Beyond the Big Dig: What About Pedestrians...By Jane Holtz Kay Like many Bostonians in my neighborhood, I've had a three-star, ten-year view of the backhoes and bulldozers that serve the Big Dig. With an office a dozen not-so-easy steps away from construction, I've suffered the electrical shorts, the telephone cutoffs, the earth-shattering symphony of excavation through the endless nineties. Like others, I've become immune to the chaos and inconvenience of endless construction in the name of a new cityscape.
What worries me is that working here, a stone's throw from Boston Harbor, I annually tally no more than six trips from my shoreside site to the sea. The obstacle that keeps me landlocked is not the Artery, any more than the overpass at North Station keeps Garden-goers from crossing to the beckoning pubs. The central barrier on the walk-to-the-sea is the six-lane highway below. And I see no evidence that the post-Dig plans will change that path, or my walk. The six-lane surface road with its relentless vehicles and daunting intersections that has been a put-off to pedestrians for a generation shows few signs of shrinking. As the Big Dig begins to set its surface plans in stone, it becomes ever more clear that the stream of traffic will endure. Not only will the roadway below the bygone bridge linger, but - worse yet - the number of trucks filled with hazardous waste will increase. Too dangerous to go underground, these chemically-laden, poisonous vehicles are required to go above on the surface road through the heart of the city. Surreal, but true, more trucks will be bombing by with mysterious cargoes plus everyday traffic shooting down the street. Together, they will damage any intent to seam the city to the shore. Wasn't this project about strengthening this path to the sea? Wasn't it about seaming the city, connecting downtown with the harbor? Wasn't it to make a safe route for walkers? A promenade for people? And, yet, for all the forums and fulminations - the huzzahs for some projects (the Aquarium T station) and the antipathy to others (South Boston's vents) - we get no mending of this brutalizing six-lane raceway. Even a Masspike spokesman admits the problem will endure. Planners will have "to wedge a lot of green space and stores," he says ruefully. But how? Unless we act, the six-lane highway will remain an impediment and it is high time to act otherwise. It is imperative to enforce the goal of the great excavation: a walkable route through a civilized city. It may be late in the game, but planners must create a street to serve pedestrians, must as if people, not cars, mattered most. Wasn't that what the price tag and the tumult were about? While we squabble through the hot summer to see who will manage the post-Dig fixup, we have yet to insist on either a viable public institution or a new plan to secure this enlivening, softening and passage to cushion the shock of the speedway. To do so, we must not only guarantee the ordained parks for people but supply the structures - stores, offices, housing - that carve a pedestrian cityscape out of a roadway. Certainly, we have the traffic-calming tools to do so. To cushion the shock of the six-lane speedway, we must soften it through tried and proven measures to slow and slim the road and widen the sidewalks. To make it walkable, we can put more parked cars along the way, and reduce six lanes to four. To make it crossable, we can bulb out - expand - the sidewalk at the corners to slow traffic. We can fill the roadway with trees and green islands. In short, we can make the impassable road passable with all the devices in the walker's kit of parts. To assure this, we must create a truly public agency. The hurry-up Millennial Greenway Trust with its lack of public stewards and bias towards profiteers was "deeply flawed" and marginally legal in the eyes of Big Dig watchdogs. We need to ally planners, the public and public agencies to institute and enforce these steps. We need to protect the conservation restriction on the paltry four to six acre parcels ordained. We have the skill and will to go back to the drawing board to salve the scar beneath the Artery. Buildings twining through? Sure. A Commonwealth Avenue or Olmstedian Emerald Necklace? In modest amounts. Above all, we need to address the pedestrian path neglected by Big Dig planners. Their massive inattention is typified by the ham-fisted plan to bridge the road's major pedestrian crossing at South Station. The sea of cars that obstruct a safe route to rail and bus today will remain. We can do better. Finally, to bring still more walkers to the surface, we need to re-route our transportation dollars to civilizing the surface and its surroundings. By shifting the millions slated for meandering bus to rail centering the city, we can cut ars and add walkers. By putting the North-South Rail Link in place under the corridor, we can turn motorists into subway-riding pedestrians and bring more life to town. By enhancing the entrances and exits for travelers at these transportation nodes, we can encourage people to gather, people released from their cars, going to the city, ready to work and shop and play on foot. The grim years living with the scar of the auto age Artery could, and should, inspire us to rediscover the waterfront world of Boston's birth. The final plans of the Big Dig could, and should, enhance the labors of past citybuilders to humanize our planning for pedestrians - for people - as we cross the finish line of this latest, but, hopefully, not least, construction in Boston's history. Originally published in the Boston Globe August 6, 2002
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The construction nearing completion these days doesn't bother me. But one thing does: the post-dig plans.