Word: highway
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...alternative between Brookline-Elm and the route to the East was customarily pictured as one of homes vs.jobs. The arguments between advocates of the different locations flew fast and furious, with contradicting statistics and claims abounding. The essential difference was always one of running the highway through an area of homes and small businesses (Brookline-Elm) or into a prospering industrial sector (Portland-Albany). And if Brookline-Elm were chosen, it would create a natural residential-industrial boundary on one side of Massachusetts Avenue, but on the other side, would leave a substantial strip of homes wedged between the highway...
...however, the selection of the Cambridge route was as much a matter of politics as planning. And the highly visible opposition to the highway obscured some fundamental political realities: first, the forces against the highway were themselves splintered and not nearly so strong as they appeared; and second, there were many interests--mostly silent interests--which desperately wanted the highway to go down Brookline-Elm. The opposing forces neutralized each other. Once the DPW got around to picking the Cambridge segment of the highway, it could really heavily on engineering and traffic criteria, and by those standards...
Cambridge really lost, or began to lose, the battle over Brookline-Elm many years ago. And it began to lose because it became isolated from its natural allies--other cities affected by the Belt--in a fight against the highway. Ironically, the very thing that protected Cambridge so long from the Belt also contributed towards isolating the city. This was the so-called veto...
...years--beginning in 1961--progress on the Inner Belt had been stalled by the existence of a veto that Cambridge, like other cities affected by the highway, could exercise over any route picked by the DPW. In 1963, the state legislature diluted the veto and made it no longer absolute. An arbitration panel, consisting of one representative of the DPW, one representative of the DPW, one representative of the affected city, and a neutral chairman, could now decide any conflict between a city and the DPW. But this arrangement was still referred to as the "veto," and it conveyed...
...powerful Ways and Means Committee, had fought to put it there. The veto had been effective, or so it seemed, and the city's representatives were determined to keep it part of the law. This was Cambridge's shield. The city--the Administration, the threatened neighborhood--feared the highway, but, protected by the veto, did little to organize a permanent political opposition...