March 2 - 9, 2000
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Last stand on Washington Street
The MBTA's plan to replace the old elevated Orange Line may not be the best solution. Is it too late to do anything about it?
by Ben Geman
Walking through Roxbury's Dudley Square bus station at rush hour, you can feel the fumes surround you as the diesel engines rumble past. The air seems to shimmer and warp, as it does in desert heat. That's fitting, because for years the promise of better public transportation in this neighborhood has been nothing but a mirage.
It's been 13 years since the old elevated Orange Line last thundered down Washington Street, once one of the city's most majestic boulevards. The El was antiquated and a bit rickety, but it got you where you were going quickly. Ever since it was dismantled, the only form of public transit connecting the Washington Street corridor to downtown Boston has been the 49 bus -- a slow, crowded symbol of the MBTA's lack of commitment to inner-city riders, critics say. Transit activists and some politicians have long pushed for a better replacement for the El: light-rail service, similar to the Green Line, which they believe to be crucial if Washington Street is to thrive again.
When the MBTA took down the El, it pledged to provide equal or better public transportation for Roxbury. But, after years of foot-dragging and public debate that prevented forward motion, the agency finally decided to implement what it calls "bus rapid transit."
Initially -- in about a year, the T says -- the diesel buses currently operating on Washington Street will be replaced with much larger "articulated," or bending, buses powered by compressed natural gas. When the proposed "Silver Line" is completed, in 2008, it will run down Washington Street, go underground near Chinatown, connect to Boylston and South Stations, go on to the developing South Boston Seaport (this section of the line is known as the South Boston Piers Transitway), and then extend to Logan Airport. When and if the Washington Street branch's underground link is finished, the compressed-natural-gas buses will give way to buses powered underground by electricity and aboveground by some form of low-emission technology.
Equal or better, critics say, the Silver Line is not. The MBTA itself acknowledges that the compressed-natural-gas buses will provide slower service between Roxbury and downtown than the old El did. According to MBTA documents filed with the state's Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) in mid 1999, it will take the new Silver Line 14 minutes to get downtown from Dudley Station -- compared to the eight minutes it took the El. Although the buses would run in a lane closed to most car traffic, vehicles making right turns or pulling over to park would be allowed to enter. During rush hour, the exclusion of other vehicles would be difficult to enforce. "Of course it [the bus] will get stuck in traffic," says Seth Kaplan, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, which has criticized the plans. "With the general lawlessness of traffic in Boston, do you really think the only cars in that lane are going to be the ones about to make a right-hand turn?"
Clean Buses for Boston, a coalition of members from the Committee for Boston Public Housing, the Egleston Square Neighborhood Association, and the Roxbury environmental-justice group Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE), notes in written comments to EOEA that "very little will prevent general traffic from crossing into and using the bus reservation." The organization and other critics also charge that the MBTA provides little data to support its conclusion that the Silver Line is the best replacement-service alternative.
Despite these arguments, the push for light rail, or even a bus that won't run in traffic, has gone nowhere. The Silver Line scheme, on the other hand, has chugged slowly along. The MBTA has fallen laughably short of its goal of completing Washington Street replacement service by 1994, but state environmental officials have approved key components of the bus plan during the past two years, and the MBTA plans to buy a fleet of the new buses in the coming months and to begin service between Dudley Square and downtown in about a year.
Now, however, it seems that transit activists have one more chance -- perhaps their last -- to fight for better replacement service. Last month, a new Roxbury city-planning process put the issue back on center stage. And, any minute now, environmental and civil-rights advocates will file a formal complaint they've been working on, asking federal officials to investigate the MBTA's service to minority neighborhoods. This, too, could give the rail advocates' case a boost.
"This issue," pledges Roxbury state senator Dianne Wilkerson, "is hardly dead."
These are pivotal times for Roxbury. City officials and residents have worked hard to encourage development -- a new complex in Roxbury incorporates retail, office, cinema, and hotel space, and the state's Department of Public Health is slated to move to Dudley Square. Such growth will help the economy in some areas of Roxbury. But development and a good economy come with their own risks, and rising housing costs threaten to push long-time residents out.With all of this in mind, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) has initiated the new Roxbury planning process. The BRA is meeting with residents and community groups to discuss development, public-space, and transit issues in Roxbury. With the goal of developing a "sustainable community," those involved in the planning process are working together to devise a master plan for Roxbury's future.
At the kickoff meeting on February 10, a couple of hundred Roxbury residents gathered at the Boston Police Department's Roxbury headquarters. Among the issues they discussed was the Silver Line. According to several people who attended, the crowd voiced strong displeasure with the MBTA's plans. "I would say that if the initial meeting and attendance was any indication, the T should be gearing up for another round and barrage of opposition to the Silver Line," says Wilkerson.
"That battle has been going on for a long time and we cannot ignore it," agrees David Lee, a partner in the architecture and planning firm Stull and Lee, the city's lead consultant on the Roxbury planning process. "On the strength of the interest expressed by the elected officials and various members of the community, it will be hard not to make this a part of it."
The BRA agrees that the planning process reopens the debate over replacement service, yet it seems unlikely that the organization will push the MBTA to change course without serious pressure from Silver Line opponents. The city has long sought to improve Washington Street with wider sidewalks, new landscaping, and other amenities, and the current replacement-service plan includes provisions for these things. The city, therefore, supports the idea of moving ahead with new, cleaner-running buses, keeping the option of light rail open for the future. "It's very important that we get the current proposal for the Silver Line in place and under way so there is some level of service," says Linda Haar, the BRA's director of planning. "But through the planning process we can look at what we see as a future generation of Silver Line."
That's acceptable as a beginning, in the view of Roxbury Neighborhood Council president Bruce Bickerstaff, who believes the Silver Line as planned will be inadequate. "We are not going to get what the neighborhood was originally promised," Bickerstaff says. "I would hope that . . . we can negotiate, as part of the master-planning process, an assurance from the MBTA that somewhere down the road, light rail will be considered." The MBTA also plans to use the new buses on other routes, so eventually changing the Silver Line from buses to trains would not mean throwing buses in the trash.
But others say the "just get started" approach merely justifies the MBTA's moving forward with an unpopular plan that would, in practice, preclude better options. In theory, of course, nothing would prevent the MBTA from introducing light rail someday. But after the agency and the state highway department have committed to the roughly $28 million plan for Washington Street bus service, what would the chances be of ever getting funding for a rail line? The T's history of inertia alone rules against it.
Meanwhile, another piece of the Silver Line -- a complex section that involves a new tunnel in the Seaport District linking the transitway to South Station -- is way over budget already, with costs soaring to $600 million. Federal funding is not yet secured for still another tunnel that would link the Washington Street busway and the transitway in 2008, allowing the Silver Line to connect with existing subway lines. To mass-transit advocates, these tunnels are key -- it's impossible to call the Silver Line a replacement service if it fails to offer a direct link with the rest of the city's transit system.
But the whole project is already fraught with delays, and activists are skeptical about the T's pledge to link the Washington Street corridor to the rest of the system. Without this connection, residents could still be riding the bus well into the next century. It might be a cleaner bus, but it won't be true rapid transit. Says Bob Terrell of the Washington Street Corridor Coalition, a group that's long pushed light rail, during a ride on the 49 bus, "There is not anything they are proposing that is different than what you and I are riding right now."
MBTA officials say critics aren't giving the Silver Line a fair shake. In fact, they claim, it will be more convenient and accessible than the old El. The proposed buses, points out general manager Robert Prince, are part of the broader plan for Washington Street's improvement and will provide "quick and easy access to downtown," running roughly every five minutes at peak hours, through seven new stations. "If you closed your eyes, it's like a trolley; it has all the bells and whistles of a trolley, like next-stop announcements and easy boarding for the disabled," he says. "We have to . . . bring people to the realization that it is a different type of technology. It gets you expediently to your destination, keeps cars off the road, and lowers pollution."
And the MBTA's plan has its fans. Some South End neighborhood activists have expressed support, and written comments on file with EOEA show support coming from the South End Community Health Center, the Old Dover Neighborhood Association, and the Archdiocese of Boston, whose landmark church, the massive cathedral on Washington Street, is right on the proposed route. Indeed, transit officials argue that one reason for the delay in replacing the El has been that not everyone in the community is behind light rail: opinions have long been divided over which mode of transportation to choose.
But, critics say, it's not just about getting from point A to point B; it's also about the economy. According to light-rail advocates, even the most futuristic new bus service would fail to enhance neighborhood stability and prosperity the way trains could -- and once did -- in Roxbury. "The decimation of the economic activity and the lifeline of what Washington Street represented to the Roxbury community was a direct result of and correlated to the dismantling of the Orange Line," says Dianne Wilkerson. "There was an economic price the community paid and is still paying 13 years later."
"[Train] stops are where people get off to do their shopping on the way home," adds Jane Holtz Kay, an architecture critic and mass-transit advocate who lives in Boston. "It's the Coolidge Corners, the Davis Squares. We have so much evidence of how areas become lively and viable when you put in good public transportation."
If "bus rapid transit" is so great, asks Terrell, "when are they going to shut down the light rail in Brookline and run buses?"
"That's the true test that exposes the issue of equity around this whole situation," he adds. "If it's not equivalent service in Brookline, in Cambridge, in Quincy, then it's not equivalent service in the South End or Roxbury."
In fact, some MBTA critics believe, the agency has a long and ugly history of leaving the inner city with inferior service even as it lavishes money on transit in wealthier communities. This is why groups including the Conservation Law Foundation, the Washington Street Corridor Coalition, ACE, and the Boston branch of the NAACP are about to file a formal complaint with the Federal Transit Administration alleging that the MBTA has failed to comply fully with federal requirements that the organization document the impact of its service on minority and non-minority communities.
Consider that the MBTA has beefed up the commuter rail in recent years, spending more than $500 million to expand it on the South Shore, yet a huge swath of Roxbury, and thousands of daily commuters, remain without a rapid-transit line. Many people who travel through Roxbury while commuting from other neighborhoods, such as Dorchester, must take multiple buses every day. In others words, transit officials have made it more convenient to get into downtown Boston from the South Shore than from other parts of the city itself.
The complaint being filed will explore existing service, but ACE attorney John Rumpler says it will also have clear implications for the debate over replacement service on Washington Street. "We suspect, when the numbers come out, that they will document a clear pattern of inadequate service to low-income communities of color," says Rumpler. "There is reason to believe the Silver Line, as planned, would not bring the MBTA into compliance" with the federal rules. Terrell, meanwhile, has hinted at a future lawsuit against the T on the grounds of "transportation disinvestment."
Will any of this matter in the long run? It may be too late for Silver Line critics to slow the project down. "There is an awful lot of momentum and reality in terms of funding decisions and the decisions of the powers that be in favor of this bus-based model," concedes Seth Kaplan.But, then again, with the MBTA you never know. Big Dig overruns have thrown state transportation planning into a tailspin, and though Robert Prince and an MBTA spokesperson assured the Phoenix that the Washington Street replacement plan won't be affected, Wilkerson believes the crisis puts a host of transit issues back on the table.
One thing's for sure, though: the Roxbury public-transportation plan won't get better without pushing. In written comments to EOEA, the BRA states that the MBTA's latest findings "sufficiently demonstrate" that the Silver Line will be an "acceptable replacement" for Washington Street, though the BRA adds that other modes of transportation should not be ruled out for the future. Those are hardly the words of an agency likely to raise a cry for still better service once the new buses are up and running. Some city officials say that after so many years and so much debate, any upgrade to current service is a victory. "The way that the Silver Line has been designed has been to provide service as soon as we can and not preclude, in the future, the option to change modes," says city transportation commissioner Andrea d'Amato. "It is really important for everyone involved to get the service going."
Wilkerson, Terrell, and other Roxbury advocates want to see that future come as soon as possible. And, at the very least, the Roxbury master plan -- and perhaps the complaint being filed against the MBTA -- will help those who want better replacement service continue the fight.
"People made it very clear at that [February 10] meeting that it's not acceptable for a bus to replace the old Orange Line. Very, very clear," says Terrell. "To have that level of support and to have it written into the [Roxbury] planning document is going to strengthen our case tremendously."
Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.
