Stimulus plan may be last, best hope for footbridge

The walkway from the North Point Park in Cambridge dead-ends as it approaches railroad tracks leading into North Station. A planned $15 million footbridge would go over the tracks to connect the park to Paul Revere Park in Charlestown. (George Rizer/Globe Staff/File 2007)

Where the Big Dig failed to deliver on new Charles River parks, might President Barack Obama come to the rescue?

River advocates and watchdogs are hoping the president's federal stimulus package could provide the funding to finish millions of dollars' worth of promised parklands, bike paths, and pedestrian footbridges between the Museum of Science and the Charles River locks.

At least one of the unfinished projects, a $15-plus million footbridge that would rise up over North Station's railroad tracks and connect Cambridge's North Point Park to Paul Revere Park in Charlestown, has been discussed for inclusion on the state's request list. The 960-foot expanse meets the "shovel-ready" benchmark for stimulus package dollars and would partially complete the long-awaited dream of connecting the Esplanade to Boston Harbor for walkers, joggers, and bikers.

Given the state's long list of infrastructural needs, however, the bridge's inclusion on Governor Deval Patrick's final list - for which submissions are due this Tuesday - remains in doubt.

Statewide, more than 500 bridges are in need of repair - the Longfellow and BU bridges among them - with funding to fix only about 100 of them. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is also in dire straits, owing $2.2 billion in outstanding bond payments on the Central Artery/Tunnel Project while projecting a $12 million deficit for the fiscal year, officials said.

Still, the footbridge has a chance of making the final cut, in large part because the Central Artery project left the state with $28 million to finish parks and bike bridges it had promised to build as mitigation for constructing the Big Dig. That seed money, if combined with several million more from the federal government, could be enough to build both the Cambridge-to-Charlestown footbridge - known as the North Bank Bridge - as well as finish riverside parks in Charlestown, Boston, and Cambridge.

If the federal government were to kick in a higher amount - more than $20 million - it might be enough to finish everything the Artery promised.

"I think any federal stimulus program provides a great opportunity to leverage the money we have on hand for the North Bank Bridge," said State Representative Marty Walz, a Cambridge Democrat. "I would encourage the state to allocate money from the stimulus program to allow that project to move forward immediately."

What the project lacks, at least at the moment, is a bona fide champion within state government.

The Central Artery/Tunnel Project had promised to spend $80 million on a series of parks, paths, and at least three pedestrian footbridges in the "lost half-mile" of the Charles River between Monsignor O'Brien Highway and the Charlestown Bridge. By filling in that gap, walkers, joggers, and bikers could have traveled from the Esplanade to Boston Harbor without ever leaving the riverbank, with direct access to the Rose Kennedy Greenway to boot.

Cost overruns elsewhere in the Big Dig, debate over park designs, and the discovery of contaminated soil in the area stalled work, though. By the time the Artery project officially dissolved on Dec. 31, 2007, it had spent about $70 million on three, sparkling new parks along the river. (The project ended up setting aside $100 million, adjusted for inflation, for all of its river projects.) But none of the pedestrian bridges, which were to span the river and North Station's railroad tracks, linking all the new parks together, had been built.

Now, bureaucratic debate rages as to which state agency will make good on the Artery's promises: Will it be the Turnpike Authority, which absorbed the Artery's administration; the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which oversees parklands and originally designed the expansive footbridges; or some umbrella agency, such as the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs or the Executive Office of Transportation?

Turnpike spokesman Mac Daniel said the footbridge and related river parklands are "low priorities" right now due to his agency's mounting deficit.

Richard Sullivan, Department of Conservation and Recreation commissioner, said the state has a "legal and moral" obligation to construct the parks and footbridges the Central Artery promised back in 1993. However, he could not say whether his specific agency will assume responsibility for such tasks.

As for requesting stimulus dollars for the Cambridge-to-Charlestown footbridge, Sullivan said: "I think it is absolutely a project that could be appropriate for that. It's a project that would fit the criteria. You could start construction within 180 days."

Individual state agencies have been instructed to submit their requests to the governor by Tuesday, and hundreds are expected. The Executive Office of Transportation's "Project Delivery Task Force," which is charged with assembling the EOT's wish list for stimulus package projects, had a $20 million request for the North Bank Bridge on its preliminary list. Officials, however, would not say whether the request will be passed on to Patrick.

Should the project fail to make the governor's list - or fail to meet yet-to-be-established criteria for federal stimulus money - it could be some time before any of the missing links are built in the lower river basin, according to activist groups such as LivableStreets Alliance and WalkBoston.

The state, at Walz's request, has allocated an additional $4 million to design and build a second pedestrian bridge over North Station's tracks, this one on the southern bank of the Charles where Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital sits. But the bridge could cost four times that amount.

Private developers who hope to build along the river might also be a source of funding, advocates said.