Re: Silver Line Phase III
Sierra Club: Silver Line plan shows ?willful ignorance and contempt for reality
The Massachusetts Chapter of the Sierra Club is responding to several recently-filed documents including the draft Finding of Effect Memorandum dated September 16, 2008, identifying the potential impacts to historic properties that may result from the construction of the Silver Line Phase III bus tunnel connecting the South Boston Waterfront Transitway with Washington Street bus service to Dudley Square in Roxbury. We believe that these filings seriously underestimate the likely effects, both temporary and permanent, of this construction project upon the structures and other features along its route. The most notable of these are its effects upon the ambient groundwater in the neighborhoods through which it would pass, and the unnecessary destruction of existing public transit infrastructure.
The Core Tunnel Segment of this bus line commences on Atlantic Avenue, a block south of the South Station upper-level busway. It then turns onto Essex Street, following Essex and then Boylston Street in a westerly direc-tion to a turnaround at the corner of Charles Street. The Charles Street Modified Alignment then makes a 90-degree turn to the south and continues until it reaches a portal just south of the intersec-tion of Charles and Tremont Streets, followed by a "boat section" ramping the bus up to street level in the block of Tremont between Charles and Marginal Road in front of the Mass Pike Towers apartment complex.
Much of the southern fringe of downtown originally lay under water, and it comprises some of the ear-liest exten-sions of the city to be built upon filled-in land. The route of this tunnel roughly parallels the original shoreline of the South Cove as it heads west, and then south.
Yet the discussion of the Core Tunnel Segment fails to acknowledge the issues and implications of tunneling through and near landfill, alleging there will be "No Adverse Effect" to the nineteenth century buildings along Essex Street in the Leather District and Chinatown, to Boston Common (including the Central Burying Ground), and to the Public Garden. "Ad-verse Effect" is found principally around Chinatown and Boylston stations, where transfer stations will be con-structed to connect the bus with two underground rail transit lines, as well as in front of Emer-son College on Boylston Street, and the corner of Boylston and Charles. There is no mention that the proposed expansion of the under-ground Boston Common Garage might take place in conjunction with Silver Line construction (Boston Globe, 6/5/07) -- a possible pedestrian connection into the subway station would certainly have some adverse impact on the Common - or that the bus turn-around at the corner of Charles would abut the south-eastern corner of the Public Garden.
Acknowledgement of the construction?s likely impact upon ambient groundwater levels does not appear until page 20 of the Memorandum, in a description of the Charles Street Modified Alignment - and then only in the context of the construction period. Evidently, we are expected to assume that its effects upon the water table will miraculously disappear once construction is complete and the tunnel placed into service. This assumption is not warranted, as the history of the area reveals. Construction of the new Back Bay Station and Orange Line over two decades ago has resulted in dangerously low water levels in the adjacent filled land, which threatens to undermine the foundations of many of its buildings, particularly in the Chandler Street neighborhood. The MBTA is now risking replicating this damage in its proposal to plop the bus tunnel and portal in the even more fragile soil of Bay Village, a neighborhood with generally older buildings than in the South End.
This Memorandum also minimizes the effects of vibrations upon the surrounding neighborhoods and assumes they will be restricted to the construction period. This is plainly incorrect. At the Tremont Street portal buses would change from diesel to electric trolleybus propulsion, and vice-versa. Buses emerging from the tunnel would start their engines while on the ramp, adding to ambient noise and vibration levels. They would also spew diesel particu-lates into several crowded neighborhoods suffering some of the worst air quality in the entire metropolitan region, also adversely affecting property values. On page 17 it states, "The portal will not separate Bay Village from any nearby historic buildings or areas..." It will, however, create just such an impediment for the residents of the Mass Pike Towers on the other side of Tremont Street -- are they less worthy than Bay Village homeowners? Elsewhere it twice states that the new portal is located on the site of the original streetcar portal that was abandoned in 1962; however, that portal was located at what is now the northern edge of Eliot Norton Park, half a block away from the corner of Charles and Tremont.
Such willful ignorance and contempt for reality is endemic to this entire project. Epitomizing the pernicious nature of the T?s Silver Line planning process, it proposes sever-ing the abandoned streetcar tunnel under Tremont Street to build the Boylston transfer. Such an action would destroy the utility of a tunnel that could be more effi-ciently utilized for a Washington Street light rail service directly into Park Street, at a fraction of the cost of what is proposed here. Evidently, the MBTA would squander this priceless urban resource to replace it with something far inferior.
This plan is a loser. Not only is the Silver Line proposal extremely wasteful of scarce public resources at a time when the Authority can barely pay its bills, but the MBTA is wasting the public?s time and money by repeatedly coming up with outrageous schemes it should have reason to know will be rejected. It is time for the Federal Transit Administration to put an end to this tawdry charade, reject this Memorandum and its associated filings, and compel the agency to come up with plans that will serve the needs of the real people who use the system -- not some fictitious ridership that exists only in its planners? imagination -- plans that will not create such an adverse impact on the surrounding neighborhoods.
Respectfully submitted,
John Kyper, Transportation Chair
Sierra Club, Massachusetts Chapter
