Community Corner

Winchester Center Station Needs 'Total Renovation'

According to the MBTA, the ramps at the station will need to be extended 200-feet, and the station itself will need to be completely updated. Construction isn't expected to begin for another two years.

The Winchester Train Station will continue

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) . However, according to Town Engineer, Beth Rudolph, those repairs have a lifespan over only five years.

Major work needs to be done to the station.

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“We can’t just repair the station,” said Frank Astone of Jacobs Engineering. “We need a total renovation.”

However, even though the MBTA expects to have the station completed by 2015, the project is still contingent on the MBTA securing funding.

Find out what's happening in Winchesterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

According to Astone, the final design would require the removal of the building, while that space is used as a holding area and the ramps would need to be extended by 200-feet in order to accommodate nine-car trains. But Astone did say that throughout the construction process, commuter rail service would not be interrupted.

 Some of the proposed designs by the MBTA required some temporary property taxes, but Selectman Roger Berman said that the board would not approve any plan that would allow residents or businesses to lose part of their land.

“It’s not the town’s policy to take land,” Berman said. “I don’t envision it. The MBTA proposed plans that would take land, but we rejected them. We have no intention to take land.”

There was also some discussion of creating a pedestrian tunnel that would connect the Town Common and Thompson Street, but that change is not yet finalized.

But some residents who were in attendance were concerned about the expansion of the ramps and an inclusion of a pedestrian tunnel.

“Thompson Street would be negatively affected by a pedestrian tunnel,” said Richard Murphy, whose parents have lived there for nearly 40 years. “They feel as though it would destroy the value of their property.”

Murphy also said that his parents had no idea that their property was being discussed and said that in the future, he hopes the town does a better job of communicating the information.

According to Berman, residents have also expressed interest in having elevators at the station, but he said that, financially, elevators would be an expensive endeavor.

“This project is entirely an MBTA expense,” Berman said. “If we include elevators, it would be the town’s responsibility to maintain it. One of the reasons the elevator option has taken a back seat is because the town would have to pay to maintain it and also replace it eventually.”

The MBTA is expecting the final design to be completed by December 2012 and to begin construction by the spring of 2013. The project would then take two years to complete.


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