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Thursday, December 13, 2007
A second baby step...
As for the nick-naming of the project, please scratch my previous suggestions. How about Bigelow? "Big" because it is, and Boston is still in the post Big-Dig era. L-O-H for little-over-highway, or low-over-highway since compared to the Prudential Center being built over-highway, this one is a shrimp.
When they finished their second pass by hand with standard jack-hammers, they went back for a third, back with the mobile jack-hammers.
Then they cut the trees down on the closest side road, and took over some of it. I'm amazed at how the trees are absolutely embedded into the chain link fence. I would have guessed they'd die after being ringed, but many grew to over a foot in diameter with the chain links through them at all angles.
When they first blocked that side road from Marginal Street access, I was a bit concerned. Emergency vehicles used that route a lot, because of all the one-ways leading away from that area of downtown.
A big problem when they used that route, was double parking and the extreme narrowness of the road to begin with. I'd guess about 25& of the time they used that route, they had to slow to a crawl at best. I think they've circumvented the problem a bit, by having a different hospital cover from the other side of the city. That hospital has temporarily expanded ambulance bays, and is only a mile or so out. BU Medical Center was always a full time ambulance center whereas Tufts - New England Medical Center had limited hours anyway. Boston has no lack of hospitals.
They're now at the stage of digging along the separation between the highway and road. I'm going to guess that'll move the ramp to it's new permanent position, before doing much else.
They found a few small spots in the overhead bridge sidewalls, and they're doing some small patch repairs. Another guess; they're going to encase every wall on the highway with additional concrete structures to hold up the cover, besides the piers that will be every few feet in every divider, or space between tracks. The adjacent section of rail tracks are seven trains wide. I thought they might leave that side open air, but now I'm guessing they'll cover everything.