An MBTA commuter train crosses one of two drawbridges over the Charles River as it leaves North Station. The commuter agency is beginning the process of replacing the drawbridges, which are a bottleneck for trains entering and leaving the station.
Scott A. Hartley
BOSTON — The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has begun the process of replacing two drawbridges that create a bottleneck for service in and out of Boston’s North Station.
The Boston Globe reports that the MBTA has issued calls design and construction of a new bridge to replace the two double-track bridges, each more than 80 years old, that cross the Charles River near the station. The plan is to replace the two bridges with a six-track bridge, opening up two tracks and a platform at North Station that have never been used for commuter service because of the bottleneck.
The project is estimated to cost at least $100 million and might not be completed until 2026. The Globe report says the design process alone will take two years.
Two of the bridges were removed earlier, the 1960’s. By the mid-1970’s I was an active railfan and not just streetcars and I would have remembered bridge removals and walked across one of the bridges at night following NKP 759 in October 1973. Yes, the bridges open every day, often, and not just for pleasure craft. Duckboats, tour boats, and perhaps some water shuttles use it every day. Commercial oil barge traffic to a power plant continued supposedly as late as the early 1990’s to the Broad Canal with its highway drawbridge on Memorial Drive. Yes, it’s navigable water. What is interesting is did anyone ever consider elevating the tracks to cross the river on a higher fixed bridge into a raised station, then doing the North-South raillink by an aerial guideway on Causeway and Commercial Streets and Atlantic Avenue and South Station somehow. The time to have done that was 30 years ago before the new Boston Gaaden got built. 40 years ago Boston was prostrate and might have leaped to the idea–except that one would need to call it an aerial guideway rather than an Atlantic Avenue Elevated.
Charles, I often find your posts obtuse, but in this case, you show your ignorance. Federal law states that navigable waters always have priority over anything that crosses them
I’m not convinced one bridge is better than two (or three or 4$. I’ve watched these bridges go up and down. They only change position when needed. Sometimes one bridge stays up for a time, while the other goes up and down just occasionally. A single bridge would be going up and down all the time… also, a few decades down the road, do you really want to risk all access to north station due to single bridge failure?
At one time in the past, there were 4 2-track drawbridges side-by-side on this site. The two bridges on the western side were demolished many years ago.
CHRISTOPHE – I don’t understand your comment. Don’t know what a bridge over the Charles River has to do with the North – South Connector. The N-S Connector would cost billions of dollars and take decades. The money is needed for more important projects. You can bet that your grandchildren’s grandchildren won’t see it happen.
STEVE – Like many urban waterways traffic is 99.9% pleasure boating. I don’t know how often the drawbridges open but I find it irritating that the inland waterways which charge no user fees can force a bridge to be open for recreational boating.
There used to be 4 bridges there and the abutments still exist. Back when the B+M sold everything to the MBTA they got rid of two of the bridges. No matter what replacement they come up with it will still have to open and close for all the boats going to or from Boston harbor and the Charles River. You can’t build the bridges at a higher elevation to provide more clearance because North Station is to close to the bridges.
Any plans for a North South connector has a ramp starting out in the middle of the railroad yards West of the draw bridges.
How often do these bridges open for water traffic? Will new bridges also open?
This would be unnecessary if the North-South rail link was built between North and South stations.