Public Meeting Tonight - Green Line Extension to Somerville

[bigrock.livejournal.com]

Support your fellow Somervilleians tonight!

Us folks in the Somerville/Medford should all go. Not only is the project needed for Somervile, it is required to be built by 2011 as one of the conditions required to allow the Big Dig to be built.

There will be another important public hearing on the Green Line extension through Somerville on Monday, Feb. 28, at 6:30 p.m. at the Somerville High School Auditorium, 81 Highland Ave. It will be a strain to turn out a large crowd of residents for the third time in four months. But we must do so.

http://www2.townonline.com/somerville/opinion/view.bg?articleid=186793

and some proposed maps :

http://www.somerville-t.com/maps_thumbs.html

Currently, the Green Line ends at Lechmere.

Comments

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

Wow! I used to live on Lowell Street -- to think I could have had T-access so close! Then again, by the time this happens rents will probably go up so much that I wouldn't have been able to afford to live there anyway. Neat map! I've heard lots about "the extension" but never actually seen a map of proposed stops.

[catalyst.livejournal.com]

     i, also, used to live on lowell street, and of course this would be immensely handy to me now living in davis square. but is this really the best use of the mbta's budget? do we need another light rail line more then all the poorer neighborhoods still stuck with buses (ahem, "silver lines")? granted, east somerville is poorer then west somerville, but both because it is better off then say, jamaica plain (and hence has more car drivers), and because it is sandwiched between 2 rail lines and a freeway, it does not strike me as the area most in need of mass transit.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Somerville has one of the densest populations in the entire *country.* When they built 93 over East Somerville, they admitted even then that the pollution from the backed up traffic would cause heath problems. We also have a disproportionately high childhood asthma rate.

When it takes an hour and a half to ge to work by T and 35 minutes by car, too many of us just decide "fuckit, I'll drive" (I know I do, sometimes), which hurts Somerville, Boston, and the Ozone-layer-at-large.

Also this is critical because the EPA has *required* them to do this for YEARS. If they can weasel out of this, like they weaseled out of the Silver Line, then basically we're saying to the MBTA that they don't have to listen to the EPA any more. If they have budgetary problems that's okay, their bottom line is more important than what the federal environmental legislators say.

It's just NOT ACCEPTABLE to let them get away with ignoring the mandates again and again.

[catalyst.livejournal.com]

We also have a disproportionately high childhood asthma rate
     air pollution alone is a fairly weak argument for a light rail extension, in my opinion:

(1) - keep in mind that what i advocated was building light rail *elsewhere*, not not building it at all. to whatever degree it helps with local air pollution, choosing to invest in one place just means somebody else's pollution is worse, so once again, good public policy means figuring out how to make the rail-per-population ratio equitable. i fail to see how somerville rises to the top by that measure.
(2) - it is freeways that are responsible for most air pollution, and east somerville residents do not make up such a large percentage of the traffic on 93 that there would suddenly be nobody driving if that neighborhood had an alternate way to commute.
(3) - according to this table (http://www.mcdin.org/asthma/asstats_data.htm), somerville actually doesn't have a high asthma rate. medford's on the list, but notice that it's 7th behind those aformentioned poorer areas on the south side that don't have any rail.

[motive-nuance.livejournal.com]

I live in Jamaica Plain -- the orange line works pretty well for most of us. Most of the people who are a million miles away from the T are the rich people who live pondside.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

If anyone reading this is thinking they might go, but, uh, watching TV might be more interesting, these thing can be really wild. And incredibly important. If you can go, consider yourself doing a favor for those of us who have to work tonight. Actually I'd be off work in time to get the the second half of it, but I work on Newbury street and taking the Green to the Red to get home takes so damn long I'll miss it.... You can be sure I'm explaining that in a write-in comment.

Here's what our Alderman-at-Large wrote about this:

1) GREEN LINE "COMMITMENT" HEARING TONIGHT!
Why are We Doing This AGAIN?
Tonight's hearing on a possible "substitution" for the promised Green
Line Extension has been so well publicized that writing this notice may
be redundant. Yet the danger exists that too many people will take it
for granted that others will attend, that Somerville has already made
our case, that one more hearing is just one too many. As a friend of
mine remarked the other day, "The tactic of wearing people down does
work, eventually."

So, please remember: the famous October 27 hearing on the Green Line
Extension was held by the MBTA, NOT THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Nor is there a videotape of the 10/27/04 meeting that we can show the
interested state agencies, the Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP) and the Executive Office of Transportation (EOT). Some people were
able to speak at the Gardner Auditorium on Dec. 14, 2004, but it was
nothing like the volume of testimony given to the MBTA in October.

[ert.livejournal.com]

Apparently the meeting has been postponed, according to this (http://www.livejournal.com/community/davis_square/249617.html) post.