to be in the winter? The roof is mostly flat so snow will collect but pitched so it can slide off, the height makes it inaccessible to maintenance personnel, the edges of the glass are right on walkways, and the rising hot air will cause snowbanks to melt and slide... head's up!
Plus the outrageous heating bills we will be paying for
Forevermore otherwise the station will be freezing.
Some architect will have a lovely showpiece, but we will face the long term costs.
Wait, they heat stations?
Wait, they heat stations?
Of course they do
They had the heater on at State St at full blast this morning.
FTFY
No, it won't.
It'll cause ice dams, meaning it will cause massive chunks of melted and refrozen ice (topped with snow) to slide...
Long-term maintenance?
It's nice that this is being fixed now, but what happens a few years (or, more likely, months) down the line if/when the panels fail again? The MBTA is terrible at maintaining stations. Examples include the tile floor at North Station, where maintenance crews have given up replacing cracked tiles with new ones and now just fill the empty spaces with mortar, or Copley Station, which already has peeling green paint on the support columns only a few years after the station was renovated. Heck, Forest Hills still has a sign pointing passengers toward a Green Line stop that never saw service. I'm concerned GC is headed for the same fate.
My favorite photo of an MBTA
My favorite photo of an MBTA station. It's almost artistic in its decrepitude. Looks like some of the pictures from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone...
Whenever I see that glass
Whenever I see that glass structure at Government Center, I'm thinking it's going to be 100 degrees inside that thing.
Let's lose the glass crap.
Why is the T hiring these jackass glass architects to make stupid glitz messes out of a simple subway station headhouse?
It is baking in a whole set of unnecessary structure problems to satisfy vanity.
Which asshole over at the T is the architects cousin? This is just another pathetic example of hick Boston getting carried away by another wave of world class anxiety.
I'm really missing the old Cold War era civil defense pillbox that used to be there and I bet it was a much better value.
It also doesn't match
It also doesn't match anything in the surrounding area. It would have been nice if they'd done red brick and historical-style detailing, maybe tying it into that curving building to the side that is the only non-hideous thing on that whole plaza. But no, another 'modern' monstrosity that people will hate in 10 years.
More red brick in City Hall Plaza???
Methinks they have plenty there already.
That's the point.
It's contextually appropriate and fits in.
No one wants more of that context.
The entire point is to be a stark contrast to the surroundings, which everyone despises and calls for demolition. Should the glass pyramid at the Loevre be changed to fit with it's surroundings or is that the point if it? (Not that anyone would confuse the 2 locales).
The entire point of this project should be
to provide a functional subway station, not an architectural statement.
Mutually exclusive goals
Everyone agrees, but the structure could, in fact, do both.
Replaced brick by brick?
The whole plaza should be replaced, yes. But is adding an eyesore, which, I agree, is architecturally different from the eyesore of the rest of the plaza, a good way to do that? Making the area look like a jumble of radically different buildings at odd angles is inferior to a master plan for the area.
We shall have to agree to disagree on this one
City Hall plaza is 100% brick from one end to the other, and hated for it. You may be the first person on earth to assert that more brick is needed there. It's not that I feel the new structure is a work of art, but I don't have this fixation that it has to match it's (much reviled) surroundings. Does this have roots in OCD?
Matching one's surroundings is a new thing?
See here for some examples of contextual (and non) architecture and an explanation of the design process.
I would argue that the Hancock Tower is "successfully noncontextual":
while this headhouse is "absolutely noncontextual":
and at the very least, the Brick Bunker was "very contextual":
Architecture isn't an iPhone where you have to update it every 2 years and you're stuck with whatever design is in vogue; it's an art, and part of that art is paying attention to the surroundings it exists in (in some way).
In an ideal world the
In an ideal world the buildings would be brick and the ground would be, you know, ground, with grass. Less apocalyptic nightmarish brutalism and more the common / Copley aesthetically.
Why the glass?
Because the glass is a nice canvas on which to display large billboards for your advertising customers.
Always follow the money.
You didn't think that big old head house was going to stay see-through as it is in the architects' renderings, did you?
So the T gets $1,200 a month
and Clear Channel gets $120,000 a month. That ususally how the T's ad contracts work.
That's at least plausible.
If dim on the T's part.
Kenmore looks like a prototype for the city of glass conceit. I haven't seen it is a year or so but is it also used as a billboard mount?
These new slick building technologies often have installation problems as the trades guys figure the details out and the product system matures. I could see it for some showcase building, but a head house?
I was in Seattle when Frank Gehry foisted his ridiculous building on Paul Allen to house his collection of guitars and Cher costumes in the Experience Music Project and it had stupid problems like internal rain on the bar from condensation. Gehry and Allen ended up parting in acrimony with lawsuits flying every which way.
But it is a museum and Allen wanted to make a statement.
If the motive was billboard space, why bother with the glass? Find a design that is less of a challenge for the trades and be done with it. And it does undermine the aesthetic element that presumably informed the design.
We can't build anything right in this country anymore...
Everything be build might as well be held together with duct tape, bubble gum, and baling wire. It's disgraceful.
I dunno...
I dunno,, I thought the recent Mars landing was pretty cool.
Two words
Low Bid
lolmbta
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seriously though, is there anything this agency and their idiot contractors can actually get right? Anyone?
Curious
How do you feel about the Charles/MGH T stop? Barletta did that one, too.