2. Question.
3. Response, with inserts replacing references.
1. General.
We have received the following email concerning our reports on the stalking horse that destructive bike activists have a right to environmental destruction to connect to Storrow Drive / Soldiers Field Road on the Boston side of the Charles. The question and my response.
2. Question.
Hi. Even if bikes cross the river via the RR bridge, how do they get to/from the "Storrow Drive" river path?
Is there a planned ramp along the Boston edge of the river connecting them?
3. Response, expanded.
Standard Cambridge Machine lie.
MassDOT AND the DCR in the early meetings on the interconnectivity study were highly scornful of this nonsense. It cannot be done. The bike activists are being used to get Harvard's off ramp.
The bike highway along the Grand Junction tracks can make ready connection to Memorial Drive by putting a tiny connection between the tracks and the Vassar Street turn. That will be "suddenly" discovered when convenient.
I am printing your question and the answer with the photos attached, Vassar Street side and track side.
Here is the Vassar Street side.
Here is the track side.
Here is a blow up of the usual aerial shot.
The square to the left of "Memorial" is the BU Boathouse, on the south side of Memorial Drive and just east of the woods whose ground vegetation has been destroyed by the Charles River "Conservancy". Then comes the tracks and the Destroyed Nesting Area.
The Vassar Street turn is between the M and the tracks, but blocked by the building which is to the right of two adjacent buildings which, in turn, are separated by Vassar Street. To the left of Vassar Street and the blocking building is a black area which is the roof of one of the two buildings, a major building between Vassar Street and the tracks east and west. South and north it faces Memorial Drive and a small parking lot. That parking lot appears as a gap.
Then there is a white marking. My guess is that the white marking is the white building. The bike highway should connect from the track to Vassar Street in that portion of the gap, a parking lot, which abuts the white building. Another interpretation would be that the white spot is where the connector should be, with the white building above the connector in the photo.
The bike highway would then proceed to Memorial Drive.
If Cambridge had a responsible government, this is the route which would be the only connection to the Charles River under discussion.
Cambridge does not have a responsible government, so environmentally destructive people are being used as a stalking horse for Harvard’s off ramp from I90 (Mass. Pike) over the Grand Junction railroad bridge to Cambridge. When the con plays out, the destructive bicycle activists would be put on this connector where they should be from the beginning.
