Word: dpw
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...time was 1957, and the Brookline-Elm St. route got its start with the Cambridge Planning Board. Given the Board's concerns, Brookline-Elm certainly seemed the best choice. The DPW's original Master Plan had shown a so-called Lee St. crossing (halfway between Harvard and Central Squares) for the Inner Belt. If the highway were built there, according to the Planning Board's reasoning, large numbers of heavy trucks bound for the industrial area in Eastern Cambridge would have to travel through city streets, causing both congestion and noise. Moreover, the city wanted to embark on an ambitious...
Consider, for example, the state's recommended location, the BrooklineElm St. route. It will, according to the estimates of the Department of Public Works (DPW), destroy the homes of 1235 families (3000 to 5000 people) and businesses with 2366 employees. For years, local leaders condemned this route. Yet the other ways to get across Cambridge also had their costs, and those which the DPW was willing to take seriously also had large costs...
...controversy over the highway has obscured its history and muddled some of the issues involved. And perhaps the supreme irony of the entire struggle is that the route that provoked the bitterest opposition in Cambridge, Brookline-Elm, had its original advocates not in the state DPW but in Cambridge itself...
Actually, there were no "new facts." The Portland Albany route that Cambridge citizens proposed as an alternative was the same in October as it had been in March. The main difference was Volpe's attitude: in March, he was untroubled by the DPW's selection; in October, he was worried...
Moreover, his pledge proved to be only partially true. There was no "start from scratch" in searching for an Inner Belt route through Cambridge. The DPW did make an intensive comparison of the Brookline-Elm St. route with the Portland-Albany alternate, but that was all. The DPW made it clear that Brookline Elm was still the route to beat and that only astounding new in formation would convince it otherwise. Even though eight months and $30,000 were spent on the new study it would have been surprising had the DPW reached a new conclusion. The department used...