🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <7038@bigbird.hri.com.hri.com>, blamb@rodan.hri.com (Bill Lambert) writes:

|> A little local history: Route 2 was widened to 4 lanes from Alewife
|> Station area to 128 some years ago in anticipation of connection
|> to the southern artery project (Rt. 95 extension) that was cancelled,
|> basically due to citizen outrage. There are memorials to that project
|> such as the exit ramp to nowhere of the end of Rt. 93 near the
|> Central Artery connection, and a road that runs into the side of a
|> hill near the junction of 95/128 in Dedham. The state took some land
|> by eminent domain in a "scorch and burn" policy that decimated much
|> of Roxbury, some of the South End, and so on, for a road that was
|> never to be.

The "New" Orange Line now runs through the corridor originally cleared
for I-95 (which would have been called the Southwest Expressway,
not Southern Artery).   By now I had hoped that this T line would
generate commercial and residential development to knit the severed
neighborhoods back together, but so far it hasn't happened.  Whatever
magic the T brought to Porter and Davis Squares doesn't seem to have
worked in Ruggles and Jackson Squares.

It's a good thing that most of the cancelled highways were never
built.  To build them, we would have sacrificed much of Boston's
urban and suburban fabric to the Automobile God.  The original plan called for:

a) I-95 continuing north from Dedham through Hyde Park, 
     Roslindale, Forest Hills, Jamaica Plain, and Roxbury 
     to a massive interchange where Ruggles Station now stands.

b) An "Inner Belt" running as follows:
   - from the Southeast Expressway at the Mass Ave/Roxbury exit
   - west along Melnea Cass Blvd. to the interchange mentioned above
   - continuing north-westward around Northeastern University 
	and the Museum of Fine Arts, tunnelling under the Fens
   - bisecting Boston University, then crossing the Charles River 
        near the BU Bridge
   - following Brookline Street through Cambridgeport, and cutting
        Central Square in half
   - continuing north-eastward through Cambridge and Somerville,
	cutting off Inman Square and Union Square from their adjoining
	residential neigborhoods
   - finally joining Route 93 at the "ramp to nowhere" in Charlestown.

c) A "South End Bypass" from Ruggles Street to Back Bay Station
     (along a path where a lovely linear park now stands)

d) Route 2 continuing east from Alewife through North Cambridge,
      Porter Square, and Somerville to meet the Inner Belt
      near Union Square

e) Route 3 continuing south from Burlington through Lexington
      and Arlington to join Route 2 near the Park Circle water tower

f) I-95 continuing north from Revere through the Saugus salt marsh
      and the Lynn Woods to Peabody

To save a few minutes' driving time for people in Concord and 
Westwood and Lynnfield, we'd have destroyed large sections of
Cambridge, Somerville, the Fenway, Jamaica Plain, Lynn, and even Arlington.
Fortunately, Governor Sargent listened to the people in 1974 and
stopped the bulldozers before they could do most of the damage.

If you'd like to read more about the highway plan and the citizens'
movement that halted it, check out Alan Lupo's book _Rites of Way_.

-- 
Ron Newman		rnewman@bbn.com