Comments for Jamaica Plain Gazette

Comment on Letter: Traffic calming should be part of overpass project by Barbara Gibson

Barbara Gibson — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:05:00 +0000

While I applaud you and your colleagues for your green space advocacy, you have been misled if you think that “poor driver behavior, increased
commuter traffic, unsafe vehicle speeds and driver inattention to
pedestrians” will be mitigated by an at grade solution. To begin with, the traffic model shown the WAG, did not model vehicle size nor the impact of traffic on any of the adjacent side streets. In addition, the oft sited at grade solutions in New York and California are different. In these cases the traffic had alternative parallel routes. Rte 203 is the ONLY arterial connecting Mattapan, Blue Hill, Hyde Park and Milton to Longwood medical area, one of the 2 largest employers in Boston.

Unfortunately the “at grade” solution currently on the table by Mass DOT will not calm the traffic, but divert it into the adjacent neighborhood streets. Pedestrians will J walk because the wait becomes ridiculous and traffic blocks the intersection. Bicyclists will take their life in their hands dodging double parked cars loading and unloading passengers blocking bike lanes because there is no longer any drop off parking. Folks have to get to work. Mass transit is inadequate, bikes don’t work well in rain and snow, school children ride buses and it’s too far to walk to work for many of the 36,000 daily commuters.

The at grade design exacerbates the problems you list in your letter. There would be no traffic calming, rather the opposite. Pedestrians, bicyclists, children would all be put at risk.

Comment on Letter: Overpass traffic questions still not answered by Polly Okunieff

Polly Okunieff — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 01:58:00 +0000

I would like to add to Allan’s observations that the buses of the aforementioned
routes (16, 21, 31) that need the dedicated left turn from Route 203 to
Washington Street come every three minutes. If you also consider the Route 39
bus that requires signal priority every four minutes at the same intersection,
you can see that every signal cycle will be disrupted. The models also do not consider priority treatment for pedestrians who cross New Washington, among whom are high school students boarding buses to Boston Latin School and Academy, Catholic Memorial,
Academy of Pacific Rim, and Brookline High. Moreover, bus and pedestrian priority treatments were promised for New Washington, South, and mid-block Washington Street.

Adaptive signal control and priority treatments don’t work when there are continuous
interruptions of the cycle. Priority treatment must also be synchronized with the rest of the Forest Hills area including east-west traffic along Route 203, north-south traffic along South Street, and nearby streets including Ukraine Way, Hyde Park Ave, and more. If you think this is confusing, try managing it.

Comment on Letter: Forest Hills should have beautiful bridge by Polly Okunieff

Polly Okunieff — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 01:46:00 +0000

You haven’t considered the human costs that cannot be represented in present day “traffic models.” What are the additional costs that the MBTA will incur due to the decreased speeds and additional operating costs? What are the costs incurred by residents of Roxbury, Blue Hills, Hyde Park and Roslindale when emergency vehicles that service those communities have only one passageway through Forest Hills? How is pedestrian and bicycle safety enhanced when they must compete with an additional 24,000 cars per day? What is the economic cost of congestion and air quality to the neighborhood and businesses? The traffic models do not tell the whole story and a simplistic comparison of bridge versus at-grade costs miss important quality of life, health, and safety costs.

Comment on Letter: Forest Hills should have beautiful bridge by Bernard Doherty

Bernard Doherty — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:02:00 +0000

Traffic models and reviews do not drive cars, trucks, buses and emergency transport. Nor should the lack of money be the reason we do not pursue the best traffic solution for Forest Hills.

If your idea of a “traffic nightmare” is not route 1 or 9 placed in Forest Hills then six lanes of traffic is your idilic dream. Congestion, pollution and long traffic lines backing up at every signal, intersection and Bow Tie is presented as the ”Green” solution. And, safety is reduced to a statistic of seconds it takes to cross seven lanes of traffic with the “At Grade Alternative”.

I am a strong believer in common sense and as such, I fail to see how a river of traffic at grade will enhance the traffic flow, improve safety, make for a green solution or improve the health and welfare of the community.

Comment on School-move probe seeks missing data by Jshore

Jshore — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:01:00 +0000

Thanks for the extra effort Matt Cahill!

Comment on Letter: Forest Hills should have beautiful bridge by Sarah Freeman

Sarah Freeman — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:46:00 +0000

In addition to the extra $21 million to build an elevated highway, the estimated lifetime maintenance cost is $30 million to $35 million higher than the cost of maintaining surface streets. I understand the concern regarding a traffic “nightmare”, but the traffic models and multiple independent reviews don’t support those concerns.

Comment on 190-200 rental units planned for Home site by Terry

Terry — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:43:00 +0000

Exactly what we don’t need

Comment on New overpass group draws fire by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:01:00 +0000

Jake, don’t worry it’s going to be torn down.
An attractive bridge might be a better alternative to a continuous traffic jam, especially if you live next to it.

Comment on JP Observer: Has JP become gentrified? by Jen D

Jen D — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:32:00 +0000

JP Gal, It was Sandra’s statement that “JP isn’t close to being gentrified” that prompted me to respectfully offer some alternative ways of making sense of the neighborhood in relation to this phenomenon that we call gentrification. My intent is here is to hold a respectful conversation, even if we disagree.

On the matter of whether it is surprising that middle-income people were forced in the last decade, a slightly longer time horizon may help to put that information in context. I think it is likely that middle-income people were the displaced parties during the last decade because low-income and poor people in market housing had already been pushed out and priced out in various waves during the prior decades. The reasons include: condo conversions in the 1980s; a wave of foreclosures in the early 1990s; and rapidly increased costs of housing after Boston’s rent control policy ended in 1994. JP appears on track to become one of a growing number of “bipolar” neighborhoods in which people who are quite poor and quite rich co-reside, often without knowing one another.

I understand gentrification to be a neighborhood-level expression of bigger kinds of inequality in our economy. I think that extremes of inequality are bad for people, economies, and democracies, among other things. These are the concerns that motivate my reflections.

Thanks much for the chance to discuss. Having made two sets of remarks, I’m going to bow out here, and I will look forward to reading what others have to say.

Comment on JP Observer: Has JP become gentrified? by JP Gal

JP Gal — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:02:00 +0000

So Jen D., you’re saying that gentrification exists if someone believes it does? I give Sandra credit for trying to get behind the rhetoric and figure out what is really going on, in the real world we actually live in. Sandra’s piece reviews the data over the past 10-15 years, so she is definitely not talking about “an achieved state” but exactly what you say — a process. In my view, one of the surprising facts she has identified is that the people who have been “forced” out of JP in the past decade are the middle class, not the poor and working class, as many anti-gentification activists claim. Finally, I think it’s unfair to accuse Sandra of “brushing aside” people’s concerns about “class transformation in the neighborhood.” All of us are concerned about JP and her people, and how our community manages change (because the only thing we can count on is that there will be change). We can’t solve a problem that doesn’t exist, and if we try to, we’re wasting valuable energy that should be devoted to solving problems that DO exist. This isn’t “counterfactual” and it doesn’t denigrate anyone’s life experience.