Kudos, MBTA, on a job well done.

It’s not particularly frequent that I write (or anyone else writes) a blog post praising the MBTA (although it’s probably less frequent than it should be; the agency does a lot of good work with an old system and all-too-often inadequate funding and support) but today that is exactly what I am going to do regarding the Harvard-to-Alewife shuttle.

Some background: in 2016 I wrote a blog post about how the Harvard-Alewife shuttles could be improved. I noticed it mostly because I was on a training run for Boston (two weeks before my brush with death/fame, but I digress) and ran along Alewife Brook Parkway before taking a bus back to Harvard from Alewife. That was also for the floating slab project which has been with us since, well, at least 2011, and it sounds like the infrastructure will require continued maintenance forever, or at least until the MBTA installs a signal system which allows single-track operation (a regular occurrence for maintenance in Chicago and Washington, D.C.).

My advice went unheeded at the time. When the project came up again this fall, we (TransitMatters; if you haven’t already, become a TM member or apply for our first ever staff position) went all in. We contacted the T, city officials in Somerville and Cambridge, and wrote about it in Commonwealth. The idea is mostly sound. The pushback from the T—which we heard through intermediaries—was twofold, although any problems seemed easily solved:

  • First, they argued that it would adversely affect Alewife-Davis passengers (a valid concern, although I had someone who works with the MBTA looking at how shutdowns affect ridership look at some numbers, and these passengers account for a very small number of overall ridership, as would be expected), which could be mitigated by a single shuttle from Alewife to Davis. 
  • Second, that having buses going to multiple destinations would confuse passengers. Less valid, in my opinion. Apparently a train stopping three stops short of is normal terminal isn’t confusing, but buses with different destinations is? Or as a friend put it: “people can figure out the difference between Alewife and Braintree, right?”

In any case, on Saturday, December 1, the last day of the floating slab project, I got a message from a TransitMatters member: the T was sending buses out to different termini. Some were going to Davis. Some all the way to Alewife. I had been out of Cambridge, but once home I jumped at the opportunity to Hubway (or BlueBike) over to the Harvard Station to check it out. I wanted to see for myself. I wanted the rumor to be true. Alas, when I got there, the buses were operating “normally.”

But I noticed a peculiar difference: rather than being signed for Alewife Sta one of the buses was signed for Alewife Sta via Porter and Davis. If nothing else, this was an improvement in customer information: rather than just the terminal, it showed all of the bypassed stations. By the time I arrived, ridership was relatively low: only about 100 passengers per train, which were handled by two buses, which would be called in to the busway by inspectors as trains arrived. I was somewhat disappointed: I wouldn’t get to see the new system in practice, and that it would only live on as a rumor from a busier time of day. Nor would I be able to commend the T on trying something new. Again, just a rumor on the Internet.

So I walked down the ramp towards the pit, when I noticed a stack of papers sitting on the edge of a trash can (it was above the rim, and, no, I didn’t eat it). My curiosity piqued, I picked one up and read it. What had I’d stumbled upon?

Operator Guide: Harvard – Alewife

Saturday, December 1: 12 PM to 3 PM

We are testing a new Harvard – Alewife shuttle to use buses more efficiently and to provide a better service to our customers. There are a total of 3 different shuttle routes during this time period. A station official will let you know which route to begin when you are arrive at Harvard or Alewife.

The document went on to describe the three routes in detail, the head signs to use (this described the signage I’d seen earlier) and the fact that it had been observed earlier, but not when I was there. The details are that the T rather ingeniously came up with three routes to provide customers routes without sending all of the buses to Alewife. One route ran express from Harvard to Alewife. A second ran from Harvard to Alewife making all stops. A third ran to Davis Square only. While not as efficient as what I had proposed, it was a good balance of customer service and efficiency. I was very impressed, and I hope the test went well.

The skeptic will say “so why didn’t they try this earlier?” I’ll cut the T a lot of slack here. Transit agencies are large bureaucracies, and like ocean liners, they take some time to change course. In this case, they not only had to create this document, they had to vet the route, change the buses sign codes, and communicate with the various officials involved. Could it have happened faster? Maybe. Could it have not happened at all? Most certainly: that’s the easiest thing to do.

Maintenance shutdowns happen. They’re a necessary evil, but they’re an opportunity to experiment. ( (* see below for some brief suggestions) Unfortunately, experimentation is often something anathema to organizations like the MBTA. It takes extra effort for an often overworked staff, and even if the potential payoff is high, the willingness to fail is often low. But in this case, the MBTA tried. I would hope that it was successful, and that it will be the basis for better shuttle services for future floating Slab work, and elsewhere on the system going forwards.

So o everyone involved in the planning and operations staff at the MBTA: kudos and thank you. It’s always a risk to try something new. And to listen to some guy ranting on the Internet. You did both. I hope it worked. I hope that it will work in the future, and that the T use these sorts of situations to try new things to continue to provide the best possible service to its customers.

* Some suggestions for future experiments …

  • When the D Line is shut down from Kenmore to Reservoir, run a local shuttle bus along the route, but encourage through passengers to use the C Line from Cleveland Circle and allow fares (easiest would be to collect no fares west of Reservoir).
  • When the Orange Line is shut down past Ruggles, run every bus terminating at Forest Hills through to the start of Orange Line service, reducing the number of bus-shuttle-subway transfers by allowing passengers on buses to Forest Hills a one-seat ride to the Orange Line trains.
  • When the Green Line is shut next summer from Newton Highlands to Riverside, run alternating buses to Woodland and Riverside, instead of making every Riverside passenger make the tedious loop in and out of the Woodland station.) 
  • If the Lowell Line is shut down on weekends in the future, immediately fire anyone who proposes whatever the bus route used this fall was. Instead run buses from Lowell to Anderson/Woburn and then express to Boston, and serve the rest of the line with the adjacent 134 bus, with a couple of trips added as necessary to supplement service.

Cambridge NIMBYs revisionist history

Every so often, you wonder what goes through the minds of people who don’t want to build more housing where there’s high demand. (Which works. The market works.) In Cambridge, there is a contingent of people who live near Fresh Pond and don’t want to build more housing because there’s been too much development there already (or something). They’ll trot out all the tired canards: climate change (the solution to which is obviously to make people live further away from jobs and transit), traffic (the solution to which is obviously to make people live further away from jobs and transit), impact to natural resources (even if the housing is being built on brownfield sites which haven’t been wetlands for decades or centuries) and the like. Does it make sense? No, of course not!

(Unless, of course, you bought your house 30 years ago for a song and have seen it appreciate it to the point that you’re blinded to the housing cost and availability crisis around you. And you remember the days when Cambridge had 20% fewer residents and traffic wasn’t so bad and the Red Line wasn’t full. You can’t have both: your home value has appreciated because of the increase in traffic, not in spite of it.)

Has Cambridge done its part? Hardly. The city has an arduous process to permit new development, and while more housing has been in the pipeline in recent years, it’s not nearly enough. It is true that Cambridge does more than many of our more suburban neighbors. But that shouldn’t be an excuse to sit back and wait for someone else to build the housing our region needs.

Yet here we are, with several hundred residents in the Fresh Pond area signing a petition for a “pause” for housing development. It’s an absurd stance, to paraphrase: a complete and total shutdown of housing development until we can figure out what’s going on. Their arguments are just as specious as as the the premise, and today this page will analyze their latest opinion piece and poke the holes necessary to ensure that well-informed discourse takes place, not discourse where one of the parties uses scare tactics to poison the dialogue.

Original in indented italics. My comments in plain text:

There’s a new housing construction clash in Cambridge, this time over a letter signed by more than 600 people hoping to push the pause button on decades of virtually unrestrained development. 

That’s their opening. “Virtually unrestrained development.” In a city where you have to spend 45 minutes in front of a zoning board (and certainly hours of preparation) to add a second dwelling unit to a house which was built as a two-family household when it was originally built. For something which won’t really affect anyone. These are the same people who rail against protected bike lanes because it affects their parking space: when you don’t get what you want through the public process, demand the public process is shut down. Doesn’t work that way, nor should it. But please, go on.

Ah, yes, from the days when Alewife had genuine community.

It led to the submission of a zoning petition to be taken up by the City Council next week, demanding that the council weigh in on an essential question: What kind of communities shall be shaped by new housing, affordable and not? In a cash- and resource-rich city, why should we continue to allow the process be driven by developers focused on short-term profit rather than by urban planners and city officials focused on building genuine communities?

I’m confused. Is there something less genuine about people who move in to new apartment buildings? Most of the development in the Alewife area is taking the place of things like old industrial buildings or dilapidated night clubs. And the city may be cash-rich, but it doesn’t have the resources to build new housing. Instead, the way it works is that the private sector builds new housing, and then the owners pay taxes on it. What a novel concept!

To help understand why we need more attention on city- and citizen-directed planning rather than mostly out-of-town developers of luxury rentals,

This is what we have! Who do you think sits on the planning board, and the other boards which support it? Who votes? This is a false comparison, conflating “city- and citizen-directed planning” with “out-of-town developers.” But those operate together! City-directed planning is the process through which out-of-town developers of luxury rentals (and really, of anything) create housing. It’s not as if out-of-town developers run the process.

one need only approach the town from the west and consider the so-called communities that have taken shape with the current “anything goes” approach.

Define “anything goes.” While you may not love every piece of the development in the Alewife corridor, every project goes through a thorough zoning process. And it turns out that if you build enough luxury rentals, the overall cost of housing will come down.

By car from Belmont and Arlington on Route 2,

Apparently, the best way to understand Cambridge is from a highway.

one’s gaze is first drawn to the right, where virtually uncontrolled development sprawls across the Alewife wetland, suggesting “No Vision” vs. “Envision” Cambridge. 

Areas in yellow are impervious surfaces today. Red are
buildings. A few new parking lots near the right-most
buildings aren’t shown. But those parking lots are now parks!

What about this development is “virtually uncontrolled”? If you look at the area south of Route 2, the majority is protected wetlands. It’s not virtually uncontrolled. It’s actually quite controlled! Here’s where the revisionist history comes in: there’s actually significantly less development there now than there was 50 years ago. In 1969, much of what is now the Alewife Brook Reservation was a series of parking lots, which have since been removed, remediated and turned in to a park. So, removing a parking lot and turning it in to a park is “no vision”? If that’s the case, what should we envision instead? We have six acres of new parkland in the Alewife thanks to the lack of vision of the planners there. If that’s what we’re fighting against, I’d hate to think what we’re fighting for.

Rounding the corner, one passes dilapidated, “brutalist” Alewife T architecture – untouched by enhancements or landscaping since its creation 30 years ago. 

The Alewife station is brutalist (although relatively functional, and could work better with, say, bus lanes in and out), and it is dilapidated, but it is certainly not the fault of the City of Cambridge, or that we’ve built too much housing.

One wonders about the asbestos-contaminated brownfield lurking behind the chain-link fence around Jerry’s Pond, across from the Rindge Towers and Jefferson Park, the largest concentration of affordable housing in the city. More than a half-century has passed since the contaminants were left there by W.R. Grace. 

In addition to having nothing to do with this housing “pause”, this is kind of a chicken and egg problem. The public housing was built there probably because the nearby land uses made the land undesirable for other housing (and when the housing was built in the 1960s, there wasn’t the kind of market pressure which would today turn a clay pit in to housing without governmental intervention).

Though a process with community input concluded the safest approach at the time was containment, one cannot help wondering if such corporate neglect would have been permitted in a more affluent neighborhood.

But now I’m even more confused. There was a community process, which is supposed to be good, but here you don’t like the outcome, so it’s a corporation’s fault. If a corporation develops housing, it’s bad. But if a corporation neglects an area, it’s also bad. “We can’t win, don’t build any housing!” Finally, such neglect probably wouldn’t have occurred in an affluent neighborhood, but the case is that an affluent neighborhood probably wouldn’t have had such land uses next to it in the first place. (In other words: there’s no quarry in the midst of Observatory Hill.) This is not an excuse for not cleaning up Jerry’s Pond (for which there are new plans to remediate and clean), but also not a reason to stop building housing in the region. This whole paragraph is pablum. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can clean Jerry’s Pond and build more housing: in fact, the new city revenue from the new housing may allow us more funding for laudable projects like the Jerry’s Pond clean up.

Stopped at the Alewife light with a head swivel to the right, one’s gaze is drawn into “The Triangle,” a dead-end neighborhood without a name that presents like a Chinese flash city and corporate annuity for institutional investors. 

I mean, some of us call it Cambridgepark Drive. Is not having a name really that much of a sin? Also, this neighborhood has been developed over 30 years (it had a planning process at least as far back as 1979!), adjacent to the Alewife T station. It’s not perfect transit oriented development (there’s way too much parking) and, yes, it has corporate owners (not sure what the China hang-up is). Also, those corporate investors pay two-thirds of the city’s property taxes. So that’s something.

It offers egress, 

Not sure what “egress” means here, since it’s a dead end, right?

impenetrable traffic jams during rush hours and virtually no amenities to suggest community.

Okay, yeah, it offers impenetrable traffic jams. So, let’s do something about that. Lots of that traffic is coming from the west trying to get in to Alewife. Why? People can’t afford to live in Cambridge! There are buses, and they’re full, but they’re no faster than the traffic they sit in. Bus lanes—which would be feasible if we put on our thinking caps—could attract a lot of these drivers if they provided a faster trip than driving. And amenities, you know how you get amenities? Build more housing! Amenities don’t spring up unless there are people to use them. More people = more amenities. (Setting aside the connection to two bike paths, many walking paths and a 10 minute walk to the Whole Foods and Trader Joes across the tracks may actually count as amenities.)

Finally, up and over the railroad bridge to the south it is hard not to wonder about the dead trees, never-cleaned sidewalk grime, permanently graffiti-ridden “Alewife Parkway” plaque

Yes, the Alewife Brook Parkway bridge is a mess. It was built long-enough ago it wasn’t built with sidewalks nearly wide enough. It is also a state-owned property, so beyond the purview of the city. But let’s stop building housing anyway. Of course, we could build a new bridge. How do we do that? Well, it would certainly help if we had a developer build the bridge integrated with a new development.

and a mall owner and city lacking initiative to create safe and aesthetic pedestrian passage to shopping, Danehy Park and West Cambridge. Pedestrians are instead obliged to navigate a sea of traffic and parked cars. 

 And, yes, the city could probably do a better job of traffic management in the Alewife area, by incentivizing bicycling, walking and transit use. And the mall owner, which built the mall in the ’70s, could have built a better mall then. But it’s not a reason to not build more housing, in fact, it is a reason to build more. More local housing will mean more customers arriving by foot, giving the owner and incentive to build a more reasonable pedestrian environment to accommodate these customers, or risk losing them.

Desperately needed affordable housing should be built, but not through abandoning good planning. It should exist within the context of a city vision – one that ensures the evolution of livable communities with access to green spaces, public transit, schools, meeting areas, shopping – and safe, sensible pathways connecting our neighborhoods. 

Let’s see what the Alewife area has:

√ green space, much of which has recently been reclaimed
√ public transit
√ schools (nearby and accessible by pathways, and an easy Red Line trip to CRLS for older kids)
–  meeting areas should be integrated in to new development
√ shopping across the bridge
√ safe pathways, although more are needed

Aspects of these are evident, but for such vision to take better shape, a brief pause on development is needed so we can access the nearly complete recommendations of our city-paid planning consultants. Let’s leave behind an era of disconnected, developer-driven Triangles in favor of one led by our own world-class planners, city leaders and citizens.

This doesn’t make sense! What are the benefits of this “pause”? What will be done better, or differently, if we have this pause? How long do you propose this pause? Why not call it what it is: a moratorium? What in this entire article gives you an argument for a pause? And what’s so disconnected about Alewife, anyway? It sits on the Red Line. It has good walk/bike paths leading to green space, and to Davis Square, Belmont and Arlington (and Lexington and Bedford and beyond). It has sidewalks to the mall, which could be improved, but are an argument for building more housing, not against it! The disconnnectedness of Cambridgepark Drive has nothing to do with housing development, and can be mitigated without any sort of housing moratorium.

Much of what has been built has been built over the course of three decades (Alewife didn’t exactly open yesterday). Projects like these have plenty of vetting through various city boards and committees: if you don’t believe me, go to a bicycle committee meeting where the committee vets every large project to make sure it complies with the city’s bicycle ordinance, and this was a couple of pages in otherwise thick permitting documents. We have a great staff at the city and a lot of interested citizens. If you are interested in improving the built environment the best thing you can do is to get involved. But the city’s goal should be to permit as much housing as it can, not to stop development in its tracks. Doing so, and ensuring that the housing crisis is exacerbated, is about the worst thing you can do.