Alewife (MBTA station)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alewife Station, located at the intersection of Alewife Brook Parkway and Cambridgepark Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a local intermodal transportation hub. It is the northern terminus of the MBTA's Red Line, and a bus terminal for several local routes. It opened on March 30, 1985. Its facilities include:
- A 2595-space multi-level "park and ride" garage, with a direct connection to Route 2 at Exit 61
- Bicycle parking for 174 cycles
- a Zipcar location in the employee parking area
- Connections to the Minuteman Bikeway, the Somerville Community Path and the Fitchburg Cutoff Path
- Pedestrian access to East Arlington, via the Minuteman Bike Path and Thorndike Street in Arlington
- A retail area with food and services such as dry cleaning
- Several works of public art commissioned for the station, including carved benches in the passenger pick up area.
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[edit] Terminating MBTA bus routes
- 62 Bedford V.A. Hospital
- 76 Hanscom AFB
- 67 Turkey Hill
- 79 Arlington Heights
- 84 Arlmont Village
- 350 North Burlington
- 351 Oak Park/Bedford Woods
[edit] Attractions
- Alewife Brook Reservation, a wetlands conservation area with walking trails, adjacent to the station on the north side. The station is named after the fish in the reservation's Little River.
- Fresh Pond reservation
- Fresh Pond Shopping Center and cinema
- The Rindge Avenue Extension office park
- Russell Field and Danehy Park
[edit] Accessibility
Alewife Station is wheelchair accessible. See MBTA accessibility.
[edit] History
Boston transportation planners expected to build an Inner Belt within the Route 128 corridor in the 1970s. Route 2 was designed with eight lanes to carry large volumes of radial traffic to the Inner Belt. When the Inner Belt was canceled, Route 2 became an overbuilt highway that terminated at what was little more than major city streets. When the westward extension of the Red Line was being designed, building a station near the end of Route 2 with a large parking garage seemed like a way to capitalize on the original Route 2 investment.
There was little near the site of the Alewife station besides a largely abandoned industrial park, a chemical factory and a protected wetlands. Following principles that came to be known as transit-oriented development, the City of Cambridge zoned the area immediately near the station for high rise buildings. Over the next 20 years, a mini-city developed with office and research and development buildings, along with high rise housing.
A state law required planning the Red Line Extension so it could later be brought out to Route 128 to Bedford. The Red line tracks extend past the station, under Route 2, and terminate in a small underground storage yard. When the adjacent chemical plant eventually closed and was replaced by an office development, the rail spur to the plant was no longer needed and its underpass was converted to an access ramp from the station to Route 2.
[edit] Trivia
The defunct MIT Alewife project -- a research multiprocessor -- was named after the station because the principal researcher falsely believed the station to be a major hub of the MBTA system.[citation needed] The station itself is named after Alewife Brook, a nearby tributary of the Mystic River. The Alewife is a species of fish which inhabits the Mystic River system.
