Green Line Development

Thursday, September 4, 2008

As everybody knows, the suburbs grew up in America along the interstate highways, flowering as if the highways were branches of a tree that had been watered and fertilized.

Transportation and development -- they go together.

At a meeting of the committed transportation group MoveMass in August, a stunning number of people turned out -- overflow crowd at the end of summer -- to hear about expansion of public transit, and the possibilities for development.

Not suburbs, but urban transit-oriented development.

Wendy Stern, undersecretary of planning in the state's Executive Office of Transportation, offered an unusual presentation on an ambitious transportation project in Massachusetts -- one with a firm completion date.

In the program, "Extending the Green Line to Somerville and Medford: Progress and Next Steps," Stern said right up front that Dec. 31, 2014, is the date the state is legally committed to finish. Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. leads the project team of consultants. See for more.

The ambitious project -- she wouldn't put a dollar figure on it yet -- includes relocating Lechmere Station, building a Green Line mechanical support facility, and building new stations at Brickbottom, Gilman Square, Lowell Street, Ball Square, and College Avenue.

The alignment of a spur line to Union Square has not been determined. And Lechmere Station, which was supposed to have been redeveloped by the owners of the big mixed-use NorthPoint development, has now been taken on by the state because NorthPoint is tied up in court.

State and federal environmental reviews, being done in parallel, will be filed in the fall, Stern said. The state is still studying four alternative configurations.

And that is what brought many, besides just members, to the MoveMass meeting -- residents, some extremely involved and knowledgeable about the project, from Somerville and Medford. One alternative is to extend the line all the way to Route 16/Mystic Valley Parkway. No new parking is planned along the line unless it is taken to Route 16, where parking -- controversial, of course -- could be included. So the extension is for existing residents, and future residents of TOD project that would cluster around the seven or eight new stations.

A petition with 2,000-plus signatures supports taking the line to Route 16.

The new mechanical facility requires 10-12 acres, and "Yard 8" in Somerville is the chosen location among a dozen considered, Stern said. Not everybody likes that either.

The state is seeking federal funding for the project, and the feds under a new program are requiring those applying for money to design their projects in more detail -- and to include a 30-percent contingency cost cushion -- because of overruns on past projects. Now what could they be referring to?

Money was included in the state bond bill to pay for whatever other sources won't cover, Stern said. Ridership projections are being made, and preliminary engineering starts in early 2009.

A Green Line Extension Advisory Group Meeting is set for Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. at St. Clement High School in Medford (though notice is not that easy to find on the project's web site).

A pumped-up Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone endorsed the project before MoveMass. "It is the best transporation project on the books in the commonwealth," he said. "It makes absolute sense."

"This route once had a trolley with 17 stops, Curtatone said. Now it has one transit stop -- at Davis Square. In 50 years a lot of things have changed," he said. "We've paid the price."

Curtatone said the extension is as much about economic development as it is about moving people more efficiently. Access to jobs for neighborhood residents and cleaning up the environment are bonuses.

"Don't let someone say we don't want this in our neighborhood," Curtatone said, speaking to Medford folks. "We support Route 16. Don't just end at Hillside."

Energized listeners -- pro and con -- spoke in favor of mitigation, against a "deal killer" of a parking garage at Route 16, for bus connections to the new stations, against the affects of a new set of tracks on nearby homes, for putting the maintenance facility at the Boston Engine Terminal instead of Yard 8, and for a pedestrian crossing of the wide highway at Lechmere Station.

And there was a spirited argument over whether the distance from College Station to Route 16 is 3/4 of a mile -- or 9/10 of a mile. Maybe we'll go walk it off.



Last time, we promised a little more about the Boston by Foot tours.

Not to be confused with WalkBoston, which actively promotes the interests of pedestrians, Boston by Foot encourages learning on walking tours.

We joined highly informed guides on two of the summer tours -- one of the southern half of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, and one of the northern half.

Always on the alert for misinformation, we heard almost none. Instead, Jan Engelman in the north-side tour in August, and Margaret Bratsch in the south-side tour in July, gave fascinating and balanced presentations of the history, highway development, Big Dig redevelopment, and finally parks corridor creation of this unequalled 30 acres or so of Boston land.

About two dozen people walked and listened from the Zakim bridge to the Boston Harbor Hotel in August, as Engelman described the modern re-invention of the historic Bulfinch Triangle near North Station, the ramp parcels where the YMCA of Greater Boston and the Boston Museum Project pray they might find enough money to locate and develop, and the fountain jets (most of which were working) that add a lot to the North End parks.

On the earlier southern tour, from the hotel to Chinatown Park, Bratsch informed a similar-sized group about the ramp parcel where the New Center for Arts and Culture wants to build, the ill-fated (but extremely nice looking in their interim condition) three blocks on which the Massachusetts Horticultural Society once planned to build a winter garden, and the colorful open space at Chinatown, originally conceived in part by Kongjian Yu, a prominent young Chinese landscape architect.

Alexandra Lee, director of public programs for the Greenway conservancy, tagged along on both tours, making sure the public-private partnership that was just blessed by the Legislature into existence got its due.

She said there will be a "mile-long party" on the Greenway on Oct. 4, its inauguration day, with entertainment on three stages and maybe even a ferris wheel. And you can find out more about it on a new web site, www.hellogreenway.org .