A host of gripes greets Green Line plans
State transportation officials drew the ire of officials and residents from Somerville and Medford last week when they announced their picks for five MBTA stations and a rail-car maintenance yard to serve the T's Green Line extension.
In particular, Somerville residents found fault with plans to place a nearly 12-acre maintenance yard in the city's Inner Belt, while the placement of a station near Tufts University elicited cries of favoritism from Medford residents.
The proposals were unveiled to the Green Line Extension Project Advisory Group at a meeting Monday attended by several dozen residents. State officials stressed the evolving nature of the project, saying that it would be refined, reviewed, and finalized over the next two to three years, and that construction could be completed by 2014.
The state will hold sessions to gather public input and neighborhood feedback in the coming weeks, in addition to the regular advisory group meetings, officials said. Project planners also will visit Medford's City Council meeting Tuesday night to summarize their proposals and answer questions.
At Monday's meeting, Somerville representatives were disappointed by a plan to put the 24-hour maintenance yard - which would be an indoor and outdoor work and storage facility for 80 cars - in the Inner Belt, a commercial warehouse district in the city's southeastern corner.
Somerville planners are hoping to reshape the area with the kinds of businesses and residences that would be attracted by a Green Line station. A large, noisy rail yard could thwart those plans, they said.
Medford representatives and residents, meanwhile, were upset about the location of a station platform near Tufts University, which they said favored the school at the expense of residents who oppose the project and don't want a station in their neighborhood.
Despite the criticism, the Somerville and Medford camps maintained their traditional outlooks. In Somerville, officials and residents who watched the Red Line transform Davis Square seek the Green Line to enhance Union Square, boost property values in the eastern half of the city, and redevelop underutilized areas.
But the proposed rail yard and a plan to put one station, not two, in the Brickbottom and Washington Street areas showed a lack of concern for those goals, several from Somerville said.
In Medford, where the Green Line would run though long-established neighborhoods, people are split. Some share Somerville's enthusiasm, while others fear it would change their neighborhoods for the worse - either by bringing crime and increasing parking problems, or by luring young professionals and Boston commuters who might price residents out of the local housing market.
Town-and-gown tensions with Tufts also affect local feelings. That was all present Monday, when dissatisfied Medford residents did not fail to note the dissatisfaction coming from the Somerville side.
"Somerville's starting to see that not everything is as rosy-posy as it was once presented," said William Wood, a Medford representative to the advisory group and an outspoken critic of the Medford extension.
The Green Line extension would run alongside existing commuter-rail tracks northwest of the Lechmere terminus. The state's first proposed station platforms would go between the Brickbottom neighborhood and Washington Street in Somerville; near Gilman Square, behind Somerville High School and City Hall; on the north side of Lowell Street, adjacent to a development proposed for the so-called Maxpak site in Somerville; on the north side of Broadway in Ball Square; and between College Avenue and Winthrop Street in Medford.
Additional proposals - for a station that would extend the route through the Medford Hillside section to Route 16 and the Mystic River, and for a Somerville spur that would route the Green Line to Union Square - will come in the next few months, said Stephen M. Woelfel, the state transportation office's lead official for the project.
Somerville officials and residents were disappointed that the state slated the maintenance yard for the Inner Belt instead of even farther southeast, in the corner where Somerville meets Cambridge and Charlestown by Interstate 93.
The area already houses a commuter-rail maintenance barn, which serves the suburban lines that slice through Somerville but do not stop there. Woelfel said the site was not viable for multiple reasons, including the need to take a small piece of the NorthPoint project, a nearly 45-acre development situated mostly in Cambridge.
His explanation caused Somerville residents and officials to accuse the state of favoring NorthPoint over Somerville's vision for the Inner Belt. Woelfel said the state weighed cost, neighborhood concerns, handicapped accessibility, existing layouts, and other factors in proposing the stations and maintenance yard.
