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Citizen complaint of the day: Trestle trusses a rusting menace under the BU Bridge
By adamg on Sat, 05/06/2023 - 9:00pm
A concerned citizen files a 311 request asking the city to do something about the rustier parts of the Grand Junction Bridge, which carries commuter-rail and Amtrak trains under the BU Bridge, before they fall on people walking or jogging along the Charles River.
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Comments
Not before an extremely
Not before an extremely expensive study gets approved and inspectors can inspect. Money and meetings before human lives.
Try saying that three times fast!
Ugh! Pretty dangerous looking.
Well
We did have a guy who could get us the money to fix this…
Dukakis?
Certainly not Baker.
Civics Lesson
The bridge is the MBTA, not the city.
BU Bridge is DCR, not the city.
These are the same people who used to complain to Marty Walsh when the Assembly Square fare gates were open.
Please learn your jurisdictions. Thanks.
MBTA owns and maintains this bridge?
Why am I not surprised A - that it’s in complete disrepair and that they probably had no idea about it too?
That's A Given
It's too bad that there really isn't a good engineering school or three within 1.5 miles of here that could help point out structural defects in our transportation system.
The state already knows about
The state already knows about the many structural defects throughout the states transportation system, how many blue ribbon committees and high priced consultants have said this again and again the past several years (or more). It's the fact that the state isn't doing anything with that knowledge.
The gas tax has gone up 3 cents in the past 20 plus years, of course we don't have the money to fix and maintain our transportation network. And with electric vehicle drivers paying none while getting $7,000 plus in taxpayer subsidies, all the while vehicles getting heavier (more wear to roads and bridges) its not going to get better.
Because there's obviously not any money in state coffers
Which is why they had to send back a check to every taxpayer in the state.
Money is not the problem in Boston or Mass.
If the Baker administration
If the Baker administration has spent more money on repairing and maintaining infrastructure in the state last year there wouldn't have been a surplus. More repair projects that have been identified again and again could have been initiated. They didn't intentionally so there would be a surplus bc it is good in the short term politically and republican orthodoxy to invest as little as possible in government programs.
Question for you:
Who approved the state budget before it landed on Baker's desk to sign?
I’m going to call BS here
Baker was never going for another term so why would he care about his political future?
San Francisco is doing oh so great right now. Those damn republicans!
Chugga chugga
They did a tie replacement about five years ago, the bridge gets inspected, regularly, but planned replacement is apparently tied to the Mass Pike Bypass project and development of West Station and a MBTA layover facility in the remainder of Beacon Park.
Expect it to be closed for a couple years if it makes it to that future date.
Maybe they'll make emergency repairs if they have to but they'll likely just milk it along until it is closed for replacement.
Too bad
We had a governor who made destroying the transit system his lifelong obsession.
It went into complete
It went into complete disrepair under CSX, a private freight common carrier. The state bought it and the first thing they did was take it out of service and fix it up a bit. There's also plenty of inspections going on. What's not going on is things getting fixed that are known to need fixing!
Or how about we just do the
Or how about we just do the smart thing and allow 311 to be a liason where necessary. There are way too many vague jurisdictional boundaries within Boston for the average person to recognize them all. But if the issue is present in Boston 311 should be empowered to reach out to the relevant (and frequently absent) state agency.
The city has more clout than Joe blow. I know, I know, townies know all the jurisdictional boundaries and if you don't you clearly are not "From Here"TM
Seriously
Not only that, you have some esoteric combinations like places on Rt 16 where the road is DCR but the pedestrian signals are maintained by MassDOT. These butt against parks which are owned by DCR but maintained by the City of Medford. How the hell is any to resident to know any of that? It's not as if there is signage saying who to call.
Then you have places like that pedestrian staircase where the poor professor was killed. It took two weeks just for MBTA/MassDOT/DCR to figure out who owned it!
Massachusetts is a tangled hairball of divisions like that. It's disingenuous for any agency to close a ticket saying, "not our job" without first entering the work request in the appropriate agency.
Leaks in Stations
There's been alot of hullabaloo about water leaks causing issues in stations. And yes.. there are. That pole at DTX on the Red Line platform is looking pretty unstable these days... as are 234872384790 other things wrong at every other station.
But a lot of this is this issue... "not my job" or "it's someone else's issue".
Much of the water comes from street level. Remember many of our water mains are still wood pipes. and they leak. Or sometimes its a leaky street drain. Or a leak in a buildings basement. All of which drains down onto the tracks and platforms.
Yes I agree the MBTA plays a part in this, but if the other entity doesn't do THEIR job, all the MBTA can do mitigate as much as possible. Unfortunately for many instances, it only works for so long.
I never noticed this until a few years ago but those panels that hang above the Orange Line platform at Back Bay? I thought for many years they were weird ceiling panels or some 'art' installation. Nope.. they are to mitigate water over the platform so it goes into the track area. I mean really? Are we that bad?
I've been on tons of older transit systems and I rarely see things like this.
Someone (who may or may not be wise) told me once.. Massachusetts is great at building new shiny things, but maintaining them. Forget it. We suck.
This goes just about any state department (DOT, MBTA, etc). I swear its to keep construction workers employed. Let sh*t rot until it nearly collapses and then magically money appears and lots of overtime cuz 'it needs to get done fast cuz its a safety issue'.
Sad that we're like this. We could have the best of the best, instead we got a rotten apple core.
234,872,384,790?
234,872,384,790?
Well, just writing down what the 234 billion+ other things are is going to take too much time. I think there's a estimation problem.
Or hyperbole. And not the truthful kind, either.
Well but then what's the
Well but then what's the point of everyone in the state government having their tiny jealously-guarded fiefdoms? What do you think their job is, cooperating to improve the lives of their constituents or something crazy?
That's not the problem
This is the problem:
PLUS
Don't blame state workers and unions for the life's work of a man who refused to do his job because he wasn't allowed to destroy state workers and their union first.
Rail Lesson
Adding... This track is part of what is known as the Grand Junction line. It connects the Framingham line to the North side yard. It carries occasional freight and equipment moves (trainsets, locomotives, coaches) to and from the north side and south side operation. This is also access to the Boston Engine Terminal where most MBTA locomotives are services. Amtrak also moves equipment over this from the South Bay yard to the Somerville yard for service on the Downeaster.
Back in the day (wayyyyy back) this was a 2-track bridge but was reduced to a one-track bridge at a time well before any of us were born. The lower superstructure remains but the upper superstructure and tracks were removed. So while rusted on the left of the image, there are no trains that go over it. They all pass on the right.
The track eventually opens to 2-tracks going through the MIT area and sometimes freight can be set aside there for a later movement. Back in the day (more recently) this is where the Ringling Bros Circus train was set out while the show was in town. However a majority of it is single track.
Awareness of these things is important but it appears the person issuing the complaint is not a structural engineer, hence the Chicken Little sounding post.
All bridges in MA are inspected at least every 2 years so at best this is adequate for the very slow moving short number of cars that pass over it.
FWIW, we have bridges that are even worse than this that are still deemed useable.
If every rusted bridge were reported by a well-intentioned person, 311 would need a completely separate system just to handle that.
This is an MBTA bridge and no revenue generating passenger traffic moves over it.
No passengers have ever been carried on this line
Not by the MBTA, at any rate. There has been talk of using it to reroute some Framingham Line trains to North Station in order to free up platform space at South Station for other trains.
The damned Post Office won't get out of the way so more tracks can be added at South Station (and, incidentally, Dorchester Avenue, which is a public street, actually opened to the public!).
Alternatively, the state won't fund the much ballyhooed North Station - South Station rail link.
Chain link
They will probably secure some suspended chainlink fencing to the entire underside for keeping steel chunks from clobbering people and boats, but I wouldn't expect much more than that.
We cannot lose this bridge.
We cannot lose this bridge. It is one of only three bridges in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
The other two bridges are the Steel Bridge across the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, and the 25 de Abril Bridge in Lisbon, Portugal, according to BU Today.
I could see pieces of rusty metal falling on someone but it doesn't seem like the bridge itself is in danger. Can't whoever is responsible get money for repairs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law by President Biden a couple of years ago? It focuses on investments in roads, railways, bridges and broadband internet.