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MBTA spending $550,000 to remove all those old trolley poles in Jamaica Plain
By adamg on Wed, 11/22/2023 - 11:43am
Jamaica Plain News reports the T decided it was time to remove the old poles along Centre Street before they started falling on people's heads.
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Comments
no lead?
The article says the poles aren't made of lead. But I wouldn't be surprised if they have lead paint on them.
Unusually aggressive for the
Unusually aggressive for the T. During the Poftak years the first three poles to bean someone would have been addressed with press releases at most.
JFC
$550,000 divided by 140 poles = $3928.57 per pole to remove. Why so freaking expensive?!
Think about everything they
Think about everything they have to do. They can't just jackhammer them out of the concrete, leave them where they lay, and call it a day. The poles have to be taken somewhere, and wherever "somewhere" is, they want to get paid, as do the people driving the truck that takes the poles to there. It costs money to repair the street afterwards, and more money to do all of the above safely. And so on.
Doesn't sound expensive at all
Not quite sure why you think it is, except maybe you haven't costed out or gotten any construction done in 30 years or so.
Do your homework first
A light pole, or similar, is typically buried about as deep as it is tall (above grade). The soil isn’t as strong as it looks and Boston is windy.
Because they have to pay cops
Because they have to pay cops their ridiculous overtime rate to play on their phones while construction workers bust their asses.
I’m glad they are getting rid of them. The amount of crap on sidewalks pedestrians have to deal with is ridiculous.
Nope
If they're not in the street, they're not paying for police details.
But I do agree with getting rid of stuff littering the sidewalks.
Sounds pretty cheap, actually
Sounds pretty cheap, actually. Neighbor got quoted like 6k for pouring a 5x5 concrete pad where they keep their trash bins, and that didn't involve cutting anything down, jackhammering the hole out, and hauling garbage away, just a little bit of site work with a bobcat.
Add in the mandatory cop staring at his phone while drivers figure out what the fuck they're supposed to do to get around the equipment trucks and 4k a pole tracks with the cost of labor right now.
That sounds pretty pricey too.
Digging a shallow hole, framing it with scrap plywood, buying, mixing, and pouring concrete, and smoothing it out? 6k seems 10x too high.
Well what's wild about
Well what's wild about skilled labor (and anyone who's had concrete settle and crack after a few months can attest that concrete is skilled labor) is that it's priced on supply and demand. Neighbor hemmed and hawed and finally went to pull the trigger at which point the contractor told him it'd be 6 months before he could get to it, because he'd taken a bunch of other work at that rate in the meantime.
And this was one of the few guys the neighbor could get to show up to look at a "small" job. Plenty of other streetwork guys too busy getting those big big half-mil MBTA jobs to come look at some random guy's yard job.
OK, so if this is the T's
OK, so if this is the T's typical schedule for such things, we now know that the old trackless trolley lines in Cambridge and Belmont will be taken down in 2061.
The thing is, as long as old
The thing is, as long as old infrastructure like this isn't in anyone's way, and isn't decrepit to the point of being dangerous, there's not that much reason to rush to tear it down. As long as those lines are there, the T has the option to start running trolleybuses in this area again. So it's a tiny benefit but an even tinier cost.
Unfortunately some of the
Unfortunately some of the trackless trolley wires are already down. Some, but not all, of the quick removals were done to enable curbside bike lanes/floating parking while not obstructing fire department ladders from reaching buildings.
When will the T make...
...an actual announcement that the “temporarily” suspended Green Line trolley service down S. Huntington Avenue and Centre and South streets is no longer temporary? What happened to the lawsuits Jamaica Plain residents filed? The T treats us like we are ignorant of history sometimes.