Fast-moving commuter rail proposal meets obstruction
The state is moving quickly on a Boston-Worcester commuter rail plan that could send 25 trains a day through Cambridge on little-used freight tracks. The path leads through East Cambridge, Cambridgeport, Kendall Square and past the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Photo: essygie)
In little over a year there could be up to 25 commuter rail trains a day barreling through Cambridge on the way to and from Boston’s North Station.
Cantabrigians, despite a tendency to support public transit as a solution for environmental and traffic problems, see the “Grand Junction” plan for commuter rail to Worcester as not worth the tradeoffs. City councillors and recent council candidate Minka vanBeuzekom criticized the idea Monday even as a weary-looking City Manager Robert W. Healy presented a report saying the state’s Department of Transportation is starting
to research ridership potential, and to determine what the demand for the service would be [and what] the impact on ridership would be if a station were to be located in Cambridge. City officials have requested that MassDOT undertake a full analysis of the potential benefits of the project, including improved transit access for Cambridge residents and employees, as well as potential impacts, including noise, traffic delays at crossings, safety, etc., before moving forward … MassDOT anticipates that it will complete its work so that if it moves forward, commuter rail service could begin in 2012.
“We don’t want it, period, whether it’s 2012 or 2020,” said councillor Tim Toomey, citing the danger of trains going up to 70 miles per hour through heavily populated parts of the city. He asked that the matter go back to Healy for more information, a motion the full council adopted.
He was also “aggressively” working against the plan at the state level, he said, in his role as elected state representative for Cambridge and Somerville.
The history of the 8.6-mile freight rail line goes back about 150 years, but it has been little used recently and the tracks winding through East Cambridge and Cambridgeport, passing through Kendall Square and near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have fallen into disrepair.
“We had promised residents we were going to put in a pedestrian and bicycle path,” Toomey said.
In addition to the path, which would give residents access to nearby recreation, the Grand Junction was to be used by the city for eventual Urban Ring bus rapid transit, Healy noted. But the state bought the lines from CSX in June and began $1.6 million in repairs immediately in preparation for rail — a pet project of Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray, a rail fan as well as a former city councilor and mayor in Worcester. Councillors complained Sept. 13 that plans were proceeding with no input from the city’s residents or officials, and Healy set up a Sept. 27 meeting with department officials.
Mobilizing the public
A presentation to the public was planned, probably for the spring, Healy said, but Toomey was already talking about mobilizing the public against the plan.
Vice mayor Henrietta Davis agreed on the need to organize public meetings and get the state to sit down to discuss the plan and its effects on the city. “We’ve been doing planning around that area for a long time,” Davis said, noting the city’s insistence that an MIT building by the tracks be designed in such a way — with a large section cut out — to allow Urban Ring buses and traffic for the pedestrian and bicycle path. “This has a huge impact on the Eastern side of the city.”
“I too am kind of amazed, and I know it has a certain political element to it, that it got to this point so fast,” she said of the rail project. “If the state is ignoring us at this point, we’ve got to take the initiative. We have to hold a community meeting, we’ve got to ask the Department of Transportation to come to our meeting and answer these questions, because we need the answers. We can’t just let this be coming through our city without regard for all the other things on which it might have an impact.”
With everything seeming to depend on the ridership study, there was no guarantee state officials would come to such a meeting, Healy said.
“At their peril,” Davis said.
At the heart of the plan is the state’s rapidly growing commuter rail service, much of which runs to South Station. While that hub for the T, bus service, taxis and rail has reached capacity, Grand Junction’s revival is intended to send more traffic to the underused North Station.
It disturbed some that there could be 25 trains a day — a figure supplied by Healy — coming through Cambridge, across major streets where rush-hour traffic would stall for rush-hour train service to pass, without even stopping in Cambridge to pick up or disgorge passengers.
“The only way it makes any sense is if we have a train station as well, instead of just allowing them to bring people through the city,” vanBeuzekom said during the meeting’s public comment period. “Kendall Square seems like an ideal place.”
The City needs to take a good hard look at the amount of development that will be occuring in the eastern part of the City over the coming years, including Alexandria, North Point, MIT/Kendall, Novartis’ Expansion, Broad Institute, Twining and many other projects essential to the growth of the City and its tax base and the potential impact that a Worcester to Boston train would have on the neighborhood, its residents and the businesses that call it home.
This is especially important in light of MassDOT’s recent history of being tone deaf to the needs of the residents and communities of Eastern Cambridge. In addition to announcing the plans for a commuter rail link from Worcester to Boston’s North Station without appearantly involving Cambridge Political leaders in the discussions there have been several other instances where MassDOT has been less than responsive to concerns of the Community:
1) Lechmere Station – The design and relocation of a new Lechmere station. On the other side of Msgr O’Brien highway the station initially proposed would be the most spartan and utilitarian on the Green Line Extension. From inconveniently located entrances and oddly placed Charlie Card machines (the only terminal where they would be outside and open to the elements) to requiring East Cambridge residents to cross 6 lanes of traffic at grade to reach the station entrances it appeared that MassDOT was not concerned with East Cambridge commuters and their needs for commuting ease and personal safety. MassDOT has made some improvement in response to community concerns but there is much work left to be done.
2) Green Line Maintenance Facility – Originally slated for a parcel close to residential neighborhoods in Cambridge and Somerville, MassDOT only agreed to shift their focus for this facility after much negative feedback from a coalition of Cambridge and Somerville community groups and political leaders united in their opposition to MassDOT’s proposed location. Now MassDOT added injury to insult when they attribute the slippage in the Green Line Extension to the community involvement in the Maintenance Facility location.
3) Craigie Drawbridge Reconstruction – Starting November 6th this will require that the inbound lanes on RT28 in front of the Museum of Science be closed to all traffic heading to Boston with Land Blvd and the Gilmore (Prison Point) Bridge used as detours. While admitting that this work and related traffic detours, from Nov through April, will cause traffic issues in East Cambridge, MassDOT did not offer any concrete assurances that they had backup plans in case the situation got out of hand. To those in attendance at either the meeting held at the Public Safety Building by Councillor Toomey or the Museum of Science by MassDOT it was clear that MassDOT had their plan and was sticking to it regardless of impacts to Cambridge.
4) The reconstruction of Broadway from Third to Ames has been the subject of a Council Order seeking more information based in part on the lack of communication from MassDOT.
And this is just the Eastern part of Cambridge. We could also add their mishandled approach to involving neighbors in either the BU Bridge Reconstruction or Western Ave / River Street Bridge projects where the invovement of City and State representatives was necessary to encourage MassDOT to be more inviting to Cambridge residents, including actually having meetings in Cambridge rather than Boston.
This is a large issue that deserves serious attention and work from the City and the Council. Waiting for MassDOT will not suffice. The City must mobilize and take a leading role lest we become lost in the wake of this curiously fast moving project. I thank Councilor Toomey for his pursuit of the matter.
I don’t know where the 70 MPH speed reference came from but I think this can’t be true for this route with grade crossings – probably more like 15 MPH. I don’t think the commuter rail goes 70 MPH anywhere.