A new pedestrian bridge was installed at Northeastern University in October 2018 to connect the university’s main campus to the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering complex. The completed bridge is used as a medium of connection between the students and the faculty members of the Roxbury and Fenway neighbourhoods. This pedestrian bridge stretches over five MBTA and Amtrack rail lines to establish a link between the two campuses. In order to commence the work, the power supplier of the Ruggles station, Amtrack and the MBTA was turned off after the final orange line train had passed on a Friday night, which signalled the construction crew to begin their work of assembly of the pedestrian bridge in Northeastern University.
The bridge was constructed by a fabricator in Houston, Texas and 33 trailers were hired to move all the pieces of the bridge to Boston. To move this to the designated location, it required 22 trailers and the largest piece of them weighed 32,000 pounds and stretched 132 feet long which was moved by a specialised trailer and full-time escort vehicles. This pedestrian bridge is built with reliable and strong materials, so the lifting of the bridge demanded one of the largest cranes on East Coast, Manitowoc MLC-650. The crane was shipped from Maine and then was assembled on site.
The construction crew steadily started off with their work and finished the work of assembling the large and smaller piece within two nights, as to maintain normalcy in the University campus from Monday. At first, the crew member used a smaller crane to join the pieces of Manitowoc crane. The smaller section of the bridge was moved and set into the Fenway side of the MBTA track and the following night the larger section of the bridge was placed on its place stretching from the MBTA to the Amtrack lines.
Northeastern University has always maintained their attempt in making an inclusive campus. Similarly, this bridge is a symbol of better communication between the extended campuses of the university.
Rubena Bose
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