Revived plan for detour on Esplanade stirs outrage

The Patrick administration revived a plan last night to build a temporary bypass road through the Charles River Esplanade to expedite reconstruction of the crumbling Storrow Drive tunnel, igniting outrage among residents who decried the damage that would be inflicted on the widely used park in Boston's historic Back Bay.

Richard Sullivan, commissioner of the State Department of Recreation and Conservation, said the bypass road would cut construction time by six months and save the state $5 million.

If the bypass is built, it will divert Storrow Drive traffic onto the Esplanade for at least two years, he said as he proposed the plan at a community meeting.

The road, Sullivan said, would cut as far as 40 feet into the tree-studded Esplanade. It would begin at the Arthur Fiedler Footbridge and run about 1,000 feet west, ending between Berkeley and Clarendon streets.

"The benefits are time, money, construction, emergency routes, and ensuring traffic always flows," Sullivan told the Globe after the heated meeting. "But the impact is clearly on the Esplanade.

"Whichever option we choose, there are pluses and minuses," Sullivan added. "All I'm asking is for everyone to weigh the costs and benefits."

The minuses, though, are enormous, according to the plan's critics, many of whom live in the Back Bay and on Beacon Hill. The plan would involve chopping down at least 23 trees and impinging on a park that many people consider hallowed ground.

Sullivan's announcement, made to the Transportation and Landscape Advisory Committee to the Storrow Drive Tunnel Project, provoked howls of dissent from Back Bay residents, who said the change in course caught them by surprise.

"We're totally opposed to a bypass road because the Esplanade is a public resource," said Patrice Todisco, executive director of The Esplanade Association and cochairwoman of the landscape advisory committee to the Storrow Drive tunnel project. "What we heard tonight was a total surprise. It doesn't make any sense."

One longtime Beacon Hill resident, Linda Cox, threatened to chain herself to a tree to prevent a bypass road on the riverside parkland.

"This is just completely shocking," said Cox, who has written a small book about the Esplanade. "We were all assured that this was completely off the table. There is no way to justify the permanent damage that would be done to the Esplanade."

After the meeting, Councilor Michael P. Ross, who represents the neighborhoods, said he does not believe the proposal has a chance of coming to fruition.

"The notion of an automobile driving 40 miles per hour down the Esplanade would be universally opposed," Ross said. "It really can't happen. It would destroy the good work of this committee. I'd say, if this was a trial balloon, it was clearly shot down."

Sullivan argued that the benefits outweigh the temporary impact on the Esplanade, which he promised would be completely restored. Building a road, he said, would allow construction to take place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., instead of just at night, and keep emergency evacuation lanes open at all times, with two lanes in each direction. The plan, he said, would allow the project to be completed in two years at a cost of $50 million.

Even without the road, repairs on the tunnel will intrude into the Esplanade, at one point as far as 25 feet, according to engineers hired by the state.

The Storrow Drive Tunnel, completed in 1953, carries more than 100,000 cars per day eastbound along the Esplanade, while westbound traffic travels on the surface on the roof of the tunnel. Over the years, the tunnel has been plagued by leaks, deteriorating concrete, and corroding beams, its rehabilitation considered by state engineers to be an urgent priority.

State officials designing a plan to repair the tunnel first raised the prospect of a temporary road on the Esplanade in late 2005, but assured the public that it was likely to pursue other options, given the heavy use of the parkland near the Hatch Shell.

In July, the state learned that the tunnel may need to be replaced, rather than repaired, because it was not waterproofed when it was built more than five decades ago. This has led to such extensive structural damage, DCR officials learned, that it would be impractical to repair the tunnel.

Now, the state believes it will be able to stick to the original price tag by rebuilding the tunnel from within.

Paul L. Kelley, a structural engineer with Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc., a Waltham-based engineering firm helping to develop options to repair the tunnel, said the project would involve waterproofing the current tunnel by pouring new concrete, replacing the steel beams in the roof, and surrounding the existing walls with a chemical grout.

Before construction begins in 2010, the state will need to spend $2 million annually on maintenance to extend the tunnel's life.

Dorothy Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said last night that the mayor was concerned about allowing Storrow Drive's traffic to spill over into town neighborhoods and recreation areas. "We'd like very much to continue to work with the state in keeping the cars that travel Storrow Drive each day in that corridor and not on the streets of our neighborhood or on the Esplanade," Joyce said.