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Stairs of doom at Ruggles commuter stop
By adamg on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 8:13am
Charlie on the Commuter Rail shows (with both photos and video) how a stairway at Ruggles, re-opened just last year after a couple of years of being shut, are already falling apart - individual steps are coming loose as the nails or bolts that hold them to their base rust away.
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Comments
And why is something this new falling apart?
If I can remember watching a station open (in 1987), it's not old.
The Real Cost of "Cheap" Salt
This is a steep staircase, and they may apply salt in the winter. Alternately, people track it from other exposed areas (of which Ruggles has many) that have had generous heaps of "cheap" salt thrown on them.
The salt corrodes everything. Even in the summer, leftover chlorides will migrate through concrete and eat every thing metal.
My dad is retired, but he makes some money on the side as a winter maintenance consultant. He has told me time and again that anybody who thinks salt is cheap and more salt is better isn't doing their math right.
1987? How about 2007?
The floor in the Kenmore lobby is already caked in filth and crumbling.
2007 was a bad year
By an odd coincidence, 2007 was the year that the T finally re-opened that stairway, too. So (as I said in the post) although it took them at least two years to "fix" those stairs, they're already falling apart - badly - after only 16 months.
If they close that stairway again, they'll have only a single, smaller stairway for access to and from the commuter rail platform (plus a very slow single elevator). If there's ever an emergency on the platform, and a large number of people need to get to or from it, there is going to be a serious problem.
I didn't put this in the post because I can't prove it, but I have a strong suspicion that the T simply slapped Amstep tread covers over the old decaying stairs in 2007. That bottom step just looks too bad; I can't believe that it was fully repaired in '07.
Union First!
Quality T workmanship as usual... I miss mike dukakis
How about the platform
I'm still wondering why half the commuter rail platform is closed off - or was that re-opened as part of this effort??
Still closed
Nope, it's still closed. They never worked on it, as far as I can see; it looks like a permanent closure. The platform is in pretty bad condition throughout, but it's really bad in the fenced-off areas.