Mr. Frank Tramontozzi, P.E., Chief Engineer, Massachusetts Department of Transportation
10 Park Plaza, Suite 3170
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Dear Frank,
I’m calling you by your first name because I took you out for breakfast on Cambridge Street once when you worked for the city. So I’ve decided to be more familiar than I ordinarily would be in an “official” letter.
I went to the meeting last night about the Longfellow Bridge. I came away both encouraged and depressed.
I was encouraged because your plans to clean the steel and granite and relocate the utilities so you can inspect the bridge before the main phase of the work starts sounds like an imaginative and effective way to proceed.
I was discouraged—dismayed, even—to hear the presenters then talking about their goals to “process” traffic quickly through Charles Circle. I listened as they erroneously predicted traffic jams in 20 years as far back as Belmont (I’m exaggerating) if we didn’t keep traffic flowing over the bridge. I thought I was back in the 1950s.
Your guys have got to get a new model, and I don’t mean only for the Longfellow Bridge. We cannot continue planning for more and more automobiles in our construction projects. In fact, there is absolutely no way to accommodate the dire increases in vehicle traffic that I keep hearing from traffic prognosticators for the Longfellow, Storrow Drive or any other road project. We might as well pave over the whole city.
Your plans right now on the Longfellow, even on the interim plan, play into schemes that encourage traffic volumes to rise. Instead we must find ways to drastically reduce motor vehicle volumes at every opportunity.
On the Longfellow, that means reducing the traffic lanes in each direction to one only. (You did it a year or so ago when you were evaluating the bridge, and hardly anyone noticed.) It means widening the sidewalks so that pedestrians have enough room to stroll with their friends. It means providing dedicated (and separated) bicycle paths so that the commuters from the north who want to cycle to work are corralled and safe. It means reducing the stacking lanes coming off the bridge at Charles Circle to two rather than three. It means providing more trains and subway lines all over Massachusetts so that those who don’t need cars have other options.
The Longfellow Bridge’s traffic is considerably lower anyway than it was a couple of decades ago. It won’t hurt for drivers to wait on the bridge since it has a lovely view, and drivers are used to waiting anyway. I don’t know where you got the idea that it’s bad to have people stuck in traffic. It’s ideal in a large congested city. People are inventive: ultimately they’ll “seek alternate routes,” or they will seek alternate means of getting there.
I read in the Boston Globe today that the BRA has a plan to reduce truck traffic by reactivating rail links to the harbor and the shipping that arrives there. Mayor Menino and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council have plans to install city bikes for people to rent. The Mayor’s office says they hope to have a contract with a bike company soon so they can begin renting bikes next spring.
So we’re already figuring out ways to reduce vehicle use.
MassDOT is a new organization with a new promise. I hope you and your colleagues decide it’s a new era in transportation too. I hope you envision a place where walking, biking and transit riding are considered the ideal modes of getting around, and that automobiles are used appropriately and thoughtfully—and enjoyably—for the times they are really needed.
That kind of thinking is what will take Boston uniquely into the 21st century.
Moving cars as the first priority is an old idea whose time has gone.
Sincerely,
Karen Cord Taylor