The Cambridge City Council apparently voted for the worst of the three currently possible options for the feeding of bikes off the bike highway proposed for the Grand Junction railroad, the option to feed bikes into a Boston based traffic problem on Brookline Street in Cambridge. The net impact of this vote keeps open the real goal which is to con the Massachusetts Department of Transportation into accepting feeding bikes into MassDOT’s I90 rebuild in Boston, arguing that “they tried” but “accidentally” created a nightmare, and could MassDOT please give in and sneak the dirty stuff related to the Grand Junction into MassDOT’s plans?
The key committee vote came THE DAY AFTER my letter on the Grand Junction bike path would have been received by the City Council IF THE CITY CLERK’S OFFICE HAD HANDLED THAT LETTER IN ACCORDANCE THE VERY CLEAR RULES.
Rejected without discussion was Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s 2014 proposal to feed bikes onto the “Fort Washington” connector. Several months ago, the City Council WITHOUT MENTIONING THE IMPACTS voted to rearrange easements in the area of the Fort Washington Connector in association with the coming MIT dorm.
Since my last report, I got the following on that Ft. Washington connector:
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I took a walk over to Vassar Street the other day. That new MIT dorm project is simply massive, taking up a huge lot perhaps 200 yards on either side of the former walkway to Ft Washington. That park is going to be in permanent shade in the AM with the 10 story monstrosity they've building. Pile driving continues every afternoon too, will all summer. They're sinking them in just a few feet apart, subsoil is all landfill, just sand, mud, and clay under that.
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Here is MIT’s idea of an appropriate dormitory in that location. The monster building at the bottom of the photo is a few hundred feet from the Fort Washington crossing where the dormitory work was seen. The construction is probably to its right just before the bottom edge of the photo.
This is taken from “From Cambridge to Boston with the DJ Inspire 1 Drone footage,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN-OmMzvHhw, minute 8.12.
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The two parallel lines feeding to the upper right corner are the upper, the Grand Junction, and below that, Vassar Street.
The brown line connecting them is the route MIT proposed to use for bikes coming on the bike path, and #1 was MIT’s identification of the Bike Route to Memorial Drive.
The broken line which I wrote in between the Grand Junction and Vassar Street is the suggestion of Friends of the White Geese.
Also taken from MIT’s 2014 package is the following areal photo of the area.
The Grand Junction is at the top. The connector would go to the left of the white building next to the Grand Junction, then to Vassar Street at its curve and then to Memorial Drive. Parking replaced by the connector could in turn be replaced by constructing a parking platform above the large parking lot below the white building with deeded parking spaces for the respective users.
#2 is the dangerous intersection that the bikes will now be sent to.
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Our publication of our letter on the Charles River White Geese Blog was posted on May 6, 2022 at https://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2022/05/positive-news-on-grand-junction-with.html. The letter was HAND CARRIED to the City Clerk on Monday, May 9, 2022, three days ahead of the May 12, 2022 deadline to get it into the agenda for the May 16, 2022 meeting. The official record of the eventual May 23, 2022 city council posting, WITH THE STAMPED RECEIPT DATE OF May 9, 2022 on the first page may be seen in official city records at: https://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=3656&Inline=True, pages 62 to 76.
Our publication of our letter on the Charles River White Geese Blog was posted on May 6, 2022 at https://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2022/05/positive-news-on-grand-junction-with.html. The letter was HAND CARRIED to the City Clerk on Monday, May 9, 2022, three days ahead of the May 12, 2022 deadline to get it into the agenda for the May 16, 2022 meeting. The official record of the eventual May 23, 2022 city council posting, WITH THE STAMPED RECEIPT DATE OF May 9, 2022 on the first page may be seen in official city records at: https://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=3656&Inline=True, pages 62 to 76.
Other striking parts exist in the City Council “record” on the City Budget. The records of the meetings of the Finance Committee, the governing committee, were kept secret until the day of the release of the agenda for the June 6, 2022 meeting. The portion removed from secrecy prior to the June 6 vote was two pages long. It briefly states the votes which occurred, PERIOD. Normally such reports are massive. NOTHING OF FURTHER DETAIL WAS IN THE PUBLIC RECORD AS OF THE BLOG PUBLICATION OF THIS POST ON June 7, 2022, 11:36 pm. The “final actions” report was posted on June 8, 2022. That ADDED to the two pager City Manager input bringing the TOTAL COMMITTEE REPORT up to 11 pages, page 187 to 197 at https://cambridgema.iqm2.com/citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=15&ID=2531&Inline=True.
NEITHER report related to the June 6, 2022 meeting reported OUR LETTER BEING RECEIVED by the Finance Committee AT ALL.
