Mass. Ave. battle revs up again

Suit seeks a halt to $12m upgrade

Plans for an upgrade to Massachusetts Avenue in the South End do not include a designated bike lane. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff/ File)

A group of plaintiffs suing the city of Boston and the state Highway Department was back in Suffolk Superior Court last week seeking to put a halt to a planned $12 million road-and-sidewalk upgrade on Massachusetts Avenue in the South End.

Kenneth Kruckemeyer, Dennis Heaphy, and Cindy Walling say state highway and city transportation officials overseeing the road reconstruction violated a 1996 state law designed to ensure that public roadwork projects provide sufficient accommodation for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Slated to get underway this spring, the project, they say, will not include a designated bike lane, and sidewalks will not be wide enough in many sections to allow for easy passage of pedestrians in wheelchairs. Kruckemeyer and Walling travel mostly by bicycle, while Heaphy uses a motorized wheelchair he controls with his chin. All three belong to bike and pedestrian advocacy groups that would like the project to be redesigned.

"It's a blatant disregard of the statute," Andrew M. Fischer, attorney for the plaintiffs, told Judge Geraldine Hines. "Bicycles are part of the planning process" yet there was "never any consideration of a bike lane."

Attorneys for the state Highway Department, which is managing the federally funded project and the Boston Transportation Department, maintain there was an effort to include bikes in the plan, but there simply wasn't enough room in the roadway to add a separate bike lane without taking away from space needed for vehicular traffic. They have asked for the case to be dismissed.

Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Ogden said the law does not mandate that highway commissioner Luisa M. Paiewonsky accommodate bikes or pedestrians, but only that the department consider their needs during the planning process. "We have here a group that's dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction is not the same as [legal] standing," said Odgen.

Three other plaintiffs - Kyle Robidoux and Jill Kimmel, a Lower Roxbury couple, and Vivian Girard of Dorchester - now say they too intend to join the lawsuit.

Robidoux said he and Kimmel found it difficult to find out when planning meetings were held. They attended two, but only learned of them because Robidoux worked in the United South End Settlements building at the time, he said. The couple said they signed up to be told by e-mail of future sessions, but were never notified.

Girard said he frequently bicycles to work and for fun from his Fields Corner home along Mass. Ave. and would "feel safer" doing so if there was a dedicated bike lane.

Offering an affidavit from former state Representative Anne Paulsen, who first sponsored the Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation legislation, Fischer argued the law was created so that state and city transportation officials would be accountable to these often-overlooked constituencies when redoing local roads.

"The purpose of this law was to change the culture of the state and local highway engineering departments by requiring them to plan and design roads to accommodate all users, pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists and not just focus on moving as many cars as possible, at the expense and often safety of the pedestrians and cyclists," Paulsen testified in her affidavit.

Judge Hines said although she was "sympathetic" to the concerns of bicyclists and pedestrians, she was "having trouble" seeing how the law conferred specific rights to them that the Mass. Ave. project was allegedly denying. "I'm going to think about it," she said.