Opponents of Riverbend Park meet in Riverside with state official, demanding support on traffic
State Rep. Marjorie Decker speaks Tuesday at a meeting at the Cambridge Community Center in the Riverside neighborhood. Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Brian Arrigo is at right. (Photo: Julia Levine)
Riverside neighborhood residents already outraged by traffic pushed onto their streets by regattas, half marathons and music festivals were in no mood Tuesday to hear about state plans to put Memorial Drive on a “road diet” that would reduce its car lanes permanently, or how the state was still considering Saturday closings to car traffic as part of Riverbend Park.
Riverbend Park is a 40-year-old tradition that allows a mile of Memorial Drive to be used for recreation on Sundays from the end of April to mid-November. Saturday closings were added during the Covid pandemic, but some residents wanted to continue having whole weekends of Riverbend Park; the Department of Conservation and Recreation made a series of confusing reversals about keeping or ending Saturday hours.
At the latest signs that Saturdays might return to Riverbend Park permanently, some 60 Riverside residents, city councillors and state officials packed into a meeting room at the Cambridge Community Center.
“You need to go home and put a halt to this whole entire thing,” said Lawrence J. Adkins, a resident who led the meeting, to DCR commissioner Brian Arrigo.
State Rep. Marjorie Decker, who called the meeting with neighborhood organizers such as Adkins, also had sharp words and questions for Arrigo about Saturday closings. “What’s changed that you all are revisiting that, and what does that mean?” Decker asked. “Congregations are stressed out. The neighborhood is stressed out.”
Decker said she’d been seeking a meeting like this for as long as two years – and at least the nine months Arrigo has been in office. “I spent over a year trying to get these meetings because the City Council, with the exception of a couple, did not engage the neighborhood to find out ‘How does this impact you,’” Decker said.
Surprise to many
Lawrence J. Adkins, right, cuts off a comment by Clyve Lawrence at Tuesday’s meeting. (Photo: Julia Levine)
The meeting took many Cantabrigians by surprise, including other state legislators, city councillors and city staff, as well as advocates for expanded Riverside Park hours. Many learned about it the night before – if they listened through to the announcements at the end of a 5.5-hour Cambridge City Council meeting,
After learning of the meeting, “people who want the closure started sending around a flurry of emails. I had elderly residents who said ‘Marjorie, should we have security here?’ Because they were afraid of their voices being drowned out,” Decker said.
There were few Riverbend advocates there, though, and Adkins set rules at the start that people who went off script from the goals of stopping Saturday uses at Riverbend and the road diet plan would be “purged” from the room. When Harvard student Clyve Lawrence stood to speak to note that traffic mitigations offered as far back as 2022 could make Saturday closings into a good thing for everyone, Adkins stopped him.
“That’s not what this meeting’s about and I acknowledged that early on,” Adkins interjected. Another resident organizer, Sheila Headley Burwell, added: “Take that to the other meetings that you have the opportunity to be at.”
“We don’t want any of it.”
Sheila Headley Burwell shows a video Tuesday of Riverside traffic. (Photo: Julia Levine)
Burwell spoke at length about how annual events such as the Head of the Charles regatta, Boston Dragon Boat Festival, Boston Calling music festival, recurring road races and Sunday closings of Memorial Drive – and even the Dance Party held once a summer at City Hall – affected traffic patterns in Riverside, trapping people in their homes and clogging the air with pollution. “We don’t want to entertain the world,” she said. “We don’t want any of it.”
Residents urged the state to put Saturday closings somewhere else along Memorial Drive.
The road diet concept, to shrink space for car traffic to make walkways and bike lanes safe and accessible, enflamed things. Arrigo said a plan has been in the design phase for years – long before his arrival – and was still not quite ready for a full discussion. The design phase was 50 percent to 75 percent done, he said, and generally the agency start to engage the public and get feedback at 75 percent.
“Tonight, we’re building out a team to do a little bit more public facing and public communication,” Arrigo said at the start of the meeting. “We know that’s been a place where we need to improve as an agency.”
Among the voices expressing concern about the road diet was city councillor Paul Toner. Though the state’s safety goals were good, Memorial Drive is “the one throughway we have,” Toner said.
Race and class
Riverside residents said they felt misrepresented by city officials over the Saturday park extension and believe their voices have been drowned out by its supporters. “I don’t know where it started. I don’t know who asked for it. We were never told it was coming. It just happened,” one attendee said. “This community is not considered part of the decision-making body politically, administratively in the city, in the state, in the country,” another resident said.
“It’s race and class,” Burwell said.
Decker agreed: “What I care about is that the community that’s been impacted, that has not been engaged, is disproportionately people of color and elderly.” Scrutinizing the state staffers in the room, she added, “equity is not about being a part of a community that is very organized and has hundreds of people emailing you.”
Supporters of expanded Riverbend Park closings are better organized and more technologically savvy than the Riverside residents and have dominated the conversation, residents at the meeting said. “You cannot erase the [role] that racism and white privilege has played in this,” Decker said. Others also urged officials to listen more to the voices of the “black and brown” people in the room (but not to listen to Clyve Lawrence, who is black but a Harvard student).
Community meetings in 2022
Decker criticized her colleagues for not being more involved in discussions with these residents. “I have a colleague, a rep, who’s gone out to rally for this,” she said, referring to Riverbend Park Saturdays. “I begged that rep, Mike Connolly, I said please come to the neighborhood. Please come meet with constituents before you go rally for this.”
The record shows Connolly did that. The city held three community meetings online and in-person in 2022 about Riverbend Park that were advertised in the neighborhood with laminated posters attached to street signs. Online notes by city staff for two of them say who attended, including Connolly. Decker is not identified as attending. A survey and other requests for opinions at the June 28 event drew comments in favor and against; an online meeting Sept. 14 drew 140 people; the in-person forum Oct. 6 had approximately 60 people, about the same number as Tuesday’s meeting.
The reconsideration of Saturday closings came about because a release of state documents in July showed that there were flaws in the state’s earlier decision-making process about Riverbend Park. Those included claims that the City Council was opposed, the neighborhood in general was opposed and that the state’s legal counsel said Saturday hours weren’t allowed by law – all untrue.
More engagement coming
In the trove of documents was an email from Rebecca Tepper, secretary of the Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs, to Gov. Maura Healey in which Tepper said “Decker is staunchly opposed.” A month earlier, Decker had broken a long silence on the matter to say she had “not ever publicly or privately advocated against Saturday closings. My goal for the past year has been for DCR to engage with impacted community members and elected officials.”
Decker seemed to clarify her position on Memorial Drive at the Tuesday meeting, saying, “I’m agnostic about whether or not this is closed. I’m not agnostic about the community that’s been impacted and hasn’t been engaged.”
Arrigo, asked to make a firm commitment to return to continue the conversation, proposed the third week of February. Residents asked that the meeting be held in the auditorium of the Martin Luther King Jr. School, 102 Putnam Ave., which was also the site of the Oct. 6 community meeting in 2022.
In addition to Decker and Toner, officials at the Tuesday meeting included state Sen. Sal DiDomenico, School Committee member Caroline Hunter, Mayor E. Denise Simmons and councillors Patty Nolan, Joan Pickett, Sumbul Siddiqui and Ayesha Wilson.
This post was updated Feb. 7, 2024, to correct that city councillor Joan Pickett attended the meeting.
Decker has proven that she will lie all day about this topic. She has no interest in serving anyone but herself and other motorists. She is blatantly ignoring the majority of the neighborhood and the majority of the community as a whole, calling to ignore their opinions no matter how few people are actually opposed to the changes.
As a Putnam resident, I ask again, do these people not experience heavy traffic every evening during the weekday like I do?
I cannot imagine what is motivating Decker here and it’s so bizarre it may be her undoing.
It’s perfectly OK for Rep Decker to oppose Riverbend Park.
What is not OK is that she is repeatedly making false statements, with this article providing yet another example. As the author of the article points out, Rep Decker is criticizing one of her colleagues for the opposite of what actually happened.
It’s not surprising that Rep Decker feels she can mislead the public without consequence: representatives are seldom challenged in primaries, and therefore are re-elected automatically, with no accountability. Get elected once, and you can do whatever you want with very little consequence.
This year, however, Rep Decker is being challenged in the primary by Evan MacKay. I encourage voters to check out their site: https://www.evanforcambridge.com/
Adkins set rules at the start that people who went off script from the goals of stopping Saturday uses at Riverbend and the road diet plan would be “purged” from the room.
This wasn’t a “community meeting “ it seems to have been a controlled opposition rally.
Who the state chooses to listen to is deeply political. There was polling done showing this as a minority position, the elected city council majority voted for keeping it, and many more nearby residents than were in this meeting signed petitions to keep it, why continue to cater to this sometimes deliberately misinformed group?
Traffic changes that produce more traffic include adding more lanes, adding new roads, building highways etc. Traffic changes that reduce traffic are things like pedestrianization, road diets, etc. This is because of the principle of induced demand and the corollary principle of traffic evaporation, both of which are very well documented empirically. The thing that brings traffic to the neighborhood is the highway like river road. Closing that to cars reduces traffic. If it didn’t reduce traffic enough the hours of the park should be extended. Studies also indicate it takes about 6 months to settle into new traffic patterns after a change, so it is likely that any actual issues might have dissipated over time or could then be addressed as well instead of keeping it open for cars and closed to everyone else.
This one section is truly incredible: “After learning of the meeting, “people who want the closure started sending around a flurry of emails. I had elderly residents who said ‘Marjorie, should we have security here?’ Because they were afraid of their voices being drowned out,” Decker said.
There were few Riverbend advocates there, though, and Adkins set rules at the start that people who went off script from the goals of stopping Saturday uses at Riverbend and the road diet plan would be “purged” from the room.”
The irony is truly profound. That state officials gave this farce their time of day is embarrassing. Decker put her thumb on the scale last time and it is clear she is trying to do so again. I hope she loses re-election.
I have to add, Decker, who is white, framing it as if everyone supportive of the park is white with no evidence at all, to contrast with the few Black elders present at this purge enforced anti-park meeting is also really bizarre and tokenizing. It is denying the identities of the people of color who support the park and spoke up for it in comments at the previous meetings etc. Decker is thinking with her car and making up progressive sounding justifications for that clearly reactionary position.
@Slaw: “ The thing that brings traffic to the neighborhood is the highway like river road.”
No, the thing that brings traffic to my neighborhood is the literal highway just a few feet across the river. The only thing that would reduce traffic to and from Riverside would be to move I-90.
I want to know exactly HOW this meeting was organized and HOW we were ignored in regards to it… being a homeowner for 25+ years and living on Western Ave I have to say there was no transparency that this meeting was happening or what it was going to be about.
Adkins seems to have “cherry picked on this meeting and set the agenda. This is NOT a community meeting or how one should be handled.
The weekend closings, as far as I am concerned, should continue. Memorial drive was created with very specific goals (look into the history of the drive and why it exists people) and the weekend closings of a mile of it for recreational use falls within the auspices of the state agency associated with Conservation and Recreation.
I oppose attempts to end River Bend Park.
What an insane story. I hope Arrigo is able to get a sense of the full history and picture here and isn’t swayed by this absurdly biased and closed meeting.
I’m in favor of riverfront park, and in favor extending the times of it and the lengths of it, but let’s be real, the city does not listen to neighborhood concerns. The city might work more equitably if there were more neighborhood based and not just at-large councilors.
That said, the compromise of moving it to
different parts of the river different days might make sense.
I’m also concerned about the traffic patterns if the road size is shrunk further, I don’t think we should do that until the T is fixed. With the red line out of commission and giant buses on mass ave (with non local drivers) its a huge danger for cyclists and a disaster for drivers.
“but let’s be real, the city does not listen to neighborhood concerns”
Yes let’s, the fact that the state is catering to these anti-democratic organizing efforts by clearly well connected nimbys is a good example of that. By closing the park the state ignored the community and it is now creating a sham process to justify that.
It would have been nice to know about this meeting, but no… timing is planned. and chances are, this is not a listening meeting but to announce what is already decided. There is indeed a traffic problem in neighborhood small streets when memorial is closed down. I feel and additional Saturday is impractical, imposing and basically promoted by many who are not even from Cambridge. I have learned not to go anywhere on weekends. It can take a full 30 mins just to get from putnam ave to the Mass Pike to visit my ill sister. Or should I be riding my bike? I don’t have money for an uber. I do believe it is a class thing. The moneyed self-important elites want a recreation area taking crucial swaths of public road. What about emergency vehicles? Do they have to go around? I’m so sick of the super organized social media savvy advocates blasting through places they don’t even live. Sunday is the compromise, sat and sunday is an imposing take-over.
@cambridgejoe you should let DCR know how you feel. It’s clear they are only listening to the anti-park people right now.
@Pete “this is not a listening meeting but to announce what is already decided” this is true but literally in the opposite of the way you are claiming. Did you miss the purge enforced position of this meeting?
Walking and biking are basically free compared to the costs of driving/gas. The idea that closing a road to cars “including many who are not even from Cambridge” hurts poor people is baseless. Drivers are better off on average statistically and cars are expensive. Keeping the road open privileges drivers from outside the community and exposes the community to pollution.
You have no interest in compromise, you are imposing car dominance, and you are also posting about it online.