Bridge chunks on tracks. Photo by KMV.
Granite blocks covering a retaining wall under the bridge that carries Albany Street over the Amtrak and commuter-rail tracks between South Station and Back Bay collapsed on the tracks around 6:30 p.m. WHDH reports no injuries.
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Comments
Are you fucking shitting me?
By .
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 2:37am
Are you fucking shitting me? Can we talk to the uncle of the guy whose six-figure job is to make sure these kinds of things are inspected and safe?
Sorry, he's already been
By anon
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 11:53am
Sorry, he's already been promoted to a 7-figure job in Honolulu.
Sorry, he's already left that job
By adamg
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 12:25pm
And is back here lending his expertise to commuter rail (no, I'm not making this up).
Maintenance $ down to zero. shifted to un(der)funded expansion
By anon
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 1:38pm
The Baker MassDot administration shifted money to match the Green Line Extension (GLX) $1 billion commitment needed by the Commonwealth. According to my friends in the department, after all of that shifting they still don't have enough money for the $1 billion commitment, but the dept went ahead with expansion anyway. These are sad times.
Yes
By Waquiot
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 8:44pm
Because maintenance was robust before Baker came into office.
Falling infrastructure
By anon
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 6:13am
Falling infrastructure failing fast!!! What's more important, budget misallocation or human lives? Nahhhh, we can still wait until it happens.
We need an FMCB for the FMCB
By anon
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 3:32pm
Globe needs to dig
Nothing to see here.
By anon
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 7:47am
Move along.
Bridge Inspections
By anon
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 9:22am
The only inspections being done on the bridges and walls between South Station and Yawkey way are by graffiti vandals admiring their work.
It’s just the facade
By Greg Hunt
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 9:27am
All sorts of errors in how you’re reporting this. Based on pics I’ve seen on twitter what failed was the ornamental granite block facade covering the concrete abutment. Looks like the blocks were installed without any anchors or clips holding it to the concrete - just mortar. Crappy design and susceptible to popping off given enough rainwater seeping in and then freeze/thaw cycles. But it’s just a facade.
Seemed clear to me
By blues_lead
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 3:03pm
What error?
A facade for a road bridge, but a possible derailment for train
By issacg
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 4:34pm
I think that the real issue here isn't the integrity of the (roadway) bridge. It's that granite blocks that conceivably could have caused a train to derail went spilling across at least one set of tracks on a very busy transit corridor (T and Amtrak). If it hadn't been a holiday, this would have also caused havoc with late evening trains even without a derailment.
A facade for a road bridge, but a possible derailment for train
By issacg
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 4:34pm
I think that the real issue here isn't the integrity of the (roadway) bridge. It's that granite blocks that conceivably could have caused a train to derail went spilling across at least one set of tracks on a very busy transit corridor (T and Amtrak). If it hadn't been a holiday, this would have also caused havoc with late evening trains even without a derailment.
Map link.
By anon
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 11:57am
Map link.
Looks like granite block
By dmcboston
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 12:05pm
Wonder what's going on behind it to cause it to buckle like that?
Maybe one of the 'real' train people here can clue us in rather than an anon anti-Trump troll?
Or a different view
By johnmcboston
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 12:30pm
As a train guy - you're right, a granite brick wall would not collapse. Ch 25 had a different view - apparently there's a proper concrete abutment, and these were a granite blocks as a facade, and it is the facade that came down. Being just a facade, I wonder if it was regularly inspected as well as it should have been
So not just "debris" ?
By Russ
Tue, 04/17/2018 - 1:03pm
Every prior article I've read about this incident described the material that fell as "debris", which is in a sense true but also misleading. "Bridge chunks" and "granite blocks" are far more descriptive terms that better demonstrate the scale of the damage. Last night after seeing the pics, I was wondering why the media seemed to be downplaying the seriousness of this collapse.
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