Bob La Trémouille reports.
Cambridge, MA is one of the two most important environmental destroyers on the Charles River.
Their tactics in environmental destruction key on flat out lies as to where the city council and the city is coming from.
The lies consist of bragging of things which have nothing to do with meaningful stuff, and not talking about the meaningful stuff.
One of the many attacks on the Charles River is for bicycle highways. They brag about being pro bicycle. The reality is that they are pro contractor welfare. If it makes money for contractors, it very frequently makes no difference how destructive it is.
Cambridge dropped the other shoe on bicyclists on Wednesday, November 3, with regard to bicycle “improvements” on Western Avenue, ending at the Charles and presumably linking to some of their favorite environmental destruction on the Charles.
They are putting in bike paths which will be useless for meaningful bicyclists. They brag they are enticing in a new generation of bicyclists, and if the real bicyclists do not like it, they can share a narrowed highway with cars.
The proposed “bike paths” would be a widening of the sidewalks on the right side of the road this one way street running from Central Square to the Charles. At each intersection, the “bike path” would move toward the main road, thus meandering all over Heck and FORCING people who want to get somewhere to get onto the NARROWED car lanes.
If the “bicyclists” want to make a left turn from the far right sidewalk, there will be TWO streets on the length of the bike path where they will be allowed to do so.
In winter these will be useless. Supposedly a CONTRACTOR will be PAID to keep it clean. Will that put snow on sidewalks for abutters to clean up? Very clearly, it will force meaningful bicyclists to stay on the NARROWED travel lanes because cars keep snow packed down and passable in winter to the benefit of the bikes. The sidewalks “bike paths” if only used by bikes will be impassable even if plowed because the bikes cannot keep the snow packed down.
Hey, they also brag of being pro Civil Rights, but have no problem keeping on with a City Manager who has been called “reprehensible” by judge and jury. Judge and jury found that he destroyed the life of Malvina Monteiro, a black, Cape Verdean department head.
Judge and jury found that he did this in retaliation for her filing a civil rights complaint.
The environmental destruction includes bizarre projects on the Charles which have no value except to the contractors PAID to do it, but which starve local animals and dump poisons on the banks of the Charles to feed sickly grass introduced in place of healthy stuff which survived for the better part of a Century. Then there is the bizarre wall of bushes which seem to have no value except to the Contractors who installed it and in starving the Charles River White Geese. By contrast all other vegetation is destroyed twice a year. The destroyed vegetation is meaningful, it protects migrating water fowl. And it is native. But it costs nothing. So it is destroyed twice a year, while the bizarre, destructive, introduced stuff grows and grows.
I could keep on going, but there is a lot of other stuff elsewhere on this blog.
