what I wish I'd been able to say at last night's meeting
At the final planning meeting of the Casey Overpass ProjectCasey Arborway Project, I spoke up to urge the authorities to keep their implicit promise that they'd move a subway exit, and turn it into an entrance, as part of the plan they'd just chosen. If I'd had more time to speak, and more time to compose my thoughts, it might have come out something like this. (With some extra topics I might end up pursuing in/near grad school.)
MassDOT has led a well-meaning but deeply flawed public process. MassDOT -- John Romano and the consultants -- you got huge amounts of input from community representatives and presented dense information to well-attended public meetings. You listened pretty well, changing your proposals based on many of our suggestions. However, you mis-set expectations all over the place, making it really easy to mistrust you and each other. You said the Working Advisory Group would use consensus, but you didn't know how to facilitate it or what to fall back to. You tell us now that the Secretary of Transportation has made the final decision between the two alternatives, when your otherwise clear flowcharts of meetings and process left us with the impression that "everyone" would be making the decision "together". And you told us up front that you didn't favor either option, but then your presentations obviously favored the at-grade alternative. Why couldn't you have been up front with us with how, say, the higher expense of the replacement bridge will have to be a factor with budgets in crisis, but you are approaching the process with an open mind about other costs and benefits of each?
More importantly, you didn't break out of the traditional "public hearing" mindset enough to actually engage the community. Placing advertisements in barely-read neighborhood newspapers is not "outreach," and public comment periods where you don't respond to audience questions is not "dialogue." Either find ways to truly understand where we're coming from and what we think, or be honest that this is an adversarial process where residents need to know the rules of the game, like where to look for notices, which political players have power, and how funding constraints are shaping the playing field. (What better models for governmental outreach in decisionmaking are there?)
It was obvious you wanted to make presentations accessible, but you need to try harder. You need to drill into every speaker that a general audience doesn't understand "alignment", "signalization", and so forth, or else provide a glossary at every meeting. Maybe both. The charts that placed each meeting within a "bulls-eye" process were useful, but if you hadn't left them out of important meetings like this one, we would have had more context and trust.
Community advocates didn't do a very good job of talking *to* each other, either. This quickly devolved into a "bridge vs. no bridge" standoff, and I for one should have been more honest, when speaking up, about my reservations about the process, and advantages of bridge option had over my preferred surface option. It's also telling that this is the first time I've met most of you in this room -- if amplified controversy really the only thing that brings Jamaica Plain together, that's a very sad thing. (Have residents and organizations accurately judged that they simply can't afford to show any vulnerability and that they must harden every talking point? I hope not.)
The relative benefits of each option were very similar. I've heard people say it's not fair to consider the "fringe benefits" made possible by the lower cost of the at-grade solution. Bullshit. The city and state have no money for enhancements, and federal money is drying up. There will simply be no money for Washington St improvements if we do the bridge, for at least a decade. Besides which, I can't see how it's a smart investment to spend many millions of dollars building and maintaining a bridge that has a debatable marginal benefit to us, when the rest of the transportation system we depend on desperately needs the money. (Is it ever a smart move to appeal to the greater good at a public hearing of local citizens? Enlightened self-interest?)
A self-described transportation professional from a couple blocks away from the current bridge gruffly criticized the at-grade solution because "we don't want all those tailpipes." I'm not an expert on the diffusion of pollutants, but can the difference between having cars on the ground vs. 20' in the air really be that big? It seems to me the bridge would have put more cars waiting at Shea Circle, with pollution wafting into Morton St and elderly housing, while the at-grade solution yields slightly more emissions along New Washington St, where the plan puts more green space. This is redistribution of costs within our neighborhood, with either a zero sum or net benefit for our neighborhood, city, and state. (Is it possible to reduce the intensity of hyperlocal NIMBYism by appealing to neighborhood or regional identity?)
The plan is a great improvement over current conditions for walking and cycling. For walking, it's true that crossing 3-4 lanes at a time is an impediment. For me at least, coming back from central JP late at night, that will be more than made up for by not having to cross under a dark bridge.
...so yeah. What I did talk about was the plan to move the northern exit from the Orange Line platform North of New Washington St, how it's essential for the 6-lane roadway plan, and how I fear as a challenging project both technically and in terms of interagency coordination, it will be dropped. I was told that there are no guarantees, and that the only way to preserve what I heard as a promise during the decisionmaking process, was to apply continuous public and political pressure. I hope some folks who are here for the next year, will.
MassDOT has led a well-meaning but deeply flawed public process. MassDOT -- John Romano and the consultants -- you got huge amounts of input from community representatives and presented dense information to well-attended public meetings. You listened pretty well, changing your proposals based on many of our suggestions. However, you mis-set expectations all over the place, making it really easy to mistrust you and each other. You said the Working Advisory Group would use consensus, but you didn't know how to facilitate it or what to fall back to. You tell us now that the Secretary of Transportation has made the final decision between the two alternatives, when your otherwise clear flowcharts of meetings and process left us with the impression that "everyone" would be making the decision "together". And you told us up front that you didn't favor either option, but then your presentations obviously favored the at-grade alternative. Why couldn't you have been up front with us with how, say, the higher expense of the replacement bridge will have to be a factor with budgets in crisis, but you are approaching the process with an open mind about other costs and benefits of each?
More importantly, you didn't break out of the traditional "public hearing" mindset enough to actually engage the community. Placing advertisements in barely-read neighborhood newspapers is not "outreach," and public comment periods where you don't respond to audience questions is not "dialogue." Either find ways to truly understand where we're coming from and what we think, or be honest that this is an adversarial process where residents need to know the rules of the game, like where to look for notices, which political players have power, and how funding constraints are shaping the playing field. (What better models for governmental outreach in decisionmaking are there?)
It was obvious you wanted to make presentations accessible, but you need to try harder. You need to drill into every speaker that a general audience doesn't understand "alignment", "signalization", and so forth, or else provide a glossary at every meeting. Maybe both. The charts that placed each meeting within a "bulls-eye" process were useful, but if you hadn't left them out of important meetings like this one, we would have had more context and trust.
Community advocates didn't do a very good job of talking *to* each other, either. This quickly devolved into a "bridge vs. no bridge" standoff, and I for one should have been more honest, when speaking up, about my reservations about the process, and advantages of bridge option had over my preferred surface option. It's also telling that this is the first time I've met most of you in this room -- if amplified controversy really the only thing that brings Jamaica Plain together, that's a very sad thing. (Have residents and organizations accurately judged that they simply can't afford to show any vulnerability and that they must harden every talking point? I hope not.)
The relative benefits of each option were very similar. I've heard people say it's not fair to consider the "fringe benefits" made possible by the lower cost of the at-grade solution. Bullshit. The city and state have no money for enhancements, and federal money is drying up. There will simply be no money for Washington St improvements if we do the bridge, for at least a decade. Besides which, I can't see how it's a smart investment to spend many millions of dollars building and maintaining a bridge that has a debatable marginal benefit to us, when the rest of the transportation system we depend on desperately needs the money. (Is it ever a smart move to appeal to the greater good at a public hearing of local citizens? Enlightened self-interest?)
A self-described transportation professional from a couple blocks away from the current bridge gruffly criticized the at-grade solution because "we don't want all those tailpipes." I'm not an expert on the diffusion of pollutants, but can the difference between having cars on the ground vs. 20' in the air really be that big? It seems to me the bridge would have put more cars waiting at Shea Circle, with pollution wafting into Morton St and elderly housing, while the at-grade solution yields slightly more emissions along New Washington St, where the plan puts more green space. This is redistribution of costs within our neighborhood, with either a zero sum or net benefit for our neighborhood, city, and state. (Is it possible to reduce the intensity of hyperlocal NIMBYism by appealing to neighborhood or regional identity?)
The plan is a great improvement over current conditions for walking and cycling. For walking, it's true that crossing 3-4 lanes at a time is an impediment. For me at least, coming back from central JP late at night, that will be more than made up for by not having to cross under a dark bridge.
...so yeah. What I did talk about was the plan to move the northern exit from the Orange Line platform North of New Washington St, how it's essential for the 6-lane roadway plan, and how I fear as a challenging project both technically and in terms of interagency coordination, it will be dropped. I was told that there are no guarantees, and that the only way to preserve what I heard as a promise during the decisionmaking process, was to apply continuous public and political pressure. I hope some folks who are here for the next year, will.