Bridging Forest Hills (BFH) will continue to oppose the Casey Arborway project, even as construction is underway founding member Jeffrey Ferris told the Gazette last week.
The group has a petition to the governor it intends to circulate to drivers stuck in Casey construction traffic, according to its recent activism emails.
BFH, a community group created to advocate against the surface-street road plan and in favor of a new Casey Overpass, has continued its presence at Casey project community meetings, holding up signs and protesting. However, the state shows no signs of halting the project, which has many local supporters as well.
“Bridging Forest Hills continues alive and well,” Ferris said. “We’ve been losing for three years, but we still believe that this whole project is a bad idea.”
BFH argues that a new bridge would be better for traffic and the neighborhood by keeping cars out of the way. Its members also played a role in revealing secrecy and behind-the-scenes planning early in the Casey process, which the state later partly acknowledged, opening up its meeting process.
Ferris said that BFH has a new petition, both in paper and on moveon.org, calling for the Casey project to be halted and changed. As of last week, the moveon.org petition had just over 700 signatures, which Ferris said was only part of the 2,000 names they’ve garnered since BFH started operating.
Ferris was unable to provide a membership count for BFH, but assured the Gazette, “Our numbers are growing.”
When asked for what other plans BFH has in store, Ferris was unable to provide any details, instead talking about how the state’s process was flawed.
“The state is hiding from this project and defending it,” he said. “We’re not going away.”
The Casey Overpass was the bridge that carried Route 203 over the Forest Hills T Station at Washington Street and Hyde Park Avenue. The bridge, closed since May 16, is being demolished and replaced by a new six- to eight-lane surface road called the Casey Arborway. The project is scheduled for completion in September 2016.
Bridging Forest Hills’ website is bridgingforesthills.com.
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The contractor has a contract that entitles it to all the profits for finishing the job even if the state terminates the project in the middle -- and there is no more money for an alternative project. Mr. Ferris is advocating for an enormous waste of public money and a hideous inconvenience to those of us who want to see the project just get done asap. There are structurally deficient bridges all over the state crying out for money. The Casey project will be done in a year and a half and will be beautiful, and a huge improvement for those of us who are pedestrians in the area. We were lucky that the project was not delayed past the deadline for locking up the money.
I hope Mr. Ferris realizes he's probably losing a lot of business from bicyclists who support the current boulevard plan for the Casey (and there are a lot of them given that Boston Cyclists Union, MassBike, and LivableStreets Alliance all support the current plan.)