Content area
Full Text
As governments and transportation agencies around the country seek ways to upgrade and improve their systems, integrated transportation networks, or "intermodalism" is emerging as a strong trend. The overriding goal of these networks, which are based on many types of transportation funneling into and fanning out of a single location, is to create an efficient and seamless movement from one system to another for travelers and commuters.
Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) has been a powerful impetus in the nationwide move toward intermodal facilities. Now, municipalities and state transportation agencies are finding that old rail stations and terminals offer precisely the right combination of location, size, facilities, acreage, commercial potential and affordability to work as multimodal facilities.
As a result, a growing number of venerable structures, including many that narrowly escaped demolition during the public-transit doldrums of the 1960s) are in effect being "recycled"--cleaned up, refurbished, reconstructed, and in some cases, even relocated to service modern transportation needs.
The following projects--all old rail stations or terminals that have been made an important part of a new transportation picture--are diverse in geography, history and status of completion.
They represent a new kind of public transportation thinking, in which the mobility, comfort and concerns of patrons are controlling factors.
DUDLEY STATION, BOSTON
Located in the Roxbury section of Boston, Dudley Station served for more than 80 years as the southern terminus of the elevated Orange Line. The Orange Line was replaced in the late 1980s by the Southwest Corridor subway, which passes about a half mile from Dudley Square.
To compensate the community for lost train service, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) increased the number of bus lines into Dudley Square. Many of these lines had to force their way through dark, narrow streets directly under Dudley Station, which was now vacant and waiting for demolition.
Built in 1901, Dudley Station had been designed in the popular Beaux Arts style by noted Boston architect A.W. Longfellow. On the exterior, ribbed copper canopies sheltered passenger platforms. Inside, a series of steel-roof arches were suffused with light from clerestory windows.
The general objective was to open up the area with wider streets, more parking facilities and comfortable passenger waiting areas. Detaching Dudley...