Summarizing My Experience At The MBTA Draw One Bridge Replacement Open House

2025-01-05

For those out of the loop, the MBTA is planning to replace the “Draw One” bridge over which trains access North Station. Besides not having the mechanical issues of the existing century-old bridge, Massachusetts legally committed, in the 1990s, to adding a pedestrian/micromobility walkway when the bridge was rebuilt as part of environmental mitigation for the Big Dig. The MBTA quietly revealed last year that their plan no longer included following through on that commitment. On Friday, January 3^rd, the MBTA held an open house about the project at the Cambridge Library Central Square branch. This is a summary of my experience there:

Re. the current state of things

• There is absolutely no plan right now for building the pedestrian/micromobility connection to North Station as part of this project.
  • No renderings, no sketches, no rough timeline, not even concepts of a plan.
• The project staff tried to avoid taking responsibility/accountability for most of the decisions related to removing the pedestrian path from the bridge.
  • They asked why we didn't bug MassDOT or DCR about it when those organizations would have pointed us to the Draw One team because that pedestrian connection has been (officially, as far as the public was told) part of the Draw One project for the past 20-30 years.
  • They tried to frame that pedestrian connection across the river to North Station as a goal or desire rather than a legal contractual commitment the state made.
  • Some of them claimed because they were new to the MBTA, we shouldn't expect them to know the organization's prior commitments.
  • Some of them tried to claim it wasn't their responsibility because “the state” made the commitment, not them in particular, as though they weren't the folks the state had tasked with carrying out that commitment.
  • Some of them claimed the MBTA only needed to be focused on moving train and buses across the bridge (even though plenty of other MBTA projects focus on how people get _to_ MBTA stations).
  • Basically, if there was anything they all seemed to agree on, it was that we shouldn't be displeased with them for dropping the pedestrian connection from this project after ≈30 years of it being part of the project.
• Some of them focused on how having a pedestrian crossing over a drawbridge could be a safety issue (because it would be another way people could get onto the tracks, or because people could fall off when the bridge opens), and a stationary bridge that arcs up and over would be better. They also said a stationary bridge would be more convenient because the uphill walk would be better than potentially having to wait for the drawbridge to lower.
  • They had no plan for such an alternative bridge.
  • They had no answer for how a pedestrian connection across this bridge would be worse than the next nearest crossings—the locks and the Museum Of Science bridge—which also open.
  • They had no answer for why people would be more likely to try to get on the tracks around the edge of the fence when the bridge is open vs. much more easily walking onto the tracks from the skate park.
  • Basically, all evidence points to their safety concerns being made-up after the fact to justify cutting the pedestrian connection, not genuine issues that can't be mitigated like they are at every other drawbridge with a sidewalk.
  • They had no concrete answer for whether such an alternative bridge could be made part of this project.
    • One of them suggested it should be tacked onto DCR's project to build a pedestrian bridge over the North Station tracks, but confirmed DCR that wasn't something DCR had expressed any openness to or intention of doing.
• They claimed the decision to remove the pedestrian crossing was made sometime before last year because the federal grant application team thought cutting it (reducing the cost by about 1%) would make the grant application “more competitive”
• As Scott Kilcoyne put it, “It really was a long conversation of them throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing if an excuse stuck, but within one probing question of an answer the excuse held up as well as cooked spaghetti.”

Re. where to things go from here

• They said the MBTA started talking with other state agencies about the pedestrian connection last September (5 months after they announced dropping it from this project and 3 months after the public meeting, both resulted in several hundred emails and voiced comments telling them to keep their promise).
• They said they will release a joint statement with DCR, DOT, and the governor's office (IIRC) on Tuesday the 7th, after this public comment phase closes, addressing the issue.
  • They read us a snippet of the latest draft of the statement, and it completely avoids any of those involved taking responsibility for the pedestrian connection. It actually changes the dynamic of the past ≈30 years, where the Draw One project has held responsibility for it, to one where no one is formally responsible for it.
  • They seemed genuinely proud of the statement and shocked we unanimously saw through and took issue with that. We all requested they address that before the final statement on Tuesday.
• One member of the team suggested the rail bridge could be “phase 1” of the project, and the pedestrian bridge could be “phase 2”, but was clear that was his idea, not one shared by the whole team, let alone a formal commitment.
  • They didn't respond to asking whether the latest design, being a new iteration of a design that once had the pedestrian path, could be retrofitted with the path in the hypothetical “phase 2”, which seemed to suggest they weren't really planning on it.
  • They were happy to go into detail about the 3 phases (or subphases I guess?) of construction the rail bridge would go through to enable trains to cross the river throughout construction. Just not about this hypothetical 4th phase for the pedestrian connection.
• They didn't respond to asking whether it would be less expensive to build the pedestrian connection as part of the same project (whether connected to the drawbridge or not) vs. a separate project. It is extremely probable doing it as a separate project, as they seem to want, would be more expensive for the state overall, but they seemed exclusively focused on how it would make the train bridge part less expensive.
  • They did acknowledge it could be less expensive if the same contractor did the train bridge project for them and the pedestrian bridge project for anyone-but-them, but then they wouldn't respond to why it wouldn't be more cost-effective to make it part of this project.
• Someone asked about them setting themselves up to be sued for violating their legal commitment to build that pedestrian connection with this project, as they were when they tried to cut the pedestrian path from the GLX project. They basically refused to acknowledge the question.
• This public comment period ends this Monday, the 6^th, by noon. You can email comments to DrawOne@mbta.com!
  • One person I spoke with said the difference from the previous period is this is part of the federal process, so where public comments from the last one just went to MBTA folks involved with the project, public commenst from this period will go to folks involved in the federal grant, environmental review, and permitting processes.

TL;DR

• No one at the T thinks their ≈30-year-old promise to build pedestrian access between the parks or to North Station when they rebuilt this bridge is their responsibility anymore.
• They were blindsided by the massive public backlash to finding out they had dropped that promise and only started reaching out to other state agencies to collaborate late last year.
• They are aiming to shift responsibility for this promise to a nebulous cloud of DCR + DOT + the governor's office so none of them have to directly take responsibility, BUT:
• Unlike last year's, this week's meetings and online public comment period are part of the federal review process, so more people will see our comments, and the T will be required by federal law to respond.
  • >> Email DrawOne@mbta.com by Monday morning! <<