2. The timeline.
3. My evaluation.
4. Responsible behavior now?
5. Comments and announcements.
A. Boston Globe.
B. Robert Winters.
C Chris Neil, 4/2/13, representing City of Cambridge?
D. Stephanie Boundy, 4/1/13, Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
6. Conclusion.
1. Memorial Drive next to the Destroyed Nesting Area to close for six months.
Memorial Drive in Cambridge, MA, USA, next to the Destroyed Nesting area of the Charles River White Geese, is closing for “emergency repairs” at 8 pm this evening, April 7, 2013. This involves the area directly under Memorial Drive being fenced off for the work. Traffic will be rerouted via on and off ramps and via the rotary beneath Memorial Drive. This portion of Memorial Drive is called the Reid Overpass.
This looks to me like a trumped up con from the state to claim innocence in the ongoing outrage of railroad workers in the Destroyed Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese.
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Golly gee, we can’t park the railroad workers and put their building in a responsible location. The area they should be parked and where their building should go is closed for emergency repairs.
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Nonsense.
2. The timeline.
This is a photo I published on March 27, 2013 in this blog.
[03-26, CVS 1511 03-18-13 DNA]
The brick structure running left to right through the middle of this photo is the “Reid Overpass” of Memorial Drive.
I took this photo on March 18, 2013 on viewing the beginning of the latest and most extreme outrage from the Commuter Rail workers with the blessing of the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
My first report, on March 18, was followed by extreme ramping up of the abuse of the Charles River White Geese by installing a metal work structure in the most sensitive part of the Destroyed Nesting Area.
I reported that outrage on March 24, 2013.
On March 27, 2013, I published two photos from March 18 including this one and six photos from March 24 showing the accelerating outrage.
In my various communications, I encouraged folks to contact the governor, at http://www.mass.gov/governor/constituentservices/contact/. People, including me, informed the governor that the vehicles and the metal building belong under Memorial Drive and not in the destroyed nesting area. Use of the area under Memorial Drive would be in accordance with responsible behavior during the BU Bridge work over several years.
The state apparently announced closure of the raised portion of Memorial Drive next to the Destroyed Nesting Area on March 29, 2013. Various announcements (and the Boston Globe report) are quoted in the last section of this report, below.
My blog report of March 29, 2013, unknowingly communicated the first wave of the work.
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On my way to the environmental outrage, I noticed four white vehicles marked “Auson” under Memorial Drive where responsible workers park. There were two or three small boxes with peaked roofs up to a height of perhaps four feet. These boxes look like some sort of entomological (bug) operation, not apparently related to the rail workers implementing the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s animal destructive policies. Strange, I just checked their marked website and came up with zero.
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“Auson” was a misspelling. There is one more letter in the name. I still cannot find them on the Internet. I did see the same marking on vehicles in that area last Wednesday, April 3.
3. My evaluation.
All quotations are presented in greater detail in section 5, below.
Stephanie Boundy of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation reports:
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. . . MassDOT sent the traffic advisory announcement to our Charles River Basin contact list late on Friday afternoon [ed: March 29, 2013] in order to provide as much notice as possible to the community. Once we heard from our structural engineers that the overpass needed to close for necessary repairs, we sent out the media alert.
The Reid Overpass work is not being closed as part of a planned rehabilitation project, it is being closed for necessary structural repair work.
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Robert Winters, a long time Cambridge Machine activist commented on March 5:
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I don't know when the decision was made to finally do major structural repairs to the Reid Overpass, but I will say that it's long overdue. I drove over the overpass last year and was stunned by a sudden dip and bump that pretty clearly was related to major structural problems. It was so severe that it could have snapped an axle. I alerted City officials who told me that they were in touch with state officials to do something about it. I'm surprised they waited this long.
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Robert Winters is a well established member of the Cambridge Machine.
For Winters to destroy the claims of a “sudden emergency” with his reports from last year says everything. Especially when you combine his comments with the outrage at the DNA suddenly being ramped and suddenly being very validly complained of.
4. Responsible behavior now?
The lay of the land is as follows:
The Destroyed Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese is on the south side of Memorial Drive. It is abutted on the north by an on ramp to Memorial Drive, and on the west by the BU Bridge. As I showed above, the “Reid Overpass” of Memorial Drive looms above the DNA to the north.
The area closed off for work starts at about the middle of the northern side of the DNA. It runs through the middle of a rotary under the Reid Overpass.
Here is a photo of the Reid Overpass taken from the BU Bridge just east of the DNA.
The brown substance is mulch, the green introduced bushes. Both are on the northwest extreme of the DNA. The opening straight ahead was illegally created by Boston University in October 1999. Immediately beyond to the right is the on ramp to Memorial Drive. The Reid Overpass is straight ahead. Parking beneath would be extremely convenient if the various government entities were responsible beings. That opening is now closed off with fencing from the brick structure to the ground. To the left can barely be seen the rotary to which traffic from the BU Bridge flows. Roughly directly behind the tree on the left is now a covered pedestrian walkway.
[06-15, DVD, 06-26-12; 06 05-19-12]
This is a view slightly to the west of the above, showing the sidewalk next to the DNA and the rotary.
[06-15, DVD, 06-26-12; 07 05-19-12]
Here is a photo of the situation from the west, next to the east bound off ramp from Memorial Drive heading east. On the left is the rotary and the Reid Overpass.
[2011; 03-16, Clark; 01 02-13-11, Rotary from west]
Going west, across from the Reid Overpass to the South is the well landscaped pollution control building of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. It is fenced off with grass between the fence and the on ramp.
Here is the next opening to the south. This is the nearest portion of the Magazine Beach playing fields, but it is not used for playing fields. The grassed area behind where the photo is taken is very close to the western end of the Reid Overpass and very close to the fence of the MWRA.
This, as I recall, is the DCR’s sickly grass which requires poisons to keep it alive. I could be wrong. It is impossible to tell the difference between the responsible grass they destroyed and the sickly stuff they introduced. Except that the irresponsible stuff introduced requires poisons to stay alive and in turn requires a complicated poison drainage system. The responsible grass destroyed requires no such thing.
This area or, more specifically, the area behind the camera is where the metal building and the parking should now be. This area is unused. The grass is destructive and should be replaced with the responsible grass that was destroyed.
[07-16, DVD 07-26; 18 19 07-03 2d phase wall, bridge barrier]
5. Comments and announcements.
A. Boston Globe.
A timely report from the Boston Globe reported the announcement on March 29, 2013 at http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/cambridge/2013/03/bridge_along_memorial_drive_in.html.
Closure is anticipated to be effective April 7, 2013 and to last six months.
This will involve rerouting of all traffic using that bridge to the rotary under the bridge by way of the on and off ramps, including the on ramp from the BU Bridge which is the northern boundary of the Destroyed Nesting Area.
B. Robert Winters.
Winters is an extremely public person.
His position of 4/5/13 reads in relevant part. This comment was the first of two paragraphs.
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I don't know when the decision was made to finally do major structural repairs to the Reid Overpass, but I will say that it's long overdue. I drove over the overpass last year and was stunned by a sudden dip and bump that pretty clearly was related to major structural problems. It was so severe that it could have snapped an axle. I alerted City officials who told me that they were in touch with state officials to do something about it. I'm surprised they waited this long.
C. Chris Neil, 4/2/13, representing City of Cambridge?
This wording, on 4/2/2013 sounds like an official announcement. I vaguely recall that the commenter was passing the information on as a coordinator for the City of Cambridge.
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On Sunday, April 7, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation will be closing the bridge that carries Memorial Drive over the rotary at the BU Bridge in Cambridge. The bridge, known as the Reid Overpass, will be closed to all vehicles, as well as to cyclists and pedestrians in both the eastbound and westbound directions. All vehicles will be diverted to the surface roadways and through the BU Bridge/Brookline Street rotary, and back on to Memorial Drive. The overpass will be closed to allow crews to perform structural repairs; the work is anticipated to last six months. For transportation news and updates visit the MassDOT website at www.mass.gov/massdot. The bridge work is not related to the Western Ave Reconstruction Project, but we wanted to make sure that those in the Western Ave neighborhood were notified, as this bridge
D. Stephanie Boundy, 4/1/13, Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
This was passed on by a “neighborhood organizer” who has problems with meaningful activism.
Boundy is definitely an official representative of MassDOT (Massachusetts Department of Transportation). The email shows a copy to the Cambridgeport “Neighborhood Association.” Her comment as relevant:
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. . . MassDOT sent the traffic advisory announcement to our Charles River Basin contact list late on Friday afternoon [ed: March 29, 2013] in order to provide as much notice as possible to the community. Once we heard from our structural engineers that the overpass needed to close for necessary repairs, we sent out the media alert.
The Reid Overpass work is not being closed as part of a planned rehabilitation project, it is being closed for necessary structural repair work. Our traffic engineers will work closely with the city of Cambridge and the DCR to coordinate our efforts in order to minimize traffic impacts to the maximum extent possible throughout the duration of the work.
6. Conclusion.
Please contact Governor Patrick at http://www.mass.gov/governor/constituentservices/contact/.
Tell him to move the irresponsible Commuter Rail workers and their outrageous building to the nearest part of the Magazine Beach playing fields in accordance with the above.
Thank you in advance for whatever you can do.
The closing of the Reid Overpass is a decidedly outrageous response to our objections to the outrage at the Destroyed Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese. This change is a lot more moderate.
