URBAN RING PHASE TWO RDEIR/DEIS
PUBLIC HEARING
The Public Meeting for
Urban Ring Phase Two
Proposed Circumferential Transit Project
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
---------------------APPEARANCES:
---------------------Ned Codd, Presenter,
Commonwealth Executive Office of Transportation
Rick Bourré,
Assistant Director of the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act
Office
Nancy Farrell, Moderator,
Regina Villa Associates
Consultant to Commonwealth Executive Office of Transportation
CAMBRIDGE TRANSCRIPTIONS
675 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 547 - 5690
www.ctran.com
Urban Ring Phase Two RDEIR/DEIS - Public Hearing
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Rick Bourré, Massachusetts Environmental Policy
Act
Ned Codd, Commonwealth Executive Office of
Transportation -- Urban Ring Phase Two
presentation
Public Comments
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Public Hearing
P R O C E E D I N G S
MR. NED CODD:
we can get started.
If folks would please take a seat
Plenty of seats available up front.
Thanks very much for coming out to the public hearing for
the Urban Ring Phase Two project for the filing of the
Urban Ring Phase Two revised draft environmental impact
report, and draft environmental impact statement that was
filed at the end of November.
We’ve just had a bit of an
open house to allow people to ask questions of members of
the project team, and look at some of the project
information in the back of the room, and what we’re going
to do now is have a brief presentation on the project and
on the environmental review and comment process.
And
that’ll be followed by opportunity for attendees from
members of the public to make comments for the record
tonight.
We’ve asked people to please sign up to make
comments.
There’s a sign-up sheet outside.
We’ve had
roughly thirty people sign up to make comments, and in the
spirit of our time limits tonight we are, ultimately,
turned out of this room.
We’re asking that people please
limit their comments to three minutes so that everybody
gets a chance to speak.
comment please do so.
will go in order.
HEARING TRANSCRIPT
If you haven’t signed up to make
At the end of the presentation we
People please come up when your name is
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called.
Public Hearing
Please come up and make your comment into the
microphone.
We will be keeping a transcript of the
comments tonight, and we will submit the transcript of the
comments tonight to the state MEPA office of the Executive
Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, and the MEPA
office will take the comments into account in reviewing the
project.
However, in order to be recognized as an official
commenter, and to receive future notice of about project
status and progress, you need to make an official written
comment directly to the MEPA office.
And there are
handouts with that information, how to make those comments,
available outside on the tables.
I should start by stating that I’m Ned Codd with
the Commonwealth Executive Office of Transportation, and in
November of this year, jointly with the Federal Transit
Administration, we filed a revised draft environmental
impact report and draft environmental impact statement for
the Urban Ring Phase Two project.
That document has been
made available for download on the Urban Ring project web
site: www.theurbanring.com.
It was distributed to folks on
our distribution list, to people who made comments on
previous rounds of environmental review.
It is available
in public libraries throughout the Urban Ring corridor.
And after tonight’s public hearing, we’re in the middle of
an extended sixty-day comment period on the project.
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Comments for the State of Massachusetts
Environmental Policy Act process are due to the MEPA office
on February 10, 2009.
We do have representatives of the
state’s MEPA office here tonight, and I’d just like to
invite Rick Bourré, who’s the Assistant Director of the
MEPA office to say a couple of words about the comment
process and the comment period.
MR. RICK Bourré:
Good evening, thank you
all for coming tonight, it’s a good turnout.
Just to add
what Ned said about the process so that everybody’s clear
on what is required by way of, at least, commenting under
MEPA.
This public hearing tonight is not officially
required under the [state environmental] MEPA process.
Just so it’s clear, it’s required under the [federal
environmental] NEPA process, and the MEPA regulations are
fairly specific in terms of what is required by way of
commenting.
While we will accept the official record of
this hearing into the MEPA record, if you want your
comments to be called out in the MEPA certificate as a
comment submitted under the process, you would need to
submit a separate comment in writing, separate from any
oral testimony that you give tonight.
So just to be clear, any comments need to be
submitted in writing to Secretary Ian Bowles, to my
attention -- I am the reviewer assigned to this project –-
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by February 10.
Public Hearing
And we accept comments by way of email,
snail mail, fax, but they do have to be in writing.
want to make that clear.
I just
And I guess the question had come
up as to what would be required by way of commenting under
the NEPA process.
And while the MEPA office is happy to
share any comments addressed to the secretary with the
federal authorities, I guess the question remains as to
whether separate comment needs to be made.
How do you want
to handle that, Ned?
MR. NED CODD:
The Federal Transit Administration
representative on the project was unable to come tonight.
I will contact the Federal Transit Administration, who is
the proponent of this project, under the Federal NEPA
(National Environmental Policy Act) process.
I will find
out from FTA how the NEPA comment process works, and will
post that information on the Urban Ring web site.
MR. RICK Bourré:
That’s all I had; thank you
very much for coming everybody.
MR. NED CODD:
Thank you, Rick.
Now we’ll have a
brief presentation on the project, and then open it up for
comments.
What is the Urban Ring?
The Urban Ring is a
proposed circumferential, or ring, transit project.
It is
proposed to pass through a lot of the rapidly growing, and
densely developed residential neighborhoods, commercial,
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and employment centers just outside of downtown Boston,
where the MBTA’s existing radial transit system begins to
fan out, and the transit system becomes less robust.
It is
intended to provide faster and more convenient connections
between these radial transit lines, and to provide service
in areas that are currently lacking rapid transit service.
Now why is the Urban Ring needed?
In order to
provide transit access and capacity that the current system
does not satisfy.
Under the existing system, a lot of the
areas of the corridor are served by surface buses
connecting in a circumferential direction, providing access
to other points in this circumferential corridor, or to the
radial transit line, such as buses in Chelsea and Everett
providing connections to the Orange and Blue Line, to
provide access to down town.
congested surface streets.
But these buses get stuck in
In addition there are a lot of
the connections through the corridor are satisfied by
making rapid transit connections into downtown, and then
doubling back out, such as connections on the Red Line into
Park Street Station to travel back out on the Green Line,
or taking the commuter rail into North Station, and taking
and taking the Green or Orange Line, and then taking the
Red Line back out.
And what this does is it provides
indirect connections, requires additional transfers,
congests the downtown subway system, and downtown subway
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stations, and doesn’t provide the convenient transit
connections, leading many people who have destinations in
the corridor to make connections via automobile, which
results in roadway congestion; when the Urban Ring offers
the opportunity to make faster, and more direct connections
through the corridor.
And these transit connections are demanded by a
lot of the corridor land use, and existing, and future
projected development patterns.
The Urban Ring corridor
includes densely developed residential neighborhoods,
commercial and employment centers.
The Urban Ring corridor
is how we describe this sort of Q-shaped stripe around
downtown Boston.
Roughly a mile wide, it includes the
proposed Urban Ring connections, Urban Ring alignment, and
each of these dots -- each orange dot represents forty
residents, each blue dot represents 40 jobs.
And you can
see that there are some very densely developed portions of
the corridor, areas that include a lot of the educational,
medical, and research-oriented job centers, as well as a
lot of dense residential neighborhoods.
By the year 2030 you can see that the corridor is
projected to get significantly denser, with major
concentrations of residents and jobs, particularly in
Cambridge, along with the medical and academic area, South
End and Lower Roxbury.
HEARING TRANSCRIPT
There are a lot of major,
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established job centers, and there’s also existing high
transit demand for connections in a circumferential
direction through the corridor.
There are a number of
existing MBTA bus routes that serve connections through the
corridor.
These routes carry about 90,000 bus riders a
day, which is about a quarter of the MBTA’s overall bus
ridership.
In addition, there are many private shuttles
that carry more than 30,000 passengers a day serving this
corridor.
So there is significant transit demand for
making these connections.
There are also a number of areas with significant
development potential, underutilized areas, formerly
industrial areas that have development potential that are
located close to downtown Boston.
In addition, there are
many environmental justice neighborhoods that include lowincome and minority transit-dependent populations.
This
figure shows the locations of these environmental justice
areas.
The areas that are colored in yellow are low-income
areas.
The areas that are colored in orange are areas that
have higher-than-regional-average minority populations, and
the areas in red satisfy both the minority and the lowincome criteria.
So you can see that there’s significant
environmental justice populations throughout the Urban Ring
corridor.
The Urban Ring Phase 2 is proposed to be a --
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what's called a Bus Rapid Transit System.
The Urban Ring
as a whole is a project that’s been under studied for a
long time, for many decades, and it is proposed to be
implemented in three phases.
The first phase includes
improved bus service through the corridor, and that
includes the existing CT1, CT2, and CT3 buses.
The second
phase, which is the subject of the current planning and
environmental review process, would add to that bus rapid
transit service, as well as enhanced intermodal connections
to the existing MBTA system.
That includes some new
commuter rail stations at different portions, in different
areas of the corridor.
The Urban Ring Phase 3 would add
rail transit service in a portion of the corridor, but that
would be the subject of a subsequent planning and
environmental review process.
Now what is bus rapid transit?
Bus rapid transit
is a form of transit that uses buses with a system of
integrated improvements that are designed to enable the
buses to operate more effectively; more like rapid transit
service.
First and foremost among these improvements,
these enhancements, is dedicated roadway space for the bus
operations in the form of dedicated roadways that the buses
only can use.
An example of that would be the Silver Line
in South Boston, which operates in a bus-only tunnel.
It
can also be in the form of bus-only lanes on roadways that
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also carry general traffic.
An example of that would be
the Silver Line service on Washington Street in the South
End.
And other key enhancements for bus rapid transit
include high-frequency service more like rapid transit
headways, as opposed to bus route headways.
Widely spaced
and substantial transit stations, such as these shown here,
as opposed to closely spaced bus stops.
Transit signal
priority that would allow buses to pass more easily through
green lights, rather than being stopped at red lights, and
potentially automated enforcement which is something that
is in use in other countries, and is being studied in this
country now in order to ensure that general traffic stays
out of the busways and bus lanes.
And the Urban Ring
planning process has worked to implement lessons learned
from other projects, such as the Silver Line experiences in
Boston.
We are coming to the end of an extensive
alternatives analysis process that’s been underway for the
past two years or so, during which time we looked at a very
wide variety of potential Urban Ring alignments and ways of
satisfying the transit demand in the corridor.
And over
the course of the alternatives analysis, key criteria have
been: how do these alternatives improve transit mobility
and access, how do they attract ridership though improved
travel time, better travel speed, and congestion relief.
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The economic and development land use improvement potential
is also critical, as well as mobility for environmental
justice populations, transit-dependent riders, and
environmental benefits.
Throughout the process we’ve conducted technical
analysis of these alternatives, as well as broad-based
public outreach.
At each step of the process we have been
engaged with our Citizens Advisory Committee; we’ve had
over forty meetings with our Citizens Advisory Committee
and subcommittees, whose members are made up of
representatives of municipalities, institutions, and
neighborhood groups.
We’ve also held many public meetings
and briefings for neighborhood groups.
We’ve coordinated
with abutters, and we’ve met extensively with public
agencies, as well as the State Legislature.
The result is a recommendation for a bus rapid
transit project alignment that is shown here.
It’s about a
twenty-five mile long corridor, and it’s shown here in
different line styles that correspond to the different
types of right-of-way and operating environment that the
buses are in at any point.
These heavy dashed lines
correspond to busway -- that's a special roadway that’s
just for bus use -- that’s physically separated from
general traffic roadways.
There is a tunnel segment that’s
shown here in the gray with yellow dots, and there are also
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segments of bus lanes shown in the double line here.
And
then there are also portions of mixed traffic just shown in
the plain yellow line.
And over the length of the twenty-
five mile corridor, 53 percent of the corridor is in either
bus way or bus lane, and it is projected to attract roughly
184,000 riders on any given day, and is projected to cost
approximately $2.4 billion dollars -- that's in 2007
dollars.
And a significant portion of that cost is related
to the proposed mile-and-half long tunnel through the
Fenway/Longwood Medical and Academic Area portion of the
corridor.
The project benefits: just on an overview it
attracts approximately 184,000 total riders.
67,000 are new transit trips.
other transit services.
Of that,
The rest are diverted from
It provides improved connectivity
and transit system capacity, and also relieves congestion
in the transit system.
It reduces regional automobile
trips by over 40,000 auto person trips each day, and
provides greater pedestrian and bicycle connectivity to the
transit system.
It reduces automobile emissions, and
improves air quality, and supports economic development,
smart growth development, and improved access for
environmental justice populations.
There are certainly some impacts to the project.
Most of those are local impacts related to increased bus
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traffic in the alignment, and there are some environmental
impacts related to providing the new transit
infrastructure.
There are some limited impacts on the
Charles River Basin, some parkland impacts, but we have
worked very hard through the process, and worked with
abutters to try and minimize those impacts.
And there are
also expected to be construction phase impacts as well.
Just a quick overview of the project alignment
beginning in the northern segment of the project alignment.
Starting over here in East Boston, the alignment includes a
connection to Logan Airport and Airport Station on the Blue
Line, connects along the proposed East Boston haul road,
across the Chelsea Street Bridge with a stop in Chelsea
near Bellingham Street, and then connects here into an
abandoned railroad right-of-way that runs along the
southern edge of the Newbury/Rockport commuter rail line.
Stops in downtown Chelsea and Mystic Mall, continuing along
the edge of the commuter rail alignment, passing underneath
Revere Beach Parkway, and continuing in bus way along the
northern edge of Revere Beach Parkway to cross the Malden
River on a new bus way bridge with pedestrian and bicycle
accommodation.
Connecting into Wellington Station, and
then continuing along Revere Beach Parkway in mixed traffic
along Route 28 into Assembly Square, and then on to
Sullivan Square with a proposed new commuter rail stop in
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Sullivan Square, then continuing over into Somerville and
through the Inner Belt district, which currently doesn’t
have direct transit access and is a major development
priority for the City of Somerville.
Continuing over to
connect over the rail lines here to connect to New
Lechmere, the relocated Lechmere Station, proposed as part
of the Green Line Extension project.
Continuing into Cambridge, connecting on bus
lanes along First Street and to the Red Line at Kendall/MIT
Station, and then connecting along Albany Street with
alternating side of the street bus lanes to provide relief
and opportunity to bypass some of the congestion, and then
with a stop at Mass. Ave., and then near Fort Washington
Park in Cambridgeport connecting into the Grand Junction
Railroad corridor. The single rail track would be preserved
for freight and passenger service access, with a two-way
bus way over on the Grand Junction railroad bridge
connecting to the south side of the Charles River, and then
connecting underneath the B.U. Bridge, crossing
Commonwealth Avenue to the Mountfort Street corridor and
connecting into Yawkey Station.
We’ve coordinated with
Meredith Management on their proposed Parcel 7 Turnpike Air
Rights development.
Leaving the main ring for a moment and looking
over at the connection through Allston, the bus rapid
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transit connection to Allston is a new component of the
Urban Ring project in this round of planning and
environmental review.
And we have been coordinating with
the City of Boston and Harvard University and this is an
alignment where we’re still continuing to carry some
options.
There has been some uncertainty related to the
State’s negotiations with CSX Railroad.
There is now an
agreement for the Commonwealth to purchase a number of
railroad rights of way, but we’re still working through
some of these different options, which include a potential
connection under the turnpike viaduct and through the rail
yard, or along the surface streets on Commonwealth Avenue,
Brighton Avenue, to Cambridge Street.
And then there are
also potential connections north of Cambridge Street to
make the connection up to North Harvard Street, and then
eventually to Harvard Square to provide connections -- an
additional connection to the Red Line and to the Harvard
Square buses.
Looking back over to Yawkey, to sort of the main
ring, at this point the buses are proposed to enter about a
mile and half long bus tunnel with a station adjacent to
Fenway Station on the D Branch.
And then we’re looking at
a few different potential tunnel alignments in this portion
of the corridor, depending on the type of construction
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method that is selected, and as we learn more about the
soil conditions and the geotechnical data.
Then in later
planning phases we will revisit these different potential
tunnel alignments and work toward a final tunnel alignment.
The tunnel alignment is proposed to continue
under Longwood Avenue, with an underground station in the
center of the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, which is
the densest employment center outside of downtown Boston in
the greater Boston area with a great deal of concentrated
travel demand in that location.
And then continuing over
to Ruggles Station with connections to the Orange Line, and
improvements to the commuter rail station in that location.
Continuing in a center median bus way, sort of
like a bus rapid transit version of the Green Line on
Commonwealth Avenue and Huntington Avenue, along Melnea
Cass Boulevard. And then connections to Albany Street
though the Boston Medical Center, B.U. medical campus.
There’s also a proposed spur along Mass. Ave., with
connections to the Fairmount Branch, and then connecting
out to JFK/UMass, with connections to the Red Line and
commuter rail.
And then the main ring continuing up to
connect to the Red Line at Broadway Station, with
connections along the A Street corridor, the Silver Line,
World Trade Center Station, and then through the Ted
Williams Tunnel, and back around to Logan Airport.
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And as a result, through these connections and
this alignment, and the provision of dedicated right-of-way
and the other bus rapid transit improvements, we’ve
analyzed a number of different travel time comparisons.
Looking at connections from different origins and
destinations, the Urban Ring offers the opportunity to
significantly reduce travel times, in the range of twenty
to forty percent for many of these connections, in addition
to providing enhanced capacity to a number of these
destinations.
And you can see the concentrations of ridership
in this diagram.
The size of these yellow dots is
proportional to the number of people who board the service
at that location each day.
And the width of these lines is
proportional to the number of people who are riding on that
segment of the alignment.
And the color is related to the
relative speed: in the green segment the buses are
traveling in excess of an average of fifteen miles an hour,
which is very fast for bus service.
The Urban Ring also offers the opportunity to
relieve congestion on the existing transit system.
Each of
these lines corresponds to the existing transit lines.
Here’s the Green Line, the Orange Line, the Red Line, and
the thickness of the lines is proportional to the number of
riders who are diverted from those existing services onto
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the Urban Ring.
We are coming to the end of our draft
environmental review process.
The next step in the process
would be the filing of an application to enter the Federal
Transit Administration’s New Starts Program to try to
qualify for federal funding for the project.
Then we would
continue along into preliminary engineering, and file
environmental review.
Based on that, try to gain federal
approval to enter into final design hopefully in the range
of about the year 2011 or so and then hopefully win funding
for the project to begin construction in 2015.
And as we
apply for federal funding, a couple of the key metrics for
whether we gain the federal funding or not are costeffectiveness -- and that’s how many riders we can get, and
how much transit travel time we save for those riders,
relative to the cost of the project.
And the finance plan
for the project -- how are we going to pay for it, and how
well is the MBTA able to operate its system given these new
financial demands on it for operations.
So this is our public hearing, again, in the
middle of our sixty-day comment period, which ends on
February 10.
issued.
After that the MEPA certificate will be
We will continue to work with stakeholders and
with our Citizens Advisory Committee.
And then moving on
from there, depending on the comments that are made, and
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the MEPA certificate, and depending upon other efforts in
the state -- other planning efforts -- and the federal and
state financial environment, we’ll have a sense of how we
can move forward with this project and hopefully file a New
Starts application and move forward in the process.
And with that we will open it up for comments.
We’ll read off three names at a time, and people can come
up in order, and please make your comments.
Please limit
your comments to three minutes, and our Public Involvement
Manager, Nancy FARRELL, will help to facilitate.
Thank
you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you everyone.
There
are some seats up front if anyone would like to come
forward at this time.
Three minutes is a long time, and
there are about twenty-nine people who want to speak, so I
will keep you to three minutes.
When you’re approaching
the end of your three minutes I’ll raise my hand and wave
at you.
I’ll let you finish up, but I will ask you to
finish promptly at the end of your three minutes.
thank everyone for coming.
We do
If you have any phones, pagers,
etcetera please turn them off so we can listen closely to
everyone’s comments.
The first three speakers -- unless there are any
elected officials here whom I did not recognize -- the
first three speakers will be Commissioner Tom Tinlin, Alan
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Wu, and Tom Nally.
Public Hearing
Commissioner?
You can come right to
this mike.
COMMISSIONER TOM TINLIN:
This one?
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Yep.
Thank you.
COMMISSIONER TOM TINLIN:
Thank you.
have to wave.
You won’t
Thank you for the brief presentation, Ned.
It’s a pleasure to be here on behalf of Boston Mayor Tom
Menino.
My colleagues and I were talking in the back about
how the mayor was one of the original signers of the Urban
Ring Compact, so his steadfast support for this project
remains today, which is why I am here to deliver testimony
on his behalf.
The revised draft of the environmental impact
report and draft environmental impact statement on Urban
Ring project makes it clear that the project has
significant benefits for those who live and work in the
Boston metropolitan area.
It will significantly increase
access in the system, with a corresponding reduction in
auto usage.
In addition, the Urban Ring will decrease
congestion within the central subway. Some of whose lines
are reaching, or are at capacity.
The draft EIR clearly presents the benefits of
the line to residents of Boston and other metropolitan area
communities.
The alignment developed by the Executive
Office of Transportation and Construction, in collaboration
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with Boston and other Urban Ring Compact communities,
passes primarily through neighborhoods with large
proportions of low-income, minority, and transit-dependent
populations.
At the same time, the project connects the
universities, medical centers, and research campuses that
are the engine of the state’s job growth.
Its potential to
connect these populations and job centers, and to reinforce
our economy, is remarkable.
What may not be so evident in the draft EIR is
the extent to which Boston and other Urban Ring Compact
cities have relied on the implementation of this project in
planning their economic futures.
To give two specific
examples: our participation with EOT in the selection of
its alignment resulted in the modification of development
plans for the Massachusetts Turnpike Parcel 7, and the
positioning of developments at the intersections Washington
Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury, in order to
accommodate its right of way.
The future of the Longwood
Medical Area depends on the implementation of the Urban
Ring, and the city will attempt to ensure that development
there does not encroach on its right of way, so long as we
have the commitment of the state to move this project
forward.
One of the Urban Ring’s virtues is that it can be
implemented in increments that would provide meaningful
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benefit, while not requiring the commitment of state and
federal funds that would be required if complete project
funding has to be in place at its outset.
As it stands,
federal project approval practices are not conducive to
this approach.
Because of the importance of the Urban Ring
to Boston, and the region as a whole, we urge EOT to work
with MEPA and the new federal administration to develop an
implementation strategy that will allow this project to
move forward in increments that are within the state’s
resources.
Again, I’d like to thank you on behalf of Mayor
Thomas Menino for allowing me to speak tonight.
Thank you,
and good luck.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
MR. ALAN WU:
Mr. Wu?
Hello my name is Allen Wu and I’m a
private citizen, and I came to Boston to study some forty
years ago.
And shortly after the canceling of the Inner
Ring Expressway I wish it really had gotten going on this
project a long time ago so we would be enjoying it now.
And I have a bunch of comments, and I’ll rattle them off
pretty quickly.
One is I think this whole process is
working fairly well, but is very much underpublicized.
I’m
just running into people constantly and they’re just
totally unaware this process is even going on.
So a lot
more work needs to be done to get the general public aware
and behind this process.
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Another thing is I just want to mention an
information technology viewpoint on this.
I’d like to
mention a web site: 511.org which serves the greater San
Francisco Bay Area as a model for the kind of information
that really should be available to transit riders.
And for
that matter, it’s actually integrated carpooling and
private transportation.
It’s a model that the MBTA or some
state agency ought to implement in the Boston area.
It’s
called 511.org and I encourage you to just look at the web
site.
You’ll be amazed at what they have there.
I just have some thoughts on bus rapid transit.
It’s sort of controversial.
Some people think that you
ought to go directly to light rail.
I think it’s more
realistic to go to bus rapid transit, and I’d really like
to not see the perfect the enemy of the good.
We really
should have this thing already up and running, I think the
sooner the better.
And I’m certainly willing to make
compromises, keeping in mind, I think, we want to go to a
rail system potentially in the future.
I’m not foreclosing
that opportunity, but we need to get things going and
working now.
The congestion is really bad now; it’s really
strangling the economic development of Massachusetts.
I will comment also on bus rapid transit.
I’ve
used it in Pittsburgh, and it works extremely well when it
has dedicated right of way.
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when it has bus ways mixed with traffic.
It’s very
dependent on enforcement, and that’s a really critical link
there.
And when it’s in mixed traffic we already know what
happens.
We get bunching, and problems like on the Number
One and Number Sixty-Six cross-town bus.
I think I covered everything except for funding.
Just some thoughts on funding, that’s obviously a big
issue.
I think it’s important to plan things out so that
we can get incremental improvements as funding is
available, and to get the general public behind the idea of
funding it.
But also seeing fairly quick payoffs from
improvements in order to get more support and funding.
I
will mention also that -- this is somewhat controversial -but the Silver Line Phase III, which is quite a bit of
money to build a fairly short segment of tunnel to connect
the two halves of the Silver Line.
It seems to be getting
a lot of community opposition, though it’s amazing how many
people are not even aware of this project at all.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
MR. ALAN WU:
You need to wrap up please.
Okay.
I suggest that the funding
for that should better be applied to the LMA Tunnel, and I
think we’ll get better community support.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thanks Mr. Wu.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
The next three speakers will
be Tom Nally, Rachel Stettler, and Archie Mazmanian.
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MR. TOM NALLY:
Thank you.
This is testimony on
behalf of the Urban Ring Citizen’s Advisory Committee,
which I chair.
It is the consensus of the MEPA-appointed
Urban Ring Citizen’s Advisory Committee -- the CAC -- that
the Urban Ring Project is one of the most beneficial
transit projects that can be undertaken for the
Commonwealth.
We urge that steps should be taken to
facilitate implementation of early actions in the swiftest
possible time frame.
Our conclusion is documented by the
RDEIR/DEIS that has been so ably prepared by the Executive
Office of Transportation, and the Earth Tech consultant
team.
As the report demonstrates, the project is
critical to the continued integrity of the existing transit
system, which can no longer absorb new riders without the
decongestion of the central subway that the Urban Ring
would accomplish.
The project significantly increases
system ridership, and decreases auto usage.
It is crucial
to the economic development plans of the cities and towns
through which it passes.
The environmental report reflects
the comments on the review draft of the report put forward
by the CAC this summer.
While individual members have
raised issues with specific aspects of the Urban Ring
project, we are generally enthusiastic, and support for the
project is broad and deep.
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The report details engineering design issues,
environmental impacts, and mitigation measures effectively.
We would, however, like to highlight several points we want
to see further addressed in future work.
The CAC has
discussed the following, and urges EOT to take immediate
next steps to initiate any additional analysis and
engineering, including release of bond-funding designated
for these purposes that will identify and advance the
timely implementation of appropriate early actions that
will provide improved transit service in segments located
throughout the corridor.
Address the issues of funding sources for capital
and operating costs.
Address issues of pedestrian access,
climate change, refinement of tunnel engineering analysis,
additional vibration EMF moving metal evaluation for tunnel
options, and completion of on-going studies identified in
the document.
Refine Urban Ring ridership modeling in the
context of MBTA system capacity constraints, and other
expansion projects being planned.
The project scores well from the perspective of
the Federal Transit Administration standards of costeffectiveness and support of economic development and land
use plans.
The development of an implementation plan that
is consistent with Commonwealth’s presently limited budget
capacity has been constrained, however, by FTA’s current
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rules which prevent projects like the Urban Ring which lend
themselves to incremental implementations from advancing in
useful segments.
We strongly advocate that the Commonwealth urge
the adoption of more nimble rules that would allow this
project to progress in tandem with the Commonwealth’s other
transit initiatives, whose success will ultimately depend
on the decongestion of the subway system that the Urban
Ring will provide.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you, Tom.
Rachel
Stettler?
MS. RACHEL STETTLER:
I’m Rachel Stettler, I’m
the Director of the Winsor School, which is an independent
school for girls ages ten through eighteen or grades five
through twelve in the Longwood Medical Area, and I
appreciate the opportunity to speak.
First, I speak on
behalf of the school, and our board of trustees, and our
community and we enthusiastically support the Urban Ring
development.
It will bring great benefits not only to the
city area, but also to the LMA area, and to all of our
constituents.
Although we are a private school, we have a
public purpose, which is educating young people.
Twenty-
five percent of our students are residents of the City of
Boston, and the other seventy-five percent live in the
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immediate area and travel into the city.
great use to them.
This would be of
Many of our parents are employed in the
LMA area by the medical institutions, and scientific
institutions, and the universities.
We have long-standing
cooperative relationships with the universities in the
Fenway College Association, with Simmons College, with
Wheelock College, and Emmanuel College.
We have reciprocal
arrangements for use of our athletic fields and their
facilities in exchange.
Though we very enthusiastically support the
development of the Urban Ring, we respectfully urge further
study of one of the tunnel alignments that goes under the
Winsor campus, diagonally across it.
Currently, we
understand ourselves to be the only institution in the LMA
Area that would be affected in this way.
We have
underground needs as an institution as we develop to
support our program.
We intend to build underground under
our fields where the tunnel would be located.
We’re in the
midst of a master plan that we hope will serve us for
twenty to thirty years that would describe that in
development.
We also cannot let the market value of our
property be diminished.
our primary asset.
Our property is our greatest and
We have no current plans to move.
We
have been in that location for one hundred of our 123
years, but this tunnel option would truly compromise the
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value of this property.
The construction process of the tunnel under the
property could also destroy the school, or necessitate the
destructive taking of the private property.
We would
probably have to shut down in some of the options for
construction, and the school is not something that can be
shut down for several years -- especially a private school
-- we would cease to exist.
Again, I thank you for the time to hear our
concerns, and our support is broad and our concerns are
specific, and we will submit a letter to the Commonwealth.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you, Ms. Stettler.
The
next three speakers will be Archie Mazmanian, Rick Dimino,
and Jeff Levine.
MR. ARCHIE MAZMANIAN:
My name is Archie
Mazmanian, and I live Brookline, about two blocks from
Commonwealth Avenue and the B.U. Bridge.
in Brookline since 1973.
I’ve been living
Now, when I first learned of the
Urban Ring project I was fascinated with the Charles River
crossing.
So that’s what I’ve been focusing upon at all of
the CAC meetings, other public meetings that I’ve gone to.
I’m familiar with the area.
Long before I moved to
Brookline I used to -- in the early 1940s -- go from our
home in Roxbury on Dudley Street, as a member of the
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Knothole Gang, to Braves Field.
And I’m familiar with the
long-time traffic problems at Commonwealth Avenue and the
B.U. Bridge.
Since the Urban Ring proposal for phase two came
about, we have had a number of schemes for this crossing.
I refer to them as “cockamamie schemes.”
cockamamie scheme number four.
Now we’re on
Now we have Boston
University coming up with its own plan at this particular
point for that area, that just may close off University
Road -- which many of us rely upon to travel by automobile
on Storrow Drive East.
There’s also a $4.1 million study
that was approved in the recent budget to study Mountfort
Street.
Now, that sounds to me like it’s Boston University
lobbying the legislature like it did years ago with respect
to the Commonwealth Armory during the feeding frenzy that,
I think, some people here remember.
So what we have here is a big political mishmash
trying to force fit at this narrow spot -- not over, but
under -- the B.U. Bridge.
environmental issue.
Widening that is going to be an
The railroad there is grandfathered,
but adding two bus lanes -- that goes beyond
grandfathering, and that’s an environmental issue that has
to be addressed.
Granted, the river isn’t navigable all
the way through because of the railroad trestle.
two lanes will make it worse.
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But in the meantime, what’s
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going to happen with the air rights over the Mass. Turnpike
extension that may be considered with this $4.1 million
study?
And B.U., of course, has its eyes on that.
So this
construction, if it starts in seven and a half years, may
be, perhaps, contrast or mixed with when are the air rights
going to be developed.
So we’re going to have a mishmash at a very
critical area.
a problem.
The B.U. Bridge/Commonwealth Avenue area is
If we can’t access Storrow Drive at University
Road, that means we have to travel down past Kenmore Square
to access that.
So it’s going to be a mishmash, and when I
read through the executive summary this morning, today
being the feast of the Epiphany, I thought maybe there
might be an epiphany resulting from reading it.
But it’s
the same-old, same-old with a new version of the cockamamie
Charles River crossing.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
MR. RICHARD DIMINO:
here to follow the epiphany.
Mr. Dimino?
Thank you and I’m glad I’m
My name is Richard Dimino,
I’m President and CEO of A Better City, and I want to thank
you for having this comment period this evening.
A Better
City is a non-profit membership organization that provides
the business and institutional community leadership, and is
actively involved with ensuring the progress and tangible
results of transportation land development, and public
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realm infrastructure investments that are vital to
sustaining and improving Boston area’s economy and quality
of life.
The ABC Board of Directors is comprised of
leaders from over one hundred major businesses and
institutions in greater Boston, and represents a broad
range of industries, including financial services, real
estate, legal services, construction, higher education,
cultural institutions, life science industries,
hospitalities, utilities, and more.
The board has an
established history of civic engagement, and is actively
engaged in work and issues that comprise the ABC mission.
ABC has advocated for the Urban Ring since the
early 1990s, with ABC representatives serving as co-chair
of the major investment study working committee, and
currently serves as the chair of this Citizens Advisory
Committee.
We are committed to this project and seeing it
being advanced and successfully completed.
The draft
EIR/EIS documents demonstrate the Urban Ring project will
provide many great benefits for the entire region.
It will
decongest the MBTA central subway system, while serving
184,000 riders daily and eliminating over 189,000 vehicle
miles traveled, and 41,000 person auto trips per day.
Those are significant benefits for any transit project.
Air quality will improve, greenhouse gases will
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be reduced as a result of these auto trip reductions, and
the business community and the institutional community
fully support those types of improvements.
The life
science industry, which we also represent, will also
benefit from improved transit connections with activity
centers of the Urban Ring corridor that will support the
growth of this industry, while checking the increase of
vehicle congestion that can choke the growth.
Academic, medical, and cultural institutions in
the Urban Ring nearby will also benefit from improved
transit access.
Residents in the area, many of whom are
underserved by transit and lack of access to cars, will
seek and see their mobility increase, and access to places
of employment will become easier.
And cities and towns
along the Urban Ring corridor will see planning and zoning
objectives more easily met with improved transit and this
project.
Modeling of the economic benefits for the Urban
Ring is based upon current regulations in the Federal
Transit Administration.
This modeling does not include
growth that would be induced by transit improvement itself.
If future regulations incorporate modeling that is induced
growth, then it’s likely to show support for additional
development and even greater ridership for the Urban Ring.
We suggest that the EOT work with the Executive
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Office of Economic Development, EOED, to look at an
economic impact study that would look at induced growth and
the potential benefits of the improved project that are
outside of the federal transit regulation.
In addition,
we’re looking at the secretary to ensure that the final
EIS/EIR include a ridership analysis which takes into
account capacity constraints on the rapid transit lines and
the core stations, which currently is not included in the
trip generation analysis, will even show better and more
robust benefits related to the Urban Ring.
All these benefits for the Urban Ring can be
realized sooner, and we also support the notion of early
action items to be required and defined by the Secretary of
Environmental Affairs.
The Secretary was kind enough to do
that in the draft, we suggest that those types of
regulations and requirements be put forward and stipulated
in the future.
I thank you for the opportunity to comment,
and look forward to the other commenters this evening.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
We have Jeff
Levine, Brian Silvain, and John Kyper.
MR. JEFF LEVINE:
opportunity to speak.
Hello, I thank you for the
My name is Jeff Levine, I’m the
Community Development Director for the Town of Brookline.
I’m a member of the CAC speaking tonight.
We will also
expect the town’s Board of Selectmen to submit more
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extensive comments prior to the deadline, but I wanted to
make a few key comments tonight.
First, I want to offer the town support for the
project concept.
It’ll provide mobility and it will
encourage economic activity, especially in the areas
outside of downtown Boston, around the first ring suburbs.
Hopefully without bringing more cars and traffic to the
area, which is really the key to unlocking a lot of the
parcels in that area.
In addition, the provision of direct service
across the river will alleviate pressure on the Green Line
central subway, as shown in these documents.
That will
benefit residents of the entire region, but from our
perspective we’re particularly happy it will benefit the
residents of Brookline.
According to the RDEIR/DEIS, the
morning peak hour central subway line along the Green Line
will decrease about twenty percent.
And that’s even
including any background growth that may happen between now
and the build year.
That’s a pretty impressive number for
an area that really is a bottleneck right now.
It’ll
improve access to jobs for Brookline residents who don’t
even use the Urban Ring, and just generally will make the
system more coherent.
Second, I want to express appreciation for many
of the changes that have occurred as part of this
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I’m often in the day-to-day review of
this project, you feel like it’s been five years, nothing’s
really changed.
But when you take a step back some
significant changes have happened in this iteration of the
project.
Specifically, two changes that I think are great
improvements: one, the recommended use of the Grand
Junction railroad bridge rather than the B.U. Bridge to
cross the river is a necessary improvement.
advocated for for a long time.
One that we’ve
I’m very pleased to see it
in this document as the recommended solution for that area.
Second, the recommendation of a bus tunnel under
the Longwood Medical Area.
the project.
It’s a marked improvement to
It’s sort of a no-brainer in some ways, but
getting it in there was a great accomplishment, and I think
it really benefits the project as a whole.
Without these
two pieces I think that I’d be up here with a different
opinion of this project.
I think that the earlier
iteration had a number of issues that we were concerned
about in the town.
And although we still have issues,
those two changes have really, really helped our
perspective on the project.
Finally I want to note that the town hopes we can
continue a collaborative relationship with the state,
institutional stakeholders, and other municipalities to
develop common solutions to the transportation challenges
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in the, sort of, core Park Drive -- Mountfort Street -Turnpike crossing -- river crossing area.
of things going on in that area.
There are a lot
There are a lot of
different agencies, and municipalities, and institutions.
We all have plans.
The proposals right now are a good
start, and I think this document does the best job it can,
given the status of various plans.
But I’m hoping we can
raise the ante and really make sure that improvements in
that area are coordinated with other planned improvements
in that area.
Thank you very much.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Levine.
Mr. Sylvain?
Just in time.
Thank you, Mr.
The next three speakers will be John
Kyper, Kelly Brilliant, and Robert LaTremouille.
MR. BRIAN SYLVAIN:
How you doing?
My name’s
Brian Sylvain, I’m with the Local 88 Tunnel Workers.
I’m a
Sand Hog, a twenty-year member, and you hear a lot of bad
things about the tunnels, but I’ve just come off a MWRA
project in South Boston.
It was a Japanese-built tunnel
borer machine, and as we mined we grouted, and put in a
bolted segment, and gasket, and tunnel liner.
So as we
mined four feet we put in the finished tunnel, and we did
it on time, under budget, and did it in less than a year
with two shifts.
And we can assure the people in that
area, the Fenway and the Longwood Medical Area, that we
won’t have any issues if we do it with the tunnel borer
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machine.
But if you look to do what they did on the Big
Dig, which we had very little to do with, you’re going to
have problems if you do the open cut.
And I know the
project team has assured me that the borer machine is the
way to go, they’ve just got to know which type of borer
machine to use.
So if anybody has any questions about that
I’ll be making these meetings from here on till the end.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
MR. JOHN KYPER:
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Kyper?
I love tunnels, but I think it
needs to make transit sense.
I am the Transit
Transportation Chair of the Massachusetts Chapter of the
Sierra Club, and I’m also a resident of the southern
periphery of the “Q.”
I live on Fort Hill, a hop, skip,
and a jump from Roxbury Crossing Station.
And I feel that
what is being proposed as a bus rapid transit proposal is a
penny wise but pound foolish alternative to a full blown
rail transit development, which is really what this
corridor needs.
And I am in the -- as I said -- I live in one of
the neighborhoods that is to be served by this, purports to
be served.
And looking at the proposal -- which is not
really circumferential -- it’s tangents of a circle of a
half a dozen bus lines.
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I occasionally go to the airport
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or a Harvard Square; I’m within a reasonable walk from
Dudley Square or Ruggles Station, and these bus lines as
proposed -- I’m very unlikely to use them if they’re built
as proposed.
The bus that would go through the Ted Williams
Tunnel, after snaking through the streets in South Boston
to get to the tunnel, would not actually go to the airport.
It would take me to Airport Station where I would have to
transfer to a bus.
The other circumferential line that
goes by the airport stops, not at the airport, but at the
West Garage, which is a fair distance, a fair schlep from
the airport itself.
And if I’m going to Harvard Square, it’s actually
even worse, because while it would go into the bus tunnel
underneath the Longwood Medical Area, first, I notice that
it would go underneath Huntington Avenue with having
absolutely no interface with one of the radial lines there
-- the E Branch of the Green Line -- there’s no interface.
And this was a line that, sixty years ago, was proposed to
extend the subway underneath Huntington Avenue all the way
to Brigham Circle, which I still think is a good idea.
And
there’s obviously no direct interface either with the 39
bus line, which truncates the old Arborway Streetcar.
But the other problem is that that the tunnel
portal is going to be about a block from Fenway Park, and
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then it’s going to put you onto Mountfort Street.
Can you
imagine -- after going via Kenmore Square -- can you
imagine going through that in a bus on a game day?
You’ll
spend an hour going through Kenmore Square.
The proposal for Mountfort Street -- it is a very
narrow street right now -- the eastern two blocks have been
channeled by one way to make them, basically, neighborhood
streets to discourage cut-throughs, and the portion that
goes from Park Drive to the B.U. Bridge is a very heavily
used artery, which is choked with traffic practically all
the time.
I assume that that means they plan to blow this
out into somewhere around six to eight lanes and then, of
course, you have to dive under the B.U. Bridge, and then
make a very sharp, hairpin turn for an articulated bus to
turn to go onto the bridge to Cambridge.
I think this it
would be far more sensible to start building this rail.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
MS. KELLY BRILLIANT:
Direct of the Fenway Alliance.
Kelly Brilliant?
Hi, I’m Kelly Brilliant,
I agree with the gentleman
who spoke right before me, but I’m speaking on behalf of
several members of the Alliance, and we support smart,
effective public transportation.
However, we’re concerned
about the proposed design for Phase 2 of the Urban Ring.
We have steadily supported public transportation
improvements that include going directly to underground
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transport for the Urban Ring phase three, and doing away
completely with phase two; or going directly to the tunnel
option, and making significant improvements to the E Line.
We’re very concerned about the Phase 2 as
proposed with BRTs -- the bus rapid transit -- on the
Fenway.
Fenway is a uniquely cultural and environmental
area of Boston.
It is distinct from both the LMA and
pretty much any other area in the city of Boston.
We
believe the preferred alternative as designed now
compromises pedestrian safety, and the historic, cultural,
and green environment of the Fenway Cultural District.
Specifically, we are concerned about the historic
Fenway Parkway, which is already congested with auto, bus,
truck, and construction vehicle traffic -- none of which is
particularly legal, but happens on the Fenway.
And the
addition of MBTA bus rapid transit, we would have to
accommodate a significant increase in bus traffic.
As we
were told six MBTA buses per hour, or one every ten
minutes, at least -- in what we’ve been told -- the interim
of this proposed routing.
The Fenway and Riverway are historic parkways
bordering the Back Bay fens.
They are listed, as you know,
on the National Register of Historic Places, and are
designated Boston landmarks.
The placement and frequency
of BRTs on the historic parkway would threaten the safety
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of our neighboring residents, and our thousands of
students, visitors, and employees who already struggle to
safely travel the streets in our area to reach their
destinations.
We do not believe that placing MBTA buses on
the parkway -- even in an interim -- is an acceptable
solution, and do not believe that these buses, if allowed
on the parkway, would ever leave the parkway, but would
remain and possibly multiply; creating great harm to our
unique environmental, cultural, and historic resource,
which is becoming increasingly fragile -- but increasingly
important to the civilization of Boston.
We believe the tunnel option best protects the
$90 million public investment for the Muddy River parkland
rehabilitation that is currently ongoing.
Twenty-four
million dollars has been invested by the Commonwealth
already for this project, and the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers have already begun to work on this important and
massive environmental and flood control project.
We
support the tunnel option, and believe a funding strategy
for this much more satisfactory option, which enjoys wide
consensus support, can be achieved -- particularly given
the change in federal administration and the new
commitments to infrastructure improvements by both the
Federal Government and the Commonwealth.
And in closing I just want to say we also
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appreciate all the work that EOT has done in this project,
and particularly the work by Ned and Jay on this project.
Thanks.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
Robert
LaTremouille, then Jeff Lockwood I believe, and Eugene
Benson.
MR. ROBERT LATREMOUILLE:
Cambridge, Mass.
Robert LaTremouille,
I’m an attorney, former railroader.
I’ve
been working on the Urban Ring since the mid-eighties.
I
support the tunnel alignment -- the heavy rail tunnel
alignment -- which is known as the Kenmore Crossing, and
which I initially proposed in 1986.
I oppose the inferior
light rail B.U. Bridge Crossing which this proposal makes
inevitable in violation of the terms under which this
package was supposed to be done.
The Secretary ordered that Phase 2 not prevent
either the Kenmore Crossing or the B.U. Bridge Crossing,
and the spaghetti which this package has, and Cambridge
prevents the Kenmore Crossing.
Crossing inevitable.
It makes the B.U. Bridge
It also combines the irresponsible
environmental destruction included in the B.U. Bridge
Crossing, which is not part of the Kenmore Crossing.
To
make it worse, the fine print in chapter five -- the
environmental chapter -- map 5-1 falsely describes the area
of the Charles, which is being destroyed by this proposal.
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That map shows a Charles River which can’t be
recognized by people familiar with it.
That map shows a
tiny little area at Magazine Beach, which is river-related,
and it shows the rest as industrial until you get to the
B.U. Boathouse.
It shows a woods as industrial.
animal habitat as industrial.
outrageous.
It shows
It’s just false; it’s
You get over to the Boston side.
There’s a
big meadow that would be destroyed by the crossing called
the Grand Junction Bridge.
That’s described as
transportation -- it is no way transportation.
meadow.
It should be in there as open space.
It’s a
It’s not
transportation.
This proposal shows the DCR’s park land west of
the B.U. Bridge in Boston as transportation.
animal habitat.
It’s outrageous.
This is
Similarly, the proposal
you’ve got in Allston follows a silly bus concept to an
extreme.
The Allston transportation should be done by a
Green Line spur following pretty much the same route as
your silly buses, but on a raised spur connecting over that
road, and connecting through to Harvard Square, where there
are already tunnels.
I oppose a lot of this.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. Lockwood?
And then we’ll have Eugene Benson and Sarah Hamilton.
MR. JEFF LOCKWOOD:
Good evening, my name is Jeff
Lockwood; I’m here on behalf of Novartis, which is a global
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healthcare company with significant operations in
Cambridge.
I’m here tonight in support of the Urban Ring
project for two reasons: one is for transportation reasons,
but also for economic development reasons.
Novartis’
presence here in Cambridge started in 2002.
Prior to that
we did not have any presence here in Massachusetts, and
today we employ approximately 1,900 scientists who are
mainly engaged in research to improve human health.
And
these scientists are, what the first speaker tonight talked
about, are an important part of the economic engine of this
state.
And I can tell you from our point of view, from our
example, they take public transportation.
In fact, the
transportation survey that was conducted in 2008 by the
City of Cambridge of our employees showed that more than
sixty percent of them take public transportation to get to
and from work -- a number that certainly surprised us.
But also, they need public transportation in order to
do their job.
Discovering drugs and developing drugs is a
team effort, and it takes people that are physicians, it
takes people that are scientists, it takes people who know
more and more about computers, and know more and more about
engineering.
And those people are not just located in
Cambridge, in the small area where we are in Technology
Square and Kendall Square.
They’re located in all of the
areas where the Urban Ring touches.
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Look at the Longwood Medical Area.
Look at South
Boston, where there’s certainly going to be more
development.
Look at all the other areas where the Urban
Ring goes, and that’s where our scientists are going to
need to be able to go to collaborate, because ideas don’t
happen in a box.
conversation.
They don’t happen in a phone
They happen more and more in face-to-face
interactions, and I can tell you -- as we all know -getting to Longwood in a car or in a cab is just not easy,
and it takes a long time, and so it’s prohibitive to folks.
And to the extent that the Urban Ring is going to
facilitate transportation through these areas from
Cambridge, to Longwood, to South Boston, to other areas
where more of this growth is going to happen is going to
benefit, certainly, our institution, our organization, but
as well as the other companies who are going to look to
grow and build in Massachusetts and continue to drive this
innovation economy that we have here.
So I applaud the work that’s been done so far to move
this project forward, and urge that it continue for
economic development, as well as creative public health
reasons.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you, sir.
Eugene
MR. EUGENE BENSON:
Good evening, thank you for
Benson.
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the opportunity to speak with you tonight.
My name is
Eugene Benson, I’m legal counsel at Alternatives for
Community and Environment.
We’re an environmental justice
organization located in Dudley Square in Roxbury.
We have
a long history of working on public transit issues.
facilitate the T Rider’s Union.
We
We are a founder and a
member of On The Move, the Greater Boston Transportation
Justice Coalition, and we care very much, and very much
advocate for good public transit -- and we do not think
this is a good public transit proposal.
We don’t think the Commonwealth should be
spending more than $2 billion on a proposal that will be
mostly buses that average less than ten miles per hour
getting to and from where they’re going.
I understand that
EOT has conceived the Urban Ring in two phases; Phase 2 as
buses, and Phase 3 as some sort of rail transit.
But
simply because EOT has conceived it that way does not mean
that EOT is not required by NEPA and MEPA, at this point in
the process, to analyze feasible alternatives, including
the rail alternative -- which obviously is a feasible
alternative -- because it’s proposed as Phase 3.
In fact, EOT’s failure to analyze -- to eliminate
-- Phase 2 and go directly to rail is a failure to comply
with a key MEPA and NEPA requirement analyzing all feasible
alternatives.
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circumferential transportation improvement project.
As
such, a feasible alternative is rail, and your failure to
do that, I believe, is a violation of both MEPA and NEPA,
and we would urge the secretary to reject this DEIR for
failure to analyze the rail option as it is a feasible
option.
Failure to compare bus to rail is also a failure
to undertake due diligence at this point.
Studies
nationally have shown that rail attracts more riders than
buses attract, is more cost effective on a life cycle basis
than buses, is more efficient to operate as buses, and is
better for the environment than buses.
It’s also feasible.
All around the country FTA is funding with New Starts
program light rail programs.
So there is no reason at this
point why it should not have been studied as one of the
feasible alternatives.
Now let me turn to the neighborhood where I work:
Roxbury, Dudley Square, the center busway on Melnea Cass
Boulevard.
The document says that it was done in
coordination with the City of Boston Roxbury neighborhood
group – quote - B.U. Medical Area and MassHighway.
wondering which Roxbury neighborhood group.
I’m
The Roxbury
Neighborhood Council is the only Roxbury group I’m aware of
that, under state statute, governing zoning and development
in Boston is given the responsibility to review and comment
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on Roxbury.
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I could not find anything in the document that
says that the Roxbury Neighborhood Council is part of the
consultation process.
Without it that’s incomplete.
Maybe
it happened, but that was not described.
Further, Melnea Cass Boulevard is four lanes
wide, heavily traveled much of the day, with long backups
often in both directions during rush hour.
Coming here
after work I walked across it to get on the T, and it was
backed up almost the entire way from one end of it to the
other.
I could find nothing in the document about the
impact of bus lanes on traffic, traffic congestion, or
pedestrian issues on Melnea Cass Boulevard.
There’s no
information on whether any land taking would require, no
discussion of potential mitigation for reducing traffic
flow in that area.
Let me talk about environmental justice for a
second.
I would suggest to you that because the route will
be on Melnea Cass Boulevard in and out of Dudley Square,
stop and go traffic much of the time, that it has real
potential to be an environmental injustice -- not
environmental justice.
Simply because a route goes through
an environmental justice neighborhood does not make it an
environmental justice project.
If the pieces that you put
in some of the EJ neighborhoods are buses in mixed traffic,
in heavy traffic, that’s not an environmental justice
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issue.
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If this were a real environmental justice project
the bus tunnel would extend from Ruggles all the way into
Dudley Square.
Finally, if this is like Silver Line Phase I it
will not work.
work.
Signal prioritization on there doesn’t
The dedicated lane is dedicated not only to buses,
right-hand turns, double parking, parking -- it’s not
successful -- if this is compared to Silver Line phase one
it won’t work.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
Sarah Hamilton,
Diana Richardson, and Sandra Pascal.
MS. SARAH HAMILTON:
Hi, I’m Sarah Hamilton, Vice
President for Planning at MASCO.
I work with twenty-three
institutions in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area of
Boston, which is a key academic and life sciences cluster
for the State of Massachusetts.
We are the second largest
employment center in the metropolitan area, and we face
well-documented local access issues and regional
transportation problems, and really need some solutions in
the not-too-distant future.
I know a number of our members are here tonight,
and will comment as part of the process.
And I would say
while there’s a diversity of opinions on specifics in the
Longwood community, particularly about specific components
of the project, there is a high degree of agreement that
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studies should move forward to resolve the open questions
that have been raised in the draft documents -particularly on the tunnel and the LMA.
The EOT has a really terrific job extensively
evaluating and preparing these documents for this complex
project.
The document evaluates surface and tunnel options
through the congested LMA, and documents that a tunnel
actually scores extremely well in cost-effectiveness, and
is beneficial both for the Emerald Necklace parks and the
Fenway parkway when compared to surface routes that have
been evaluated.
We agree with these conclusions, and we
would further state that interim surface routes evaluated
actually underestimate the access problems and impacts on
those buses in the LMA.
The DEIR shows that a tunnel
serves the largest projected ridership in the ring, will
avoid worsening roadway congestion for local and regional
traffic in the corridor, and we believe that it should not
be deferred.
We therefore request that the Secretary’s scoping
for the final document require EOT proceed without delay to
advance a short-term work program that uses state bond
funds earmarked for the Urban Ring in the 2008
Transportation Bond Bill.
Specific to the Longwood area,
studies should include resolution of tunnel routing and
portal options with the goals of determining very least
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impactive alternatives to private property and public open
space, as you’ve heard from others before.
We also feel that a variety of additional geotech
studies and environmental studies need to be pursued to
look at vibration and other impacts during construction and
operation.
We need to clarify the least impactive method
of tunnel construction, and determine if designing at this
point to accommodate heavy rail in the future makes any
sense due to costs and environmental impacts, etcetera,
because it is very cost constrained environment, and maybe
that’s something that just needs to not be looked at at
this point.
Others have talked about a phasing plan that
identifies early action projects.
We agree, but would not
like to see a stranding of future tunnel segment.
That
strands costs from ridership benefits from the whole
project.
And we would like to see a broader based
financing plan that recognizes the significant state-wide
benefits of the project in terms of the economy and the
environment to the entire state, rather than just to a
narrow corridor.
We recognize, obviously, the cost of the
project makes implementation a challenge in these economic
times, but planning and engineering for the ring must move
forward now, and in stages, so that these questions can be
answered, and the right project can be ready to go as the
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economy improves, and as transportation financing in the
state is resolved.
This will position key segments of the
Massachusetts economy for future growth and
competitiveness.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
MS. DIANA RICHARDSON:
Diana Richardson?
Good evening, my name is
Diana Richardson, I am the Interim Vice President of
Support Services at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
In that capacity I oversee the transportation needs and
planning for our entire facility and campus.
Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center is a major teaching hospital of
the Harvard Medical School, which is renowned for
excellence in patient care, biomedical research, teaching,
and community service.
Medical Area.
We’re located in the Longwood
The BIDMC employs over 8,000 workers, and we
have many, many more patients and visitors who come to and
from our facilities every day.
With nearly 100,000 people working, going to
school, and visiting the LMA every day the public roads and
transit infrastructure has not kept pace.
Without
significant access improvements the BIDMC and other Boston
area life science and academic employers will have
difficulty competing with our competitors around the nation
and the world.
The BIDMC strongly supports the Urban Ring
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project.
Public Hearing
At this time we’d like to thank EOT and its staff
and consultants for their very hard work in preparing the
revised draft EIR and DEIS for this complex and very
important project.
The Urban Ring provides connections for
over 200,000 expected daily riders throughout the
Commonwealth, provides direct access to employment from
residential areas in seven cities in the greater metro
area, links the life sciences sectors of Worchester,
Boston, and Cambridge, and improves suburban commuter rail
access to growing employment centers.
A short one and a half mile tunnel through the
congested Longwood Medical and Academic Area from Ruggles
Station to the Fenway improves regional mobility to the
state’s key life science and academic sector jobs.
This is
accomplished by linking Harvard, Boston, and Northeastern
Universities with MIT, the colleges of the Fenway, linking
life science centers from Kendall Square to Mass. General,
Harvard Allston, Boston Medical Center, and the Longwood
Area.
We note the revised draft EIR/DEIS documents both
the cost-effectiveness of the Urban Ring route, including
the tunnel segment, according to the Federal Transit
Administrative guidelines, and significant transit time
savings due to the tunnel.
We believe that the tunnel
through the LMA is a needed element of the Urban Ring Phase
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2.
Public Hearing
It will serve the largest projected ridership in the
ring, and will avoid worsening congestion and the
significant impacts of the interim surface routes.
Although we recognize the high cost of tunnels,
we believe that with the tunnel the Urban Ring Phase 2
Project will significantly enhance the accessibility and
economic vitality of the LMA and the region as a whole.
We
will be submitting detailed comments in writing to the
secretary.
At this time we’d simply like to urge the
Secretary’s scoping for the FEIR/FEIS require the EOTC
proceed without delay to take immediate next steps,
including the initiation of additional needed studies -including those related to the tunnel option, and to use
state funds earmarked for the Urban Ring in the 2008
Transportation Bond Bill to advance preliminary engineering
work -- and, again, to thank you for the opportunity this
evening to comment on this project.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
Sandra Pascal,
then Kelley Brown, and Deborah Kuhn.
MS. SANDRA PASCAL:
Pascal.
Hello, my name is Sandra
I’m Associate Vice President for Community
Relations at Wentworth Institute of Technology.
For those
of you who don’t know, Wentworth is located on the corner
of Ruggles and Huntington Avenue, and we are intimately
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aware of the traffic and the congestion that affects the
LMA in that area.
And I’m here to support the comments
made already by Kelly Brilliant from the Fenway Alliance
concerning both the tunnel and our major concerns about the
impact on the Emerald Necklace and the historic parkways.
I just urge you to move quickly to make further
plans and investigate the tunnel options, and, I guess,
from a personal point of view, I want to applaud the Sierra
Club and the gentleman from ACE who had the courage to
stand up here, and talk about, and question the whole bus
alternative route.
With that, thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
MS. KELLEY BROWN:
Thank you.
Kelley Brown?
Hello, my name’s Kelley Brown,
I’m a Senior Campus Planner at MIT; I’m also a CAC member.
I’m here to offer MIT’s broad support for this important
project.
We think it’s demonstrated the transportation,
economic, and environmental benefits that suggest it should
move forward through the environmental process, and get
into the New Starts program as quickly as possible.
MIT
has about 15,000 people who come to the campus every day.
About thirty-five percent take the MBTA, and we’ve recently
increased our support for MBTA subsidy for rail commuters,
and managed to get eighty more people to switch to the MBTA
-- which we considered a good thing.
But what we find is
that the money, ultimately, doesn’t really motivate our
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community in quite the same way, even though we raise
parking rates every year about eleven percent.
They’re really about time.
They always respond
to saying, “Gee, it takes too much time.”
And we think
we’re reaching kind of the end of what we can do as an
institution to help people get out of their cars and take
the T.
We’re doing some other things about biking, but for
the longer term I think we really need the help of a
project like the Urban Ring.
We do think that some of the ideas about an
incremental and phasing are important.
I think that one of
the things I would urge is that ideas for incremental and
phased implementation get tied to the state’s accelerated
bridge program.
I think the projects along the Charles
River there are going to be enormously disruptive, and will
necessitate the kinds of mitigation programs that, I think,
could be assisted by a phased implementation of more
readily developed portions of the ring.
I also wanted to say that we do have our own
issues.
We’re very pleased that the route in Cambridge is
on Albany Street.
It had previously in an earlier round
had been suggested for the Grand Junction railroad, which
happens to be land that MIT owns on its campus, and uses
every day to service the campus and develops on.
So having
that now being the locally preferred alternative being on
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Albany Street ultimately connecting it for Washington is, I
think, a tremendous improvement.
We are anxious to continue working with the City
of Cambridge officials, neighbors, project proponents on
how, exactly, we get from Albany to the Grand Junction rail
line, and I think that’s something that we can do as soon
as the project moves forward.
Overall, I think there’s
tremendous benefits to the project.
The faster trip times
and more direct routing is the very thing that we need to
get our people to make greater use of the transit system.
I wanted to second what Ricky Dimino said from
ABC, that we need to model the ridership without
constraints, notwithstanding some of the federal rules
that, I think, is something that needs to be shown no
matter whether it sort of counts in the federal review or
not.
Okay, thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you, Kelley.
We have
Deborah Kuhn, Bill August, and Mary Ann Nelson.
MS. DEBORAH KUHN:
Hello, I’m Deborah Kuhn.
I’m
the Director of Special Projects in the Office of the Vice
President for Administration at Harvard University.
I want
to thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Urban
Ring project on behalf of Harvard University tonight.
As
an active participant in this Citizens Advisory Committee,
we strongly support the project and urge continued progress
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in making it a reality.
I’d like to address three points in my comments.
The Urban Ring is a necessary investment in the transit
system, but also a necessary investment in the economy; the
need to expedite the Urban Ring, and I’d like to make some
general comments on the fiscal environment for the Urban
Ring.
First, our transportation system is one of our
greatest competitive advantages.
The Urban Ring project
isn’t simply a project that provides improved service to a
part of the region, it actually improves the operation of
the entire transit network.
A network that is critical to
the continued vitality of the Massachusetts economy.
The Urban Ring has the ability to increase
mobility, while reducing congestion on the system,
increasing ridership, and minimizing the impact of capacity
constraints.
The Urban Ring is important to the future
operations of the transit system, as the transit system
itself is important to the future of the region.
You’ve heard several commenters tonight talk
about the importance of the Urban Ring to the economy, and
I want to underscore that.
The project is supported by a
broad range of the region’s major employers and growth
industries: public, non-profit, and for-profit alike.
By
linking key employment centers in the knowledge industry,
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the Urban Ring can strengthen our research cluster and make
it more competitive, and make it grow faster.
In recognition of the regional benefits that this
project provides, Harvard University is committed to make
available dedicated rights of way for the Urban Ring
through its developing Allston Campus.
We are hopeful that
this contribution can be counted as local match toward
federal funding as the project advances.
A few commenters
all have said that we encourage -- and we agree -- that EOT
should be encouraged to continue refinements to the
ridership modeling presented in the documents to date.
In
order to more clearly define the beneficial impact of the
Urban Ring on the existing, constrained transit system,
particularly at areas of convergence in the transit network
core.
We’re convinced that additional analysis of this
type will show an even more critical need for the project
for continued growth in the economy than the current
analysis shows.
Second, we urge expedited implementation,
and I think a couple of other commenters have said
something similar.
We join with our fellow CAC members in
encouraging EOT to take immediate steps to initiate early
action components of the urban ring project that will
improve transit service throughout the corridor,
particularly through the LMA.
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We believe that these early actions can provide a
significant transportation benefit at modest cost.
This
program of early actions could be limited to signal and
lane priority improvements at key locations within the
corridor with no adverse impact on the environment, coupled
with increased service frequency using standard size buses.
In addition, as bridges and roadways in the Charles River
basin are repaired and reconstruction, Urban Ring early
actions may serve as transit mitigation measures opening up
an additional possible funding stream for the improvements.
Finally, a quick comment on -- a general comment
on -- the budget considerations for this project: we are
all concerned, and affected by the fact that our economy is
currently shrinking.
But as Nobel Prize winning New York
Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “Our economic troubles
are the result of a slump in private spending.
It makes no
sense to add to the problem by cutting spending too.”
In
fact, he points out, “The true cost of public investment is
much lower now than in more prosperous times.”
When the
economy is booming public investment competes with private
sector for scarce resources, for skilled construction
works, and for capital.
But right now many of the workers
who would be employed on infrastructure projects would
otherwise be unemployed, and the money borrowed to pay for
these projects would otherwise sit idle.
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spending is an investment in our future that will serve the
region for decades with new opportunities for federal
funding it may be the best possible time to get moving on
the Urban Ring.
Thank you very much.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
Bill August, and
then Mary Ann Nelson.
MR. BILL AUGUST:
Thank you very much.
I’m here
this evening in my capacity as president of a neighborhood
association board of directors, the Cambridgeport
Neighborhood Association and I thank you.
As you know from
our association’s invitations to you that there is great
interest in Cambridgeport in the details and the execution
of the Urban Ring.
We do not profess to look at these
issues in terms of some of the macro global issues, but
we’re really here as a neighborhood association to keep you
diligently focused on community needs, in addition to some
of the larger stakeholder needs.
And we intend to be a
squeaky wheel about community needs for the Cambridgeport
Neighborhood Association.
And I think our perspective is illustrative of
some of the community needs of other neighborhood
associations too. So one, we’d like to have an ongoing
dialogue with the Executive Office of Transportation about
the implementation of community needs.
We know that we
have expert assistance from the City of Cambridge, but it
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has to be city, state, and community-based also.
We don’t
have final answers on these points, but this is a work in
progress.
So we do want the state and the city to be
sensitive to the various needs that are frequently raised
about community interests, and they include -- some of
which have been mentioned, of course -- the Charles River
is an historical and regional treasure -- it’s hallowed
ground.
Any work crossing the river has to be done with
the utmost sensitivity, or we will never hear the end of it
from all quarters.
We constantly hear about bike, and
pedestrian, and recreational needs crossing the bridges,
and the execution of amenities and bike paths in all
aspects of the Urban Ring, so any use of the Grand Junction
rails at any part of the route should, of course, show us
that you’re building in infrastructure for these
alternative modes of transportation: bikes, pedestrian.
The location of the Urban Ring stop in
Cambridgeport has been mentioned as Fort Washington Park.
Again, this illustrates how we have questions, not answers.
This should be a work in progress.
You will not meet your
major environmental objectives unless you select a location
that maximizes ridership.
We have no information about
whether that location is likely to maximize ridership.
may, it may not.
It’s not the most proximate to the
population centers in Cambridgeport.
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location will serve to meet the needs of the neighborhood,
or particular stakeholders, so that’s the kind of dialogue
that’s very basic to determining if this will result in use
of mass transit, or just by the masses, or use of mass
transit by without use of the masses.
Also, the overall concern about other
opportunity, because people are constantly asking how are
we really going to increase mass transit use if MBTA fares
are going up.
So we’d like to see a holistic dialogue
about what the state and city is doing to keep MBTA fares
down while they’re working on these separate projects.
So
again, we don’t have the answers now, but we want to have
that ongoing community needs dialogue and perspective with
respect to all these issues.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
The next speakers
are Mary Ann Nelson, Karen Wepsic, and Julie Crockford.
MS. MARY ANN NELSON:
Hi, I’m Mary Ann Nelson.
I’m speaking in a private capacity right now, and I live in
Boston on Mission Hill, which is adjacent to the Longwood
Medical Area.
Many of the people who work in the Longwood
Medical Area park on my street, and I know that because
they park at quarter to seven and at 3:30 they’re gone.
So
I am also probably one of the few people who have taken the
buses currently operating: the CT1, CT2, CT3, which is
supposed to be the baby Urban Ring Phase 1.
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And when I’ve
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taken them during the day I’m often the only person on the
bus.
Which leads me to believe that we are about to build
a $2.5 billion project, plus invest in infrastructure for a
service that will only be used between 6:30 and 7:30 in the
morning, 3:00 and 4:00 at night, and maybe 5:30, depending
on when people get off work, and probably not used at all
in the evening.
I question whether or not this is the best use of
resources to transport those people to work.
I would
suggest instead the City of Boston and the other towns
consider limiting traffic on roads leading into these
employment centers, encouraging employers to continue their
existing shuttle bus services which cost the City of Boston
and the state no money at all I believe -- I don’t know
that for sure.
And maybe dedicate some roads for no cars,
and let the buses that are already on these, funded by the
LMA and other organizations, continue to run without the
cars and the trucks on this.
This is a stealth highway project.
public transportation project.
It is not a
I would strongly encourage
the state to look at putting a tunnel, as the person from
the union has mentioned, for less than $1 billion a mile if
we can make a reasonable tunnel, to tunnel the whole
twenty-five miles if you’re really talking about public
transportation.
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subway line in most areas, and I think that would provide - if you’re really serious about making a public
transportation project a better project.
I would also suggest that the section that goes
from Wellington to the airport not go through a bus rapid
transit phase since it’s going to be on an existing rail
right of way; that that should go right to light rail.
There’s no reason that those people need to be in a bus,
and a railroad right of way, when they could be in a light
rail already.
I’m against the compartmentalization of this
project, because we’ve seen from Silver Line’s Phase I,
Phase II, and Silver Line Phase III that when given a
choice between providing transportation for people and
providing transportation for corporations, the state, and
the city, and the MBTA opts for the corporate interests
over the funding for people.
We know that the Longwood Medical Area needs
better transportation, and they need better public
transportation.
The city, the state, the people at the
LMA, the people over at MIT who work in the transportation
field can sit down and come up with some better ideas than
this existing tunnel.
I’ll have some comments on the
actual EIR which I’ll submit in writing.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you very much.
Karen
Wepsic?
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MS. KAREN WEPSIC:
on the CAC.
All right, Karen Wepsic, I’m
There’s got to be more evidence that Phase 3
morphs seamlessly from Phase 2.
And you need to show more
data on the commuter rail [de-boards].
Is a bus there,
that already has passengers on it, is it going to be able
to take the full complement of people off the commuter
rail?
If it can’t the people are going to do what they
always do: go in and go out.
Same way, at the end of the
day, what Mary Ann mentioned, at 5:00 if there’s a whole
swarm of people getting out at the LMA, and there’s one
sixty-foot bus there, it’s just not going to do the job.
There’s some very outdated and erroneous
information about the Harvard Medical School departments
and that’s the one I kind of know about, so I’m suspecting
there’s other outdated information about other things in
the document.
They also talked about in the document there
being -- I forgot the word -- not boring animals and birds,
but common animals and birds in the Fenway.
site.
There’s a web
The Emerald Necklace Bird Club shows a whole bunch
of species of birds that have been sighted in the Fenway,
so it’s just not true that they’re just common birds.
At Ruggles Street Station, where the people who
are taking buses to Ruggles, they get off at one side of
the station where the Urban Ring Ruggles Street Station is
is way on the other side of Ruggles.
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I suspect the people
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who get off at the bus station part of Ruggles are going to
take either the 47, or the 8, or the 19 into the LMA.
They’re not going to go up the stairs, all across the
station, and then wait for an Urban Ring bus.
So I think
the Ruggles Street information has to be analyzed in a more
-- Can’t just say that people are at Ruggles; there are
different parts of Ruggles.
There’s an MBTA service planning process which
goes on in the bus thing, and so if there’s not ridership
there they’re not going to run the buses.
mentioned CT1, 2, and 3.
Mary Ann
They don’t run after 7:00 at
night, and they do not run Saturday and Sunday.
of money, a lot of infrastructure.
So a lot
If it turns out the
Urban Ring buses are same, are going to stop at 7:00 at
night and not run Saturday and Sunday.
If they’re planning to run articulated buses on
the Route 39, if there’s ice or snow, the articulated buses
jackknife.
They don’t run articulated buses, they run
forty footers.
Are there parts of the route that the
articulated buses will run on the Urban Ring during ice and
snow that will have to be supported by forty-foot buses?
That has to be checked out.
I’ll conclude.
In the emission profile, if it’s
the change from diesel to electric, and not all the meeting
minutes were put on the thing.
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weren’t even told about in the CAC, and the one meeting I
went to in Roxbury, the minutes -- you had to turn in your
questions ahead of time, and there was no opportunity for
discussion.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you, Karen.
Julie
Crockford, then John Businger, and Wig Zamore.
MS. JULIE CROCKFORD:
opportunity.
Hello.
I’m Julie Crockford.
the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.
Thank you for this
I’m the President of
Thank you Ned, and
Nancy, and Rick for this opportunity.
The Emerald Necklace
Conservancy is a private 501(c)3 non-profit organization as
you might guess.
Our interests in domain are the Emerald
Necklace parks that extend from Franklin Park to the Boston
Commons.
Our concentration of effort is, actually, from
the Back Bay Fens to Franklin Park, and the six parks
designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.
Our mission is the preservation, and protection
and maintenance of those parks, and we work concert with
the City of Boston and the Town of Brookline, and the
Commonwealth to that end.
Part of the way we operate is,
in addition to a Board of Directors, we have a body called
the Park Overseers, and they represent the institutions,
and the abutters, and the park advocacy groups within the
Emerald Necklace -- both MASCO and the Fenway Alliance that
you heard already from: Sarah Hamilton and Kelly Brilliant
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from Fenway Alliance, and their remarks.
And I support
their remarks because they speak, I think, to the issue of
the protection of this historic resource, the Emerald
Necklace, in the heart of Boston.
World class cities need world class parks, that’s
why Boston and Brookline decided over a hundred years ago
to build the Emerald Necklace.
The Emerald Necklace
served, initially, to stench a terrible water problem, if
you will.
We had a sewage waste problem and a terrible
smell in the Back Bay fens that was solved by the creation
of the Muddy River and the parks.
I think that the
proposal to go to -- clearly, let me just say that I
support public transportation, and we all support public
transportation, and we support the notion of economic
development; and certainly environmental justice.
The only way to link all of those, I think, in
this project is to move directly to the tunnel option.
It
does not support environmental justice, nor does it support
the historic and cultural resources of the area to run
additional buses through and on the parkways.
So we are
opposed to additional buses on the parkways, and we support
the idea of using existing environmental bond bill funding
to go right to the full studies of the tunnel option.
And
we will be supportive of that, and continue to work with
you to that end.
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MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
MR. JOHN BUSINGER:
Hi, I’ll be as quick as
possible because we’re nearing the end.
John Businger.
Former
Representative John Businger of Brookline.
I’m here as,
specifically, at the request and on behalf of the President
of the National Corridors Initiative, who could not be here
tonight because he’s working on our New London Conference
Friday on truly regional, truly rail in New England.
I’m
also the elected Democratic State Committeeman since 1976
in Brookline, and was chair in the nineties of the Muddy
River Action Group: a coalition of some of the groups, and
citizens, and institutions in the Muddy River, so I’m very
familiar with that area.
I’d just like to say, first of all, I’m very
proud to be in this building.
something right.
The state’s finally doing
I’m very proud of the fact the employees
of this former building chose me to be their leader in the
legislature to complain in the nineties about the asbestos
in this building.
Finally, we have something that the
state did right.
I’m here at the specific request, again, of the
President of the National Corridors Initiative, a national
group for regional corridors across the country, and the
development of them as rail corridors.
in Boston, could not be here.
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He happens to live
I’ll use a simple sentence:
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he’s going to submit something.
option.
He supports the tunnel
He supports this as a rail project.
His word was
that he’s distressed that this has been “transmogrified”
(his word) into another urban bus -- particularly a BRT.
I notice even the handout has a confusion now.
It talks about Urban Ring Phase 2, then it talks about the
Urban Ring as a BRT -- as if that’s the whole project.
We
were told in the nineties -- and this is my personal
comment -- we had the impression that Phase 2 was going to
be a very short-term, intermediate step.
And now, the fear
is it’s going to be the be-all and the end-all, the end
point.
Putting urban buses, urban BRT, BRTs in an urban
area on some streets that probably are not conducive to
that kind of traffic.
I’ll end with a personal note.
When Anne Hawley
of the Gardener Museum first approached me and Mike Dukakis
in November of 2003 about our concerns in this project, by
coincidence three weeks later her fears of snow and
congestion came true.
storm.
Early December, 2003 -- massive snow
Unplowed streets in the Fenway.
The old MDC didn’t
even plow Longwood and Brookline, the Longwood and the
Riverway near Temple Israel.
said is true.
system.
I said to Anne, “What you
Nothing is going to run in that kind of
No surface traffic can run.”
January, 2005, two years later, end of January I
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was visiting somebody down in Mass. General and made the
mistake of going to the Fenway to get gas.
It took me one
hour in that snow storm to get from the corner of Longwood
and Riverway to Longwood and Brookline Ave.
I never made
the hospital before visiting hours were over.
So a lot of
us feel that this project, while well-intended, is better
in concept than it’s presently constructed.
Dukakis has those same concerns.
And Governor
The National Corridors
Initiative has noted his public comments about the nature
of this project and its importance, and I can say this:
that the Governor’s very well aware of the public comment
period, and I’m sure you’re going to be hearing from him.
Thank you for your attention.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you, John. Wig, and
then, I think, it’s Darnell Williams, and Marilyn Mullins.
MR. WIG ZAMORE:
citizen.
Yes, I’m Wig Zamore, Somerville
I’m a member of the steering committee for the
Regional Land Use Plan, a member of the MBTA Rider
Oversight Committee, and a member of the Move Mass board,
but I’m here today as a representative of the Somerville
Transportation Equity Partnership.
the CAC.
I hold their seat on
So I want to start by thanking Jay and Ned for
all of their efforts.
I think Jay spent a good part of his
life on this project, and I appreciate his -MS. NANCY FARRELL:
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So we’ll forgive him for
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letting his phone ring -[Crosstalk]
MR. WIG ZAMORE:
-- integrity and all his energy.
I also want to thank the leadership from Boston at the BRA
and ABC, and Susanne from Cambridge who I think is a good
example of -- along with MIT -- wrestling with these
things.
I’m a very strong supporter of the value the
strategic vision of the Urban Ring, which is a single
technology all the way around this corridor.
It has,
potentially, a great positive benefit for existing
residents and job centers, for future residents and jobs,
and also for the perception of the form of the city.
I want to point out as I did at Move Mass that
the time savings north of the Mystic River, I think, is
important -- especially because of the lack of service on
Chelsea, Everett, and those communities.
a great benefit here.
So I think that’s
I do favor, like several of the
other people here, going to light rail all the way around,
rather than having an intermediate bus rapid transit
system.
A large portion of the capital costs in this
project, as currently proposed, are the tunnel system.
Once you to go to tunnel there’s no cost advantage to bus
rapid transit, and there’s no operating cost advantage.
So
I think that that should continue to be looked at, as
several other people have mentioned.
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If you do stick with bus rapid transit I would
urge you to make sure there’s a very smooth and available
transition to light rail.
I must also urge that you look
at full hybrid technologies.
There is a vast difference in
emissions characteristics for the people next to the
vehicles if you have a full hybrid, as opposed to a partial
hybrid or other low-emission diesel technologies.
I want to talk a little bit about the
segmentation.
I think that it’s been brought up, but many
people don’t understand that this is currently proposed as
a series of segments.
It’s clear that there’s a very
different cost per mile in these segments and, I think,
there is an issue of equity that needs to be considered.
LMA has, by far, the highest cost because of the tunnel
and, I think, Roxbury and Dorchester have the lowest costs.
And I don’t propose that those things should be equal, but
that there is a real need to look at the equity and the
travel time issues there.
I also think that if there’s financing problems
for this project because of the $2.4 billion proposed cost
that you’re going to have to look at the couple billion of
revenues from Longwood as a potential financing mechanism - the annual revenues.
I do very much appreciate the
leadership of the universities, the life sciences, the
cutting-edge high tech businesses.
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Every segment of our
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society is dependent on those who lead in sectors of our
economy, although I represent a community and volunteer
organization, I want to make that very clear.
And then lastly on segmentation: Somerville is
shown as having, by far, the greatest job growth relative
to its current job base of the communities in the Urban
Ring.
That’s largely an Assembly Square, Inner Belt,
Brickbottom, Boynton Yards areas.
But the segmentation is
exemplified by looking at Assembly Square which, as
proposed, you could not take a single-seat ride either
clockwise around to Logan, or counterclockwise to LMA -two critical connections for Assembly Square, if Assembly
Square and the Inner Belt district are actually going to
help provide strategic job growth for the region.
me stop there.
And let
Thank you for your time.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
MR. DARNELL WILLIAMS:
Mr. Williams?
Good evening.
for allowing me to be here and to speak.
Thank you
My name is
Darnell Williams, I reside in Roxbury and Fort Hill.
I
work in Dudley Square, I’m the President and Chief
Executive Officer of the Urban League of Eastern
Massachusetts.
A couple of the hats that I wear that, I
think, is instrumental -- although several speakers have
made a couple of comments that I’d like to correct.
Five years ago Mayor Menino and elected officials
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appointed about fifteen individuals to make up the Roxbury
Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee, and one of our
members -- Charlotte Nelson -- has been serving on your
advisory committee in which she has been briefing us on a
regular basis of the activities.
And secondarily our
Governor Patrick appointed me to the MBTA Board of
Directors.
So I bring a couple of perspectives, I think, and
what’d I’d like to try and do is outline -- at least as it
relates from as a resident, and working in Roxbury -- the
segment that actually goes through Melnea Cass Boulevard.
Let me just back up and say that we’re in full support of
the Urban Ring Phase 2 Project, full support of it.
And
the reason is, is that when we look at what we’re trying to
do in the oversight committee; there are ten parcels of
land that are being developed within Roxbury.
Seven hundred municipal employees will be going
into the Ferdinand Building.
Parcels 8, 9, and 10 on
Melnea Cass Boulevard, as well as the Crescent parcel on
Tremont Street, parcel P3.
We have the Bartlett Yard, and
the Blair lot, and I believe there’s a couple of more in
there that I haven’t named.
And all of that -- what that
tells us -- is that there is a connection not only with the
Silver Line Phase III, but with the Urban Ring, the
transportation jobs, the decongestion of the ridership on
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the T, but giving people the access to the jobs and
development.
One of the things that, as I listen to many of
the comments tonight why we look at the improved transit
service, this incremental implementation, and we would like
to see it advanced because we believe that, given all of
the reports that I have read, given the challenges within
our transportation system, I believe that there is a very
focused attempt to deal with those.
EOT, MBTA,
aeronautics, etcetera -- I think you know the reports that
have been done.
So after reading all of those reports and
listening to the comments, I believe that many of the
comments are well-taken and should be incorporated into the
planning, but I believe it should not impede the progress
of us going forward with this project.
Lastly, when I think about the sector -- sectors
eight and nine -- which are a combination of both segments
B and C, that’s the heart of the work of where we are.
The
only observation that I have is that as we develop those
parcels of land it’s the timing and the implementation of
the construction, as well as the transportation.
But on a
personal note, I would end by stating that when I look at
the Commonwealth Avenue, or if I look at Beacon Street,
where there is transportation going down the center, and
there’s parking on both sides, and there’s left and right-
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hand turn lanes, we believe -- at least as a resident, and
as a person who works in Roxbury -- that that improved
transportation -- and I believe there is also space for the
bike route that would also connect up into the Emerald
Necklace as part of the plan.
We are in favor because we believe that that
would improve connecting Roxbury with the South End, and
have better opportunity for connectivity between the
Longwood Medical Area and the spaces that would be
developed -- not only for housing, for mixed use, and
connecting to the life sciences and the medical community.
So in conclusion, I’d like to say we’d like to see the
project advance.
Thank you for your attention.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
MS. MARILYN WELLONS:
Marilyn Wellons.
Thank you.
I guess I’m
anchor woman, and I would like to second many of the
comments that previous people have said, especially Ms.
Nelson, especially the comments of Mr. Kyper.
And I would
also agree with Mr. Zamore that no one questions the
strategic need for the Urban Ring.
My objection, however,
is that the Urban Ring has been made synonymous with the
phase two bus rapid transit.
And this, entirely in my
opinion, misses the major benefits that the Urban Ring’s
major investment study itself identifies as accruing to
true mass rapid transit, which is rail.
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refer to light rail I would use it in this context as Red
Line which is, technically, light rail.
I would not use it
to indicate Green Line, which is an unfortunate confusion
that many people have, as for light and heavy rail.
The rail that is intended and is, in terms of the
MIS, the highest and best, most efficient, and cost
effective, and has greatest ridership, lowest maintenance
cost is Red or Orange Line technology.
end up with bus rapid transit?
And so how did we
Well, my understanding is
that the federal government was pushing buses at that time
and, therefore, in order to go after federal funding the
State of Massachusetts focused on Phase 2.
The DEIR that
the Secretary of the Environment issued in May of 2005
correctly, in my opinion, suggested that nothing in bus
rapid transit Urban Ring Phase 2 should foreclose Phase 3.
And what we hear is that the way the revised DEIR is before
us now, the Phase 2 may not preclude rail in Phase 3, but
what it does is grossly constrain both the river crossing
and the mode technology.
And as a student of government I find this very, very
interesting.
I’ve always characterized what I see at the
Urban Ring meetings as tremendous bureaucratic momentum on
the part of the state, but when I look at it strategically
I think this another instance of making the wrong choice
for what are obviously important reasons, but the wrong
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ones.
I point out that as for economic and
environmental justice, I would second comments and what I
have observed in previous meetings throughout the region on
other issues having to do with transportation.
Is it
environmental justice communities are frequently used as a
shield to advance the interests of institutions and what
are called stakeholders, and it’s not a pretty picture.
And what you find is someone like Ms. Nelson pointing out
the need for better transportation service for ordinary
people.
And you don’t find it, in my opinion, in bus rapid
transit as outlined here.
And as for environmental impacts, I would also
like to second the comments in passing about common
animals, and the Emerald Necklace, and open space, and
their importance in considering the effects of this bus
rapid transit on human beings as they live.
Because we see
the importance of environmental open space and contact with
the natural world to urban populations.
So I include
myself as a common animal.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
speakers left.
know.
Thank you.
We have four
I’m just going to read them out so you
Kathryn Erat, I believe it is, Susanne Rasmussen,
Dolores Blanchen, and Fran Gershwin.
MS. KATHRYN ERAT:
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So Kathryn Erat?
Thank you for giving me this
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opportunity to speak.
Massachusetts.
Public Hearing
I am Kathryn Erat from Cambridge,
I serve on the board of one of the
Commonwealth’s mandated aging service access points, which
are responsible for the community care of elders in the
Somerville/Cambridge region.
There are twenty-seven of
these throughout the state.
I noticed tonight that construction wouldn’t
begin until about the year 2015 which, I presume, means we
wouldn’t be finishing up until close to 2020.
When this
project began it was sort of initiated as to be able to
move people through different parts of the metropolitan
area in relationship to jobs.
There was never really any
discussion much about other people using it.
incidental users.
They would be
We now know that by the year 2040 twenty
percent of this state’s population will be over sixty-five.
There are national, federal, and Commonwealth
projects to move the disabled and to retain them in the
community so that they are not living in institutions.
The
second project is also to keep as many of the elders in
their own homes to diminish institutionalization.
This
means that you’re going to have many more elders, many more
disabled traveling to medical appointments, therapies, and
so forth.
One of the most expensive costs for caring for
both the elderly and the disability community in the
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community is necessary transportation.
be addressed in your project.
I think this should
Studies should be done.
And
in relationship to this, we will also be moving many more
caregivers -- paid caregivers -- who will be taking care of
these people within their own homes throughout the whole
metropolitan area.
And I think we should also be looking
at -- especially when we have access points and exit points
to tunnels, elevated structures, and so on -- how are we
going to accommodate the elderly and the disabled?
Minimal accommodations just really don’t work.
And having to go back and refit them, as we’ve just
discovered in Copley Square; we have endangered a historic
church by trying to do retrofits.
So I would like to see
if this project goes forward that there’s much attention
given to how we accommodate both of these growing
communities.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Thank you.
Susanne
Rasmussen?
MS. SUSANNE RASMUSSEN:
Thank you.
My name is
Susanne Rasmussen, I’m with the City of Cambridge.
And the
City of Cambridge has for a long time, and continues to be,
a very strong supporter of the Urban Ring project, because
it addresses both mobility but also environmental concerns.
Traffic congestion is something that has a very negative
impact on the quality of life for residents in our city,
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and it also contributes to climate change -- all vehicles
contribute to climate change -- and that is a [various] and
critical problem that we have an extremely short amount of
time to solve.
Of course, economic development in our city is
impeded by both traffic congestion on our roadway system,
but also, increasingly, congestion in our transit system
that we’ve heard from others about the Red Line/Green Line
downtown problems.
And we also know that ridership on the
MBTA has been increasing so that the trend of problems
there is likely to worsen fairly quickly.
Improving transportation is the most effective
way of addressing these problems in a relatively short
amount of time.
And to improve mobility in Cambridge, both
for employees but not least for residents, who have a
variety of needs as spoken about.
And of the projects that
are being considered, the Urban Ring certainly has, by far,
the greatest impact in terms of addressing these problems.
The study shows the potential -- or the predicted
-- ridership of the Urban Ring to be very significant, and
I think there is about 13,000 daily riders predicted using
the Urban Ring at Kendall Station alone.
But we don’t have
to rely on predictions to know that there is a very
significant, latent demand.
Because the private Easy Ride
shuttle, which runs only between North Station and
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Cambridgeport, and only in very limited hours in the a.m.
and p.m. peak Monday through Friday, is already carrying
1,500 passengers a day; up from 500 when it first opened.
And the curves go up every single year, and they’ve just
hit the switch to full sized, forty-foot buses because they
couldn’t accommodate the ridership on the other buses.
The Urban Ring as currently proposed is, of
course, not perfect.
And the main criticism that has been
raised tonight -- and at other times -- is that it relies
on buses and not rail.
And there are many people in this
room that would much rather see a rail-based system -- and
in a perfect world so would I, and so would the City of
Cambridge.
I mean, that’s where we all started, and that’s
what we would prefer to see.
But we have been convinced that, given the
enormous costs of a rail-based system in a dense urban area
such as the inner core, and the limited resources that are
available for large-scale transit projects, really makes a
bus rapid transit system currently the best option that’s
available to us.
I think we all shudder at the price of
this project, but try to see the costs of a full-scale rail
project.
There is, of course, additional technical work
that needs to be done and it is extremely critical that the
bond funding that is included in the transportation bond
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will be released as soon as possible so that we can do that
additional technical work, and also look at potential,
reasonable segments that could move forward earlier.
And
equally important: all the Urban Ring stakeholders need to
be involved in talking about the finance plan very
actively, and very soon, because that is going to be a huge
challenge.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Time.
Thank you.
Dolores
Blanchen?
MS. DOLORES BLANCHEN:
Good evening, my name is
Dolores, and I live at 452 Park Drive.
I see the CT2 bus
and the 47 bus cross over Park Drive, going from Dudley
Station into Cambridge, and I guess I would second other
comments that have been made as how additional buses on the
street will add to the service that’s already provided.
When, as Mary Ann Nelson pointed out, the CT2 bus
is not always -- very rarely -- full.
The 47 bus I see in
the evening when the CT2 bus ends is usually empty.
So I
don’t quite see how this whole program that you’re
describing is actually an improvement.
So the other thing -- I guess I’m a little
confused.
I’m not as well-versed in this project as many
of the people who have spoken are, and so I probably sound
a little silly.
But the Urban Ring, I understand, is to
help people to get where they need to go without having to
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go from out of town all the way into town, and then back
out again.
So if that’s the case I’m not quite sure -because I got the impression from what other people have
said earlier this evening that this will help reduce
congestion on the commute in.
Well, it will reduce,
perhaps, on the inner part of the system, but I don’t see
how it’s going to reduce congestion coming into the city on
mass transit.
And I don’t understand how it will
necessarily affect ridership in cars coming into the city.
I suppose it may help to know once you get here you can get
some place on transit, but it seems to me -- again, only by
my limited experience in the area that I live -- you’re
adding greater transportation options that people already
have.
The other thing I wanted to ask for some
information about in further iterations of the EIR is if,
in fact, as some people have claimed this will help
increase and add to economic development in the area, will
this add a transportation option if it is, in fact,
additional options, reduce traffic congestion.
Because if
economic development actually increases by virtue of this,
will we be playing catch-up and never get there?
And that,
I think, is something that I would like the environmental
impact report to address.
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Also, I live near Mountfort Street.
I’m really
confused about what’s being proposed here, and how bus
traffic is going to reduce congestion in that area.
think it’s a horrible intersection.
I
We’ve got two lanes
going into a single lane on a severe angled turn.
Mountfort Street -- if it’s going to turn into a two-way
street -- at a blind turn will create a real traffic
nightmare.
And so I’m curious if there’s going to be any
configuration there; whether or not turning Carlton Street
-- which is currently a one-way street by B.U.’s former or
current president’s residence -- into a two-way street will
help reduce the congestion that is likely to happen.
That, I think, I would be curious to know about
your traffic options in your EIR.
about the tunnel.
And now we’re talking
It seems to me kind of late in the game
in the FEIR to find out what the tunneling options are, in
terms of the engineering.
I live where there’s going to be
an opening -- the portal to the tunnel.
me.
That’s scary to
I don’t know what kind of -- I know they’re suggesting
low emission buses, but is this going to be a tailpipe
under my windows?
And also I’d just like to add my voice
to suggest that it’s a poor choice to use parkways as
commuter transportation corridors.
Thank you for the
opportunity to comment.
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Time.
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Our last
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speaker signed up this evening is Fran Gershwin.
MS. FRAN GERSHWIN:
Thank you.
My name is Fran
Gershwin, and I’m here tonight as the chair of an oversight
committee created by the Secretary of Environmental
Affairs, with respect to another major project in the area
of part of -- what’s proposed for -- the Urban Ring, and
that’s in the Fenway Area.
The project is the Muddy River
Flood Control, Water Quality Improvement, Habitat
Enhancement, and Historic Preservation Project.
And I’m
here to talk only about the aspects of the Urban Ring
project that impact the Fenway Area, the Riverway Area, and
the Longwood Medical Area.
The oversight committee is very cognizant of the
fact that increased, improved transportation is needed for
the cultural, medical, academic, and scientific
institutions in the Longwood Medical Area.
But we’re
absolutely opposed to increasing the number of buses -MBTA buses -- that are on the Fenway.
And oppose, as a
result, the phase two design that’s been proposed, and feel
that the EOTC should fully explore the feasible alternative
-- very feasible alternative -- of a tunnel project.
The Muddy River Project is a $90 million project.
It involves $24 million committed by the Commonwealth, and
an additional $8 million committed by the City of Boston
and the town of Brookline.
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involves the Muddy River parks, and the Fenway and Riverway
are historic parkways that are part of the National
Register and State Registered parks within that area.
In order to -- buses will absolutely exacerbate
traffic impacts and environmental impacts.
alternative will not to the same degree.
The tunnel
And therefore we
urge the Secretary to require the EOTC in a supplemental or
a final environmental impact report to fully and adequately
explore the very feasible alternative of tunnels -- the
tunnel in the Longwood Medical Area and rail service.
Thank you.
MS. NANCY FARRELL:
Time.
Thank you very much.
I thank everyone who participated this evening -- the
listeners as well as the speakers.
You have a lot of
patience and we thank you for it.
I encourage you to
submit written comments -- even if you didn’t speak tonight
-- on the project.
And I remind you that the comment
period closes on February 10.
very good evening.
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And thank you and wish you a
(Adjourned)
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