As Jessica Burko reports on the second day of the rest of our lives without the Casey Overpass:
Traffic parking lot from Forest Hills up thru JWay to Centre St rotary AND all up South Street to Centre. Bad.
To which Mike, sitting in a Boston firetruck, adds:
No way for even the mighty Tower Ladder 10 to get out of overpass traffic!
It gets better once drivers get used to the new surface roads and lights, right?
Chris Helms was at the overpass to record the scene at 3:53 p.m. today.
Stephanie Ainbinder spotted this horse and rider under the overpass today.
With the overlaying concrete gone, a backhoe started wrenching out its first piece of structural steel at the going-down Casey Overpass in Forest Hills, as Clay Harper shows us.
This weekend, the state is scheduled to shut the overpass towards Morton Street, which will free workers to rip the whole thing down.
Go figure: Crews painted all these new don't-block-this-box boxes around Forest Hills in anticipation of the overpass shutdown and motorists promptly figured screw this, we're going to block these boxes just like we always do, as Chris shows us this morning.
Mark shows us the backed up new roadway alongside the old Casey Overpass around 9 a.m. on the first morning the overpass is shut towards Jamaica Pond. Read more.
Isaac Walwrath took what could be his last walk across the doomed Casey Overpass this morning - the state is scheduled to shut the overpass towards Jamaica Pond this weekend, and the other side next weekend and then tear the whole thing down. Read more.
Dark lines show pedestrian routes: Note absence of sidewalk on T-stop side of street.
State officials said tonight the Casey Overpass demolition begins in earnest this weekend, when crews shut off the side heading towards Jamaica Pond and begin diverting traffic onto the new temporary surface road they've built. Read more.
Demolition of the abutments on the Arborway side of the Casey Overpass in Forest Hills began today, as Clay Harper shows us.
State officials say next week is when workers take the first real bite out of the Casey Overpass - they're scheduled to remove a piece of the abutment on the rotary side of the hulking, crumbling bridge.
Along with that comes the first overpass-removal detours: Traffic heading from the rotary into Jamaica Plan will be diverted onto the temporary road that's been built alongside the Arborway bus depot - which means the gazillion traffic lights the state has installed will blink into use.
Clay Harper wonders what group plastered this pineapple finial resistance message on the Casey Overpass yesterday - and what they want.
The Boston Licensing Board this week hears a request from the owner of the failed Tonic bar in Forest Hills to sell his all-alcohol license to the owners of the Envoy Hotel, scheduled to open this summer across from the Barking Crab and the Moakley Courthouse in South Boston.
The hotel is planning two bars: A ground-level watering hole called the Outlook and a rooftop bar called the Lookout. Also planned: A 50-seat sidewalk patio.
The City Council today agreed to let Councilor Charles Yancey (Dorchester) hold a series of hearings at which state and city officials can explain how replacing the Casey Overpass with a series of surface roads won't give residents cancer or block ambulances from getting heart-attack and stroke victims to the medical area - but not demand the work be stopped altogether.
Or, at least, that's what Yancey professed today.
"This is not [a motion] to cease and desist the demolition of the Casey Overpass," Yancey told fellow councilors.
Fried Amtrak electrical equipment coated with fire-suppressing foam. Photo by Keolis.
Mother Nature just doesn't like trains, it seems. Keolis reports that yesterday's two-alarm fire in an Amtrak signaling vault at Forest Hills was caused by lightning.
And since Amtrak and commuter rail share the Northeastern Corridor, that meant problems for both rail systems - and will likely cause problems during tomorrow morning's inbound commute:
Inbound passengers on the Franklin and Providence/Stoughton lines should expect 20-30 minute delays coming into Boston tomorrow. Needham Line rider should see some delays, too.
The Boston Fire Department reports a fire that erupted in an electrical vault by the side of the Northeast Corridor tracks in Forest Hills around 6:44 a.m. went to two alarms as firefighters poured bottle after bottle of dry chemical extinguisher on it.
The fire halted commuter rail and Amtrak service along the nation's busiest passenger rail corridor. Orange Line service, briefly halted, has now resumed.
Transit Police report that an MBTA worker who tried to wake a sleeping Orange Line passenger after the train arrived at Forest Hills last night found herself under attack.
Police say Dion Stickter, 45, "struck the female employee with a closed fist multiple times about her torso area" during the attack around 9:40 p.m.
Responding officers found him no easier to deal with, police say:
He became hostile and began to use racial epithets and refused to comply with the officers requests.
The blizzards may have slowed the work, but there's no mistaking the Casey Overpass is coming down: Trees all around it have been chopped down, there's a new road and sidewalk on the bus-depot side and construction equipment is everywhere.
The Zoning Board of Appeals today approved a 124-unit residential project along Hyde Park Avenue across Ukraine Way from the T stop.
The BRA gave its OK in December to the proposal, which will include 48 townhouse condos and 76 apartments on what is now a tree-lined grass field that stretches to the Tollgate Cemetery.
Some 39 apartments and 6 of the condos will be marketed as affordable, well above the minimums required by the city.
Several city officials backed the plan at a hearing today. Nobody spoke in opposition.
Clay Harper, who has been chronicling plans for the Casey Overpass, watched workers smooth out the new temporary lane along the overpass yesterday, in preparation for the demolition of the overpass. The work has also included taking down trees - yesterday, workers chopped down the trees along the upper busway at the Forest Hills T station.
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