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Alewife is an MBTA Red Line subway station located in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. The northern terminus of the Red Line, Alewife serves as a local intermodal transit hub. Its facilities include a multi-level parking garage with 2,733 spaces, two secured bicycle cages, a busway with an enclosed shelter serving several MBTA Bus routes, and connections to the Minuteman Bikeway, Cambridge Linear Park, and the Fitchburg Cutoff Path. Alewife is located adjacent to the interchange between Alewife Brook Parkway and the Massachusetts Route 2 freeway, with ramps providing direct access to and from the expressway portion of Route 2. Alewife opened on March 30, 1985. Originally only to be a temporary terminus during construction of the Arlington section of the Red Line, Alewife became the regular terminus when the further extension was canceled. The station is named after Alewife Brook, a nearby tributary of the Mystic River, which in turn is named after the alewife fish which inhabits the Mystic River system. Alewife features six pieces of public art which were built as part of the first stage of the Arts on the Line program. == History == Boston transportation planners expected to build an Inner Belt Expressway within the Route 128 corridor in the 1970s. MA Route 2 was designed with eight lanes to carry large volumes of radial traffic, east from Alewife Brook Parkway, through Cambridge and Somerville to the Inner Belt at the border of eastern Somerville and eastern Cambridge. 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. Until the late 1960s, 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, leading to the construction of the three massive Rindge Towers in 1971. Over the next several decades, a mini-city developed with office and research and development buildings in addition to the high rise housing. A state law required planning the Red Line Extension so it could later be brought out to Route 128 to Lexington, via Arlington, along the route of the former Lexington and West Cambridge Railroad. The Red Line tracks extend past the station, under Route 2, and terminate in a small underground storage yard. Alewife Station was designed with a future extension of the Red Line to points north in mind, possibly using the MBTA's Lexington Branch right-of-way. When the adjacent chemical plant eventually closed and was replaced by an office and hotel development, the rail spur to the plant (along a short remaining portion of the Fitchburg Cutoff) was no longer needed and its underpass was converted to an access ramp from the station to Route 2. This design was criticized by local residents, since it forced many pedestrians to cross the fast-moving parkways on foot.〔Flint, Anthony (Giving density a bad name ), The Boston Globe, February 23, 2003〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alewife (MBTA station)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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