Oh God, ew. We’ve taken a sharp turn for the worst since our last review, and all it took was a 4 minute train ride! Welp…here’s North Beverly.

Oh boy, great start!

We begin with the station parking lot, which is tiny (87 spaces) and, at least in the summer, very sandy. And you know how some stations have a little plaza between the parking lot and the platform? Well, there’s nothing like that at North Beverly: you’ve got one level passage, one staircase, and one…I guess it could be called a “plaza”? It’s a grassy uneven surface with a few newspaper boxes on its perimeter, and if you’re willing to climb over a bunch of wooden rods, there’s a bike rack!

On the platform.

There isn’t much to say about North Beverly’s low-level platforms. The outbound side is basically nothing, so we’ll just write it off as that. The inbound side does have stuff, including a typical “modern” Commuter Rail shelter and…what’s that further down the tracks? Oh no, it’s a BUS SHELTER! I hate it when they put those in Commuter Rail stations!

Bottom of the barrel.

And here we are at the mini-high platforms! Well, on the plus side, they do make the station accessible. On the minus side, these are the absolute worst things ever! Barring the fact that they have nothing on them, not even shelter, these mini-highs have some serious Mansfield Syndrome. Not only are they falling apart (little chunks of the platforms have fallen to the ground), but the wood slabs they stuck on top of them to try to make them more accessible are just recipes for someone tripping and falling onto the tracks. Heck, one of the railings has even come loose. I have so many pictures of how decrepit these things are!

Mm-hmm.

Oh, that’s normal.

Look, platform remains. What, it makes perfect sense!

Okay, I’ll drop the facade…PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE!

Station: North Beverly

Ridership: The station gets 292 inbound riders per weekday, which is less than Rowley, but apparently it’s low enough to justify making it a flag stop at all times outside of rush hour. I still will never understand why Rowley isn’t one on weekends.

Pros: It has parking…some basic amenities…accessibility…oh, it has an MBTA bus connection! …with the rush hour only 451.

Cons: It’s just so bad. From the weird grassy “plaza” to the dingy bus shelter to the absolutely decrepit mini-highs, there’s very little about North Beverly that isn’t awful. Also, why is it that two stations in the same town are in different fare zones? This is Zone 5, while Beverly Depot is Zone 4!

Nearby and Noteworthy: There are some businesses around here housed in small plazas with parking lots. It’s not pedestrian-friendly, but if you really want something nearby, it does the trick.

Final Verdict: 3/10
There’s nothing worse than bare, falling-apart mini-highs – the presence of those would be enough to drop a station down to a 5 or a 6. North Beverly decides to expand upon the mini-highs’ badness, though, and so we get the bus shelter, the “plaza,” the sandy parking lot, the weird fare zone, and everything else. Great work.

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