Construction could be tricky and disruptive, too. The cut-off wall would go underneath Berkeley and Chandler Streets in the South End — site of the Chandler Inn and other buildings, along with their attendant underground utilities and other impediments to dropping a wall into the ground. The pumping system must run along Chandler Street and Columbus Avenue, eventually winding to a Follen Street pumping station. This will serve primarily to secure the corridor on the south side of the Turnpike. The Back Bay on the river side — and Beacon Hill, Chinatown, the North End, and Fort Point — will require other plans.
Still, the MBTA’s commitment is a huge step forward — and an acknowledgement that groundwater levels are a major public issue deserving of large-scale solutions. Who will pay for those remains open for argument.
Related:
Underground art, Spoiling for a fight, T time, More 
- Underground art
Next time a smirking subway conductor cackles wickedly while closing the folding doors in your face, don’t get angry.
- Spoiling for a fight
Letters to the Boston editor, June 16, 2006
- T time
Letters to the Boston editor, May 26, 2006
- Trouble 'round the bend?
Perhaps because it hasn’t exploded into a public shutdown of services (as happened a few years ago in New York), arguably the most important fact about the MBTA has escaped public notice: most of its workers have been without a contract for nearly two years.
- State of hock
Kenmore Station looks as if it has just survived an act of God, the Orange Line hasn’t seen a new car since the Reagan administration, and the head of the Transit Police union says there are only five cops riding the rails at any given time.
- Seven should-be habits of highly effective T-riding people
One person’s peaceful commute on the T is another person’s journey to the gaping maw of Hell.
- The T and the Tube
From time to time, upon discovering that I moved here from my native London, a well-meaning Bostonian will make the conciliatory observation that our two cities are not, after all, so very different.
- Ride, don't drive
This summer, with price gouging at the pumps at an all-time high, motoring vacations promise to be an even more miserable travel experience than usual.
- T and sympathy
The Arborway rail-restoration project’s opponents may toss about unbuildable poison-pill designs, but contrary to what Deirdre Fulton states, the record shows that at no time was removing parking on one side of Centre Street ever officially presented or considered, nor is it necessary to complete the project successfully.
- Sierra Club brings environmental mixer to
The Rhode Island chapter of the Sierra Club is bringing an appealing combination to Providence.
- Got sustainability?
Growing numbers of Americans are taking up bicycling and gardening, and perhaps reconsidering the more costly habits of the not-so-distant boom times.
- Less
Topics:
News Features
, Tom Menino, Public Transportation, Transportation, More
, Tom Menino, Public Transportation, Transportation, Daniel Grabauskas, Boston Water & Sewer Commission, Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, Less
