State awarded megabucks to replace creaky train drawbridges at North Station

Adam - You can do better than posting Anon rebuttals that suggest renewables shouldn't be considered when powering the T.

They can already do the most used / longest line in the system (South Station / Providence) if they had the equipment.

Plus...
Some of those old jobs were "build an entirely new where nothing had been there before" or "build new where you have license and domain to demolish everything that is existing" - as opposed to having to build around something existing that you need to keep in operation until the new thing is complete.

Costs are driven up by labor costs, and cost of doing business. Remember when the Golden Gate went up there were less employee laws about safety. Thus less costs associated with this (think workman's comp insurance).

I agree (and said so in my initial posting) that the better pay and better working conditions and better worker safety that workers now enjoy, are all good things. The other things you cite, cost of doing business and cost of materials, are already factored in by the inflation adjustment, and we shouldn't double count them.

As an aside, we're getting different inflation numbers. I'm using the BLS CPI calculator (Link here) and getting $242 per day, or $30 per hour now, which is, as you point out, much less than what a skilled construction worker working on a dangerous job ought to be making.

Yeah, 11 people died constructing the Golden Gate Bridge. Workers safeties and rights are a bit different 100 years later. On the cost of labor/etc, though, and cost of public infrastructure we do have a big problem in this country. EU countries seem to be able to still build things significantly cheaper, especially when it comes to public transit, and have as much if not more rights, protections, and pay for workers.

The article read like keeping North Station in service with some modified schedule.
There are two existing Bridges with two tracks each. They can take one out for replacement and still have one working bridge with two tracks feeding two station platforms with a total of four tracks, right?

As part of another movable bridge project in Connecticut, they built a new platform in three weeks.

Seems if they wanted to they could build a single platform at Sullivan connected to the existing Orange Line platform (over the extra track there) in a few weeks, although both tracks would be much trickier.

I can’t thumbs up this enough.

But they built a temporary one there in the past.

...bridge connection was one of the promises the Big Dig made.

First things first. First they restore Green Line to Arborway. half/S

And it certainly won't happen for several more decades unless included with this project.

The last time North Station was renovated, they even built provisions for a future path along with the two unusable tracks.

We'll see about that!

Tacking a bridge onto the rail bridge would probably be easier and less expensive than building a freestanding structure, but with significant downsides.

The main downside is that whenever the bridge was up, so too would the bicycle/pedestrian connection be up. And since during the summer the bridge is frequently raised, the bicycle/pedestrian connection would frequently be severed.

It's a lot easier to build a fixed bike/ped bridge than a fixed rail bridge because bicycles and pedestrians are much more tolerant of grades than trains. The bridge location for trains here has to be level since the platforms are only a couple of hundred feet from the bridge itself (and that spaces is needed for switches, which have to be level); at best, the bridge could be a few inches higher than the platforms (which can't be raised because they're under the Garden and highway ramps). I believe this is the closest major (meaning, multiple lines with 10+ tracks) terminal train station to a movable bridge in the world and I'm not sure it's even close. The only alternative to a movable bridge here is closing the river to navigation (not going to happen) or building an underground station (should happen, won't any time soon).

A bike/ped bridge, on the other hand, can have grades up to 5% on either side (ADA limits) and can have curved approaches to increase the run of the grade. The Charlestown Bridge is 23' above mean high water; given tides the USCG might require additional clearance for upstream bridges but the Lechmere Viaduct isn't much higher; let's say conservatively a bridge needs 32' of clearance. The banks at North Point and near North Station are already 5 feet above water level, so 27', plus structure, so 30', accessed at 5 feet per 100, so 600' of run on either side. But that's to the center navigation channel; the sides can be lower. On the north side, this would mean starting a bridge adjacent to the existing North Bank bridge, which would hit the channel about 610 feet from the start. On the south side, this would mean landing just north of the Spaulding/MGH parking lot driveway or, if aiming west, somewhere in the Nashua Street park.

There's a very intriguing addition, which would be to extend the bridge southeast across the North Station tracks before landing under the Zakim. This is a nice value-add, although mitigated somewhat by the good bike/ped connection afforded by the North Washington Bridge which might be done next year. It would make additional sense, though, if it provided secondary access to the ends of the platforms at North Station, so someone in Northpoint could walk across the bridge and go straight to their train, rather than having to walk into North Station. This would probably mean a stairway and elevator at the end of each platform (not enough room for ramps) and even that would be tight.

...you can go right next door and there's a pedestrian walkway across the river to Paul Revere Park via the the locks in the dam. Why spend money adding another walkway to the railroad bridge?