The MBTA has picked its builder for one of the oldest bottlenecks on the U.S. commuter rail map. A joint venture of Skanska Civil Northeast and Koch won a $1.06 billion design-build contract to replace the Draw One bridges, the pair of 1930s bascule spans that carry every North Station train across the Charles River.
The award covers more than steel over water. It expands the North Station throat from four tracks to six, adds a new signal and control tower, and rolls in track and positive train control upgrades across Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. VHB, out of Watertown, leads the design. Delivery is targeted for 2032 against a full program budget near $1.29 billion.
Why the Draw One bridges had to go
The existing bascule spans are almost a century old and jam at the worst times. Every one of the roughly 11 million annual trips through North Station depends on them, and a stuck bridge means a cascading morning of delays. The replacement swaps the movable bascule design for modern vertical-lift spans, which are easier to maintain and less prone to the mechanical failures that plague aging counterweighted bridges.
Phased work, live railroad
The hard part isn’t the design. It’s building six tracks’ worth of new structure while keeping the busiest terminal in New England running. The JV will stage construction so trains keep moving, a constraint that shapes everything from crane placement to when crews can touch the active spans. That’s the same live-railroad challenge showing up on big civil jobs nationwide, from tunnel boring to the billion-dollar water-tunnel awards reshaping the heavy-civil market this year.
For Skanska, it’s another marquee Northeast civil win in a stretch where the firm has been landing large public rail work. For Boston riders, the payoff is years out, but the fix is finally funded and under contract. Skanska’s announcement lays out the scope.
See the full scope on Exchange’s MBTA North Station Draw One Bridge Replacement.