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Longfellow to lose its shakers during repairs

Time-lapse animation from MassDOT. With bonus new-agey guitar track that fortunately you can just turn off when it gets really annoying. And don't worry - they'll be putting the shakers back on.

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Comments

Is there any way to map this onto real-world timing? I want to make sure I'm not on that motorboat which sinks at 6:11...

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There were no joggers deciding that it was okay to use the bike lanes, and no cyclists clubbing them with u-locks.

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They should have constructed a new signature bridge in China or somewhere cheap with plenty of slave labor, shipped it to Boston in pieces, bring to the Charles on barges, and set it up. This falling apart tourist attraction could then have been demolished at the last minute. $ saved, and years or reconstruction would have been reduced to months.

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... remain in operation on all weekdays, and shut down only on some weekends?

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Consternation! Uproar!

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didnt they just announce three years of red line bus shuttling during the project?

this makes it look like rail service is uninterrupted...

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which will be annoying, but not nearly as bad as what you say.

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Ron, did these diagrams help make the ped / bike layout any clearer?

I may sit corrected - I thought the weekend busing was going both ways on the bridge but it may be true that Cambridge bound buses may have to follow the same detour as everyone else. I just knew that there had to be two way traffic for emergency vehichles and such during the weekend diversions. For some reason, I thought that meant that the buses would be using both lanes.

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Not once did I see traffic backup across the bridge or a red line train just sit on the tracks for no reason whatsoever!

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I agree, the sound track is annoying. I've heard better music by buskers in the Park Street station.

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I congratulate generations of our political leaders for keeping our taxes low by not painting the steel and maintaining the road deck.

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Are trains really going to run on the left in some phases, like at 6:45? Or is that a mistake?

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The intent was to show where things are in relation to the work being performed - Cars, bikes, buses, trains etc. - there is an updated video not online that corrected most of the minor issues like train direction, colors and shadows

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Anon - The trains will shift based on the phase and run on temporary 'shoofly' tracks placed on the road deck. I forget what the video shows at each moment but basically there will be a train temporarily on one side of the bridge, then the other - allowing for service to continue except for the aforementioned weekend diversions. You can imagine that some of those weekends are to shift the trains over to their new alignment.

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Thanks, I understood the shoofly arrangement.

But I didn't understand how or why a train would run on the left-side track at any stage. That would require crossing over on both ends of the bridge, blocking traffic on the other track in the process.

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They're not made of copper, which is probably the only reason we'll ever see them again.

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I missed the part where the railings are being removed for restoration.

It would be nice if they came back from restoration.

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Railings that can be restored and reinstalled will be, but there are enough that are beyond repair that they will re-cast to replicate the existing railings.

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It's not clear to me why the cupolas are being removed at all. They end up in the same place when it's done, and they are not support structures anyhow, just decorative enclosures for the access stairways. Can somebody explain ?

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Hi Anon.

Currently all of the towers have settled in one direction or another. Dismantling the towers will both help fix that situation as well as allow for structural repairs to happen underneath the towers in the piers below. Add to that the fact the towers go back with seismic reinforcement (they're currently just resting on themselves) and those are some if the reasons to dismantle and reassemble. (Plus, it's going to be crazy cool - to me- to see them dismantled piece by piece and then reassembled.) Leaving them in place was going to make all of that other work more difficult and would not have represented any real savings. Why not take the opportunity to do it properly with a clean slate, right?

I hope that helps.

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Or will the setup be substantially the same?

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When construction is complete there will be bike lanes in both directions.

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to a single lane of vehicular traffic on the Cambridge-bound side, allowing for (theoretically) dedicated rights-of-way in each direction for pedestrians and bicycles.

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I like the forward thinking on reducing travel lanes.

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Way more complicated than the Mass Ave or BU bridges, but way more costly -- $253 million vs $19 million for the BU Bridge project and $16.3 million for the Harvard Bridge re-decking that completed in 1990.

Anybody know, what's the "No-Fly Zome" at 3:32 at 5:17 in the video?

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It's the area near the MBTA that no construction equipment can go into as a way to protect the trains while running from any possible accidents. I guess "No-Go" could have been used as well. That's why the excavator has a telescoping arm instead of a bucket. Also why there is a gantry crane instead of a crane with a tall boom.

The weekend shutdowns are for work to the tracks or in that No-Fly space

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Would the pepper shakers on the Pepper Shaker Bridge be suitable for artists to setup little studios for painting?

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your off-the-wall idea for the usage of public space is hurting mayor mumbles' brain

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