Malden Center

Last night for no terribly good reason I took the orange line up to Malden Center. It was not the most exciting place in the world. The T stop is kind of a dump (they're doing "ADA-related" construction work -- putting in an elevator, perhaps?, but even so) and a bit cramped. My impression is that it was initially constructed as a three-platform orange line station, so if no trains were ever supposed to stop at what's now the northbound platform it makes a little more sense. The commuter rail platform should have a yellow "D.I.B." sign but doesn't.

Malden Center proper should hang off the east side of the T station. It doesn't, really, since the city planners conveniently arranged for a building to be built through the street that would be the obvious connection. So instead the business district is built along a dead-end street a block off from the main road (Route 60). Around 7 PM, there were just enough people to make me paranoid. Everything was closed except for the restaurants, which were predominantly Chinese and noodle-soup places.

It seems like the area has potential, but it'd need some help to actually become a thriving commercial center. Things I had initially thought were a problem, like the T effectively presenting a wall on one end of the area, aren't so bad as just the lack of traffic and it being non-obvious how to get to commerce from the T.

Warm coming weekend

jdreed noted that it was expected to be warm this weekend. And while my Sunday is already taken up, Saturday is still open. "Warm this weekend" works out to, according to the National Weather Service, 71 in Boston and 68 in Fitchburg. Maybe I'll get my act together and make the mad train-bike trip, then; I could take train 1407 leaving North Station at 11:20 and get to Fitchburg at 12:51, and ride around a bit, and come home; the most plausible Saturday return train is 1412 leaving Fitchburg at 5:35, which only has the issue that it's after dark. In fact, the magic Boston gets-dark-at-5 thing is quite a pain doing this at this end of the year. But if official sunset is at 4:45 PM, I still have almost four hours out. Having a better light wouldn't hurt; I wonder if I have time to acquire one.