CRail wrote:How is it in "garbage condition?" Have you ever ridden over it?
Yes, actually. Ridden it 2 or 3 times in revenue service when the Cleveland Circle train I was on was waived on to BC in advance of the early-PM shift change. I haven't done it in a few years, but used to be an inspector's discretion decision whether to let passengers stay on board so it occasionally paid to find an excuse to ride the C after lunch in hopes of getting some rare mileage.
As for "garbage condition"...look at the curve rail on both ends of the street, and all of the frogs. Chestnut Hill Ave. hasn't been resurfaced in over 20 years, and all of the original pavement has crumbled away around the rail replaced only by overlapping layers of pothole patch that have to be refilled each year. The rail moves so much because of shot substrate that old patch breaks loose all the time. Those new green-painted bike lanes the city put in a few years ago are already a safety hazard of deep gashes around the tracks, and a big bone of contention for bicyclists in the neighborhood. The straightaway between Beacon and Comm Ave. has held up well, but both intersections are in deplorable shape and way overdue for track + surface replacement. Lack of any effective MBTA + BTD coordination has back-burnered any basic fixes far, far longer than would be allowed anywhere else in the city, but it's now deteriorating to the point where another year of pothole patch isn't going to cut it.
To be completely fair to the T here, they probably would've been more inclined to repair before it got this bad if BTD weren't so notoriously dysfunctional and prone to neighborhood-on-neighborhood factionalism. There's a reason why that nice paving job Brookline did on Beacon St. turns into a boulder field at the city line, and it has more to do with the torturous politics of Cleveland Circle and Cleveland Circle redevelopment than anything else.