A GRASS ROOTS PERSPECTIVE ON THE BATTLE OF
SCHEME Z
By Stephen H. Kaiser
INTRODUCTION
It began quietly in 1988 and 1989. Government officials,
citizens, businessmen began to realize that there was
something terribly wrong with the proposed design for the
new Charles River interchange known as Scheme Z.
The depressed Central Artery Project was now to be linked
to one of the most ugly masses of elevated highway structure
anyone had ever seen. A sprawling spaghetti bowl of 6 loop
ramps, -- 18 to 20 lanes of expressway crossing the Charles
River in a 300-ft. wide corridor, complete with a humped up
I-93 structure 110 feet high -- would require traffic to go
through the infamous double crossing of the river, the
"double cross" in the words of one official's Freudian slip.
The overwhelming imposition of a 70-acre viaduct village on
the banks of the Charles River was simply too much for most
people to tolerate.
For most observers, Scheme Z stepped over the limits of
acceptability. The grassroots protest which followed made
Scheme Z the most famous interchange in all of New England,
even though it will probably never be built.
As the resistance grew, the intensity of debate
demonstrated the power and tenacity of the print press to
focus on a controversial topic, while the TV media was
reduced to virtual irrelevance. A Scheme Z story even
appeared in the Washington Post. Scheme Z was famous.
Surely Scheme Z is an unlikely nominee for best actor in
a Boston political passion play. How could it be possible
that a highway interchange could trigger such passions,
stimulate such debate and ignite so many volatile meetings?
How could it become the target of news headlines and
lampooning cartoons, and ultimately be accorded the status
that only celebrities dream of -- an awareness by the
average man in the street?
The experts felt that Scheme Z would survive simply
because of the awesome power and credibility which
surrounded Fred Salvucci during the 1980s. Surely, no one
could take on the state transportation establishment,
challenge their designs and out-organize and out-lobby them.
Yet in truth the ship of state was like a modern-day
Titanic, steaming hell-bent through an ocean of icebergs. In
a series of crunching collisions, the Scheme Z superliner
was battered, bent, and hobbled. The unsinkable ship was
indeed headed for the bottom, bringing down its captain as
well.
The intense battle over Scheme Z culminated in the
frenetic month of December 1990, as newspaper articles and
community/ political lobbying reached a peak, and the
Salvucci/Dukakis Administration struggled to take last
minute initiatives to rescue the project. The MEPA comments
for this single month could be measured physically as a foot
deep.
In December 1990, virtually every day brought new
revelations by Peter Howe of the Globe, and soon other
newspapers were joining in. By the end of the month, the
press cartoonists were also participating with gusto, with
hilarious portrayals of loops and spaghetti bowls. The once
all-powerful Fred Salvucci was reduced to a battered prize
fighter, hanging onto the ropes to make it through the end
of his term in January.
In this context, the May 1993 report by the Harvard
Kennedy School on the history of the Central Artery is a
timely summary of key decisions along the way.
Unfortunately, no history can be complete, and seldom are
they without controversy, as all sides seek a more favorable
"spin" on the outcome. While Fred Salvucci and his
supporters may feel the text was unduly negative towards his
activities, others feel the report glorified public
officials, whose actions should have been more roundly
condemned.
I have no way of telling whether Harvard's narrative of
top-level decisionmaking is accurate or not. My view was
strictly as an outsider who saw or heard fragments of inside
activity and opinions, yet by participating in a peculiar
combination of grassroots activities, I gained a rather
unique set of perspectives and anecdotes on the Central
Artery design and in particular the battle over Scheme
Z.
We all carry fragmentary vignettes -- stories,
observations, impressions and memories of the turbulent
times of the Scheme Z wars. The best we can hope for it that
our little pails of water can be added to the sea of
History.
I believe that the best history of Scheme Z and the
personalities involved will be the sum total of all of our
anecdotes, followed by the observations and conclusions
which we offer. No one has the full picture and no one ever
will. The Harvard history is very much a narrative of high
level decisionmaking and strategies. It does not identify
the role of neighborhood activism, especially the critical
confrontations in East Cambridge. For this reason, I am
offering this anecdotal analysis as a complement to the
Harvard study, as an alternative bottom-up viewpoint from
someone who was there and saw at least part of the
action.
This text is version 1.0 of what I hope will be a more
comprehensive history of the Central Artery, and covering
the full debate over elevated vs. depressed structures --
which has been going on since the beginning of this
Century.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FRED SALVUCCI
Fred Salvucci could be Boston's nominee for the title of
the world's most stubborn man. His tenacity and
determination have been demonstrated and proven time and
again, and he has proven to be remarkably resilient as well.
There is probably no one else who could have taken the
battering and the well-deserved derision attendant to Scheme
Z and still come out plugging years later. Fred remains an
active player.
However, there is no denying the fact that Scheme Z
virtually destroyed Fred Salvucci. A man who at the
beginning of 1990 was regarded by his supporters as a
demigod and by his critics as an immovable mountain of power
had been pulverized, disgraced and deserted by the end of
the year.
If the modern Central Artery story is one of the rise of
Fred Salvucci and his astonishingly successful merchandising
of the Central Artery /Tunnel project, the Scheme Z story is
the opposite spiral into failure and public oblivion. Taken
together, the entire story is a Greek tragedy of heroic
proportions which could be subtitled, "The Rise and Fall of
Fred Salvucci." He took off on a splendid flight, flew too
close to the sun and came crashing back to earth.
The continued presence and persistence of Fred in
subsequent years may also be setting the groundwork for his
re-emergence and comeback. But like all comebacks, the
second time around may lack the zest, skills and confidence
of the first time out. Efforts to return Fred Salvucci to
power and influence in the state transportation hierarchy
could result in a humiliating collapse, the ultimate
Waterloo.
In the eyes of his friends and supporters, Fred is a
stalwart leader and conscience. His critics see him as
Machiavellian, a transformed community advocate from the
1960s who became a transit advocate in the 1970s and who
betrayed his calling to become a highway salesman in the
1980s.
Fred's background and personal habits make the political
transformation from transit to highway all the more
implausible. He comes from the left-wing Italian roots, and
his grandfather was the Communist mayor of a town in Italy.
Fred worked as a common laborer for his father's
construction company, and he treasures a picture of himself
as a 1950s teenager doing brickwork on the Dewey Square
tunnel.
In the early 1960s, Fred received his Bachelor's and
Master's Degrees in Civil Engineering from MIT but had an
urge to do things for people, not to be a mere technocratic
engineer. He worked with the BRA and the Mayor's office to
control the threat to older neighborhoods posed by the Inner
Belt and Logan Airport expansion.
He still lives on the top floor of a three-decker in
Brighton. He is a vegetarian who worries about the morality
of wearing leather belts and leather shoes. For years he did
not have a car and seldom drove. When he did use a car in
the late 1960s, it was to chauffeur then-governmental
assistant Al Kramer around town and to use the opportunity
to preach the gospel against the Inner Belt.
At a time when corruption is common in many governments,
no one has ever suggested that Fred was corrupted by money
or sex, two of the three traditional vices. But power is a
different story. Fred's critics feel that his approach to
power has been almost pathological, that he has been
severely corrupted by the temptation and exercise of power,
and that he has used government powers and budgets as his
own domain and instrument. They feel he looked upon the
Artery as his personal project and highway funding as his
own personnel fiefdom. In so doing, many critics of the
"modern" Fred feel that he has sold out his traditional
democratic values.
Fred's defenders would reply that he has been advocating
the people's values all along, especially when no one else
was. Fred loves to reminisce about the times of Boston
Transportation Planning review, the battle against the Inner
Belt, and his alliances with neighborhood groups and
environmentalists. The problem is, many of these groups feel
that Fred has taken them for granted since 1980 and has
offered them nothing of substance. They receive feel-good
vibes about the past, but the transit achievements in the
1980s have been unacceptably insubstantial. With his
advocacy of Scheme Z, Fred's credibility as an
environmentalist came crashing down.
Fred had the technical skills, experience, initiative and
personal contacts to feel that he knew what was right for
the people, not the phony ineffective environmentalists who
were not fighting the good fight when he was. Besides,
leaders need to be tough to get anything done, and they need
to make compromises. Otherwise the opposition will tear any
large project to shreds.
During the Alewife Task Force deliberations of the late
1970s, Fred resisted efforts by local Cambridge politicians
to have jobs wired for their constituents. In retribution
the campaign manager for one City Councilor came to the Task
Force meetings and shouted so loudly that most people
winced. The meetings had to be terminated completely because
it was impossible to continue. Fred had taken a stand on
principle and had not compromised. And he had gotten
punished for it.
By the time of Dukakis II, Fred had become a better
politician and diplomat, and these kinds of public conflict
were avoided. The positive perspective shows a leader
finding ways of accommodate the opposition. The critical
view is that Fred as Boss the second time around had learned
how to cut deals and buy off the opposition. The knock on
Fred was that he used the public process to divide and
conquer and to support his own goals and objectives. Fred's
supporters respond that he avoided many of the conventional
trappings of democracy (meetings, votes. etc.) so that in
the world of hardball realpolitick, the peoples' vision
(which was identical to Fred's) could have a real chance of
success.
When his grandmother's house was taken for the Mass
Turnpike extension in the early 1960s, Fred developed an
intense hatred of authority figures like Bill Callahan. In
those days, the Turnpike made the homeowner an offer of one
dollar pro tanto for his house and the message of those
imposing authority figures was "If you don't like it we'll
see you in court."
These were the days before laws required payment of fair
market value, and many citizens were simply awed at taking
on the aggressive might of the Turnpike Authority and its
lawyers. The image of such ruthless authority, surrounded by
powerful lawyers and engineers, wreaking cruelty upon
ordinary citizens energized Fred to fight this modern day
octopus.
When Bill Callahan died of throat cancer in 1965, Fred
Salvucci had lost a focus for his activism, but the image
was quickly transferred to a new ogre -- the Executive
Director of Massport Authority named Edward J. King. Eddie
King was hell-bent on expanding the airport and cared
nothing for the concerns of neighboring communities. So by
transference, Eddie King became the new Bill Callahan, and
Fred Salvucci had a new battle on his hands to get even. He
bridged the gap between neighborhood activism and direct
advice to then-Mayor Kevin White, first elected in 1967.
Fred expanded his sphere of influence to include many
aides in the Mayor's office and at the BRA. A key
battleground to thwart Eddie King's agenda was the fight
against the Leverett Circle Bridge.
THE LEVERETT CIRCLE BRIDGE
The Leverett Circle Bridge, first proposed in the 1962,
had been supported as an essential relief to the Central
Artery. The 1962 Artery master Plan showed that the downtown
artery would be overloaded by a factor of 4, if everyone who
wanted to drive did so. This massive flow meant that to
avoid an embarrassing Central Artery bottleneck, the excess
traffic had to be shunted somewhere else -- in this case
onto Storrow Drive. Another 1962 Report made the first
proposals for a Leverett Circle Bridge.
This bridge over the Charles Circle effectively connected
Leverett Circle to City Square, I-93 and the Tobin Bridge.
It was designed to bypass the high bridge weave and the
congested downtown artery. In effect the only relief was
Storrow Drive, which immediately raised the suspicions of
Beacon Hill and Back Bay residents.
In 1971, the MDC commissioned a restudy of the bridge
plan. The BRA with Fred Salvucci presented an alternative
called the Accolon Way Flyover, which used elevated viaducts
to cross the Charles River and bypass the Boston Garden. It
was designed by Tony DiSarcina, an old friend of Fred and
the only person I ever encountered (except for Fred) who
ever defended Scheme Z on design terms. The basic concept
was to bring new viaducts parallel to the I-93/Artery
corridor, in contrast to the more perpendicular route of the
Leverett Circle bridge supported by Ed King and his
allies.
The opposing goals of the two sides were rigid and clear:
Ed King was in favor of a Leverett Circle Bridge, a Third
Harbor Tunnel and more Logan Airport expansion. Fred
Salvucci opposed the Leverett bridge plan, was against a
Third Harbor Tunnel and opposed airport expansion. Ed King
also presented himself as a troglodyte on environmental and
neighborhood issues, while Fred was their champion.
Fred could and did identify with all of the liberal,
feel-good vibes of the 1960s. Even today, his speeches live
in that period, of his work on BTPR, of fighting Massport
and highway expansion, of working with neighborhoods and for
environmental values. He identifies with this type of
audience and enjoys their camaraderie, while he retains
intense suspicions of engineers and other bureaucrats.
Fred lives in something of a time warp, clinging to the
values and images of his glory days, when he was fighting
tyrannies in government. By contrast, he talks little about
the intricacies of power manipulation in government, and
avoids any discussion of Scheme Z in a public forum.
THE BIRTH OF THE ARTERY IDEA
The 1972 Boston Transportation Planning Review brought
about a revolution in transportation planning for the Boston
region. The 25-year old Master Plan to construct radial
highways and an Inner Belt expressway was scrapped
completely.
In its place, Governor Sargent announced a policy of
balanced transportation, which actually meant a pro-transit
strategy emphasizing transit extensions and park-and-ride
garages, as alternatives to urban highway construction.
With the rejection of I-95 north and South and the Inner
Belt/Route 2 system, the highway lobby was shellshocked.
Contractors were anguished about their future. In 1971, one
enterprising contractor, Bill Reynolds, floated the idea of
a depressed Central Artery. The idea intrigued Fred Salvucci
and he adopted this new goal as if it were his own.
A small feasibility study was prepared as an adjunct to
BTPR, to consider a depressed Central Artery roadway,
including a North-South rail link. This 1972 study was under
the overall design coordination of Peter Roudebush and the
administrative supervision of Jack Wofford. The project was
intended primarily as a land use project, with objectives of
providing employment for contractors without engaging in
environmental controversies, such as those which helped kill
the Inner Belt.
The BTPR process came to an end in 1972, and the projects
to be completed were limited to the Leverett Circle Bridge
(in a different design) and the Revere Beach Connector. As
it happened, neither was completed. Design work on the
Artery was minimal for the first couple of years, but in
January 1975, Michael Dukakis took over his first term as
Governor and appointed Fred Salvucci as his Secretary of
Transportation.
Under a DPW contract, the BRA began a somewhat
half-hearted study of the Depressed Artery concept. Salvucci
had bigger plans, as he prepared to shift the control of the
study from the City of Boston to the State.
In 1976, a special Central Artery office was set up in
room 530 of the Mass. DPW at 100 Nashua Street. Key
engineers on the original team included Frank Sholock, Dave
Wilson, Ed Fitzgerald, Bill Oliver and Jim Allen. The
immediate priority was to prepare corridor studies for the
project, covering three distinct areas -- North, Central and
South.
The North Area was defined to cover the City Square,
Charlestown Area, including I-93 and the Navy Yard. In 1975,
a plan was developed by DPW engineers to remove the elevated
highways over City Square and replace them with a tunnel.
The new design was drawn up from a suggestion by architect
and Charlestown Resident Bill Lamb. However, the resulting
"trumpet" interchange would have large loop ramps extending
out into the rail yards and into Cambridge North Point area
west of Charlestown.
For the Central or downtown section, engineers came up
with a major breakthrough when they devised ways to
construct a depressed roadway underneath the existing
elevated highway structure. The original concept for the
downtown road in 1972 was for an $80 million open trench,
but over time this concept was gradually replaced by a full
tunnel design, which required extensive ventilation.
Efforts to select preliminary design engineering
consultants were expedited in 1977 and 1978, but there were
problems connecting the North and Central sections. The
elevated double deck "snake" of I-93 remained substantially
untouched, and became a primary design and land use control
for the area. The loop ramps for the North area were all
elevated, as were the expressway bridges across the river.
In a sense the Charlestown elevated ramps were not removed
but merely relocated.
EXILE
Suddenly, in September 1978, the Central Artery program
was dealt a stunning blow by the primary victory of arch
enemy Ed King over Governor Dukakis. By January, Fred
Salvucci had been banished to MIT, and the King
Administration began an effort to dismantle the Central
Artery design effort, with the exception of continued
support for the rapidly advancing North Area designs. News
reported circulated claiming that the Artery was a dead
project.
In early 1979, Ed King had actually wanted to disregard
any highway plans developed by the Salvucci EOTC. He wanted
to advertise the original 1970-vintage Leverett Circle
Bridge plans. In essence, he wanted to take 10-year-old
plans off the shelf and build them. When DPW engineers told
him about EIS procedures and other legal niceties, King
reportedly replied that the Department should "go ahead and
advertise the plans and we'll worry about those other things
later." Ultimately, legal judgment won out and the plans
were not advertised.
Ed King began getting rid of Dukakis/Salvucci
sympathizers. Seeking to get even with those who he blamed
for stopping the Leverett Circle Bridge, King sought to fire
Steve Kaiser, formerly of the MDC and now working at MEPA.
Due to successful protection strategy involving the EPA,
this last effort amounted to nothing more than a temporary
blacklisting from work on any Mass DPW projects.
Governor King also had problems getting his
Administration and the appointments untracked, with various
scandals interfering with his political agenda. EOTC
Secretary Barry Locke had his own priorities for controlling
the MBTA and by 1980, was exposed in a major political
scandal involving improprieties at the MBTA. While progress
was being made on some agenda items, such as Charlestown
Artery work, other projects such as the Third Harbor Tunnel
languished. Only in 1981 - 82 was there an effort to launch
the Third Harbor Tunnel and begin the EIS/R process. The
downtown Depressed Artery was allowed to languish and
appeared dead and forgotten by the end of 1982.
After Barry Locke's arrest in 1980, the new
Transportation Secretary James Carlin began a new push for a
Third Harbor Tunnel. Assistant Secretary Bill Rizzo
coordinated most of the details.
In January 1982, the Harbor Tunnel project was scoped by
MEPA and the Draft EIS/R for the Third Harbor Tunnel was
submitted to MEPA and FHWA for review just before Christmas,
in December 1992. By early January 1983, about 2 weeks
later, Michael Dukakis returned as Governor and immediately
reappointed Fred Salvucci as his Transportation
Secretary.
THE SUPER SALESMAN
What happened next in the year 1983 was a truly
extraordinary political achievement, spearheaded by one
individual -- Fred Salvucci. From the first, almost
single-handedly, he dedicated himself to a revival of the
Central Artery depression project, even though most of his
advisors felt the chances for success were virtually nil.
Conventional wisdom held that the deadlines for application
to the fading Interstate Highway program were simply too
tight. The train had left the station, and there was no way
to jump aboard.
No one gave the project any chance without 90/10 funding.
Almost no one except Fred felt there was any hope of
reviving the project and getting it through the
Environmental process.
Even more difficult to overcome was the limited number of
supporters carried over from the 1970s. Other than the
Sierra club and several contractors, few independent
constituencies were backing the Artery. The City of Boston
and the business community had basically been unenthusiastic
in the 1970s and in 1983 they saw the Artery as
substantially a fringe project supported only by the
peculiar persistence of the EOTC Secretary.
With the desperate situation in 1983, strategy and
support were vital. The basic approach was to piggyback the
project on Ed King's Third Harbor Tunnel project. On January
24, 1983, Salvucci filed a Notice of Project Change with
MEPA, to "change" the tunnel project to include the
depression of the artery. The letter was very brief, but was
the initial move in the strategy to revive the artery
depression. He then sought to negotiate the extent of a
supplementary Draft EIR. As Salvucci explained to newly
appointed Environmental Secretary James Hoyte, "You're going
to have to accept many things on faith." To which Hoyte
replied, "What do you mean 'on faith'?"
The Third Harbor Tunnel project was used as a vehicle to
carry the Central Artery into the Federal bureaucracy. The
Harbor Tunnel would be used to carry it through the
increasingly restrictive Federal funding maze.
Initially, most people were stunned by the audacity of
the artery move, a combination of admirable determination
matched with reckless commitment -- in the face of seemingly
hopeless odds. With the winding down of the Interstate
highway program, people had adjusted to a future without a
depressed artery.
Federal officials were initially humored by this brazenly
illogical exercise and expected it to die on the vine. Such
a radical strategy required enormous dedication, hard work,
good luck and a near religious faith combined with
relentless stubbornness to pull it off. In 1983, it seemed
that only Fred was a true Believer, the only one with the
requisite tenacity of vision, of rigid stubbornness, and of
belief, faith and dedication which bordered on a combination
of secular religion and Baptist fundamentalism. By contrast,
others on the staff were simply going through the motions as
a common machinist might labor for an eccentric
inventor.
The specifics of the project change were not spelled out
until a March 25 letter from Salvucci and DPW Commissioner
Robert Tierney. The MEPA office required a supplementary
ENF, which was filed by the end of March 1983.
Fred's political activities in Congress and in the
Washington bureaucracy are beyond the scope of this
historical review. Locally, Fred needed to assemble design
staff quickly to develop the Artery plan. To this end, in
June 1983 he hired Matt Coogan away from the BRA to be his
deputy on the Artery, and in the process Matt seized control
of a BRA study on surface streets around Dewey Square.
Three community scoping meetings were held in late April
and the supplemental Draft EIR was submitted in June 1983.
The basic Charles River crossing plan continued into the
Final EIS and came to be known as "5A Modified." This plan
featured a split bridge design over the river and a tunnel
connector to Leverett which skirted the edge of the North
Station side of the Charles River.
Gradually through 1983 and into 1984 Fred developed
designs, strategies and constituents for the Artery project,
including House Speaker Tip O'Neill and many members of the
downtown business community. In the process the highway was
widened by 2-4 lanes and the rail link connector was
dropped.
With this transformation, the Sierra Club was transformed
into a strong opponent. Many members felt cheated and used.
Most other environmental groups stayed with the wagon train
and supported the Artery, many of them promised significant
environmental mitigation to compensate for the effects of
Scheme Z and other major construction.
By the mid-1980s, EOTC recognized that they had
underestimated the difficulties of the Charles River
crossing. They had concentrated so much time and effort on
problems with the downtown artery, the Fort Point Channel
and Logan Airport connections that the river crossing and
coordination with the CANA project in Charlestown had been
poorly supported. Undersecretary Matt Coogan admitted the
need for more effort at the Charles River crossing and this
became an EOTC priority after the FEIS signoffs in January
1986.
Design problems included getting sufficient bridge
clearance over the river, allowing for maintenance of lock
gates on the new Charles River Dam, making all ramp
connections to Leverett Circle, resolving weaving problems
on the Artery between Causeway and the Sumner/Callahan
tunnels, construction staging to connect into existing
elevated I-93, and avoidance of excessive physical or
traffic impacts on Storrow Drive.
THE CREATION OF THE RAY BARNHART ARTERY
The original 1970s Central Artery plan was intended as a
land use project, combined with a North-South rail link. It
was not designed to increase traffic capacity. However,
Federal Highway officials traditionally have supported
projects only if there is a major capacity or safety
improvement. Their primary goals do not include land use and
transit.
Because FHWA support was essential to successful funding,
Salvucci had to make compromises. By Fred's account, the
widening of the artery was the result of Reagan's FHWA
administrator Ray Barnhart, who opposed the original concept
and favored a simple redecking of the elevated artery.
Salvucci explained his land use goals, to no avail. Barnhart
agreed to go along only if there were significant capacity
improvements to the artery. Thus were two lanes added to the
downtown artery design, bringing the total to 10, and in the
process the rail link was scrapped for lack of space.
Another consequence was an expansion in the loop ramps at
the north and south ends of the project.
By 1985, there was a widespread belief that the Artery
was a Go project, that Salvucci had assembled a unified team
of supporters and that the local critics had dissipated.
Moving the project past the Reagan administration was still
a problem, but Tip O'Neill represented a mountain of
political force and will.
By 1987, Fred pulled off the ultimate coup, with a 1 vote
override of a Reagan veto in Congress. But this period
represented a time of vigor and hope and confidence which
the artery team was never again to equal. Somewhere in the
1985-1987 period, Fred Salvucci missed a step, became both
more cautious and more stubborn, and his best judgments
began to desert him. He lost his vision on the banks of the
Charles River.
PRELIMINARIES TO THE BATTLE OF SCHEME Z
The first inkling of problems arose with the plans to
place all of the excavate on Spectacle Island, creating a
monstrous mountain in the harbor. Clearly there were
environmental and regulatory problems with this proposal,
but Fred was unyielding.
Remarkably, the Artery Business Committee saved EOTC by
hiring their own consultant to find alternate ways of
mitigating the distributing the fill, so that the bulk of
Spectacle was diminished. While the result was satisfactory,
Fred could not claim that his judgment had won the day.
There was reason to question the wisdom of the supreme
leader.
Fred's encounters with Richard Goldberg and the Park 'n
Fly lot in East Boston did much more permanent damage. The
arguments went back and forth for many months, and Goldberg
hired H. W. Moore to design highway alternatives which would
meet EOTC goals while avoiding takings of Park 'n Fly. These
initiatives were shunted aside, with sufficient tactlessness
that Goldberg was convinced to go to war with Fred
Salvucci.
One version of the story says that Goldberg willingly
went to war with Fred and spent over $1 million on legal,
engineering and staff assistance. Another story has it that
various advisors worked diligently to persuade Goldberg to
fight back, to spend $500,000 to $750,000 and to focus on
the weak point -- Scheme Z.
At any rate, Fred came out of East Boston in 1989 with an
energized opposition, who now had the motivation to hire
engineers, lawyers and publicists to go after Scheme Z. Fred
had made an unnecessary enemy and had neglected to protect
his flank: at the Charles River, he was sitting on a monster
that no one really liked.
This same year saw the creation of a newly formed group,
Citizens for Regional Transportation. This group was headed
by Dun Gifford, but obtained virtually all of its funding
from Richard Goldberg. The group met for almost a year in
the offices of Goldberg's law firm, and there were
refreshments, public relations personnel, environmental and
civil engineering consultants also made available. CRT
meetings became a regular source of information on Artery
meetings, a source of support for the All-Tunnel Plan, and
the forum to revive the concept of a North-South rail
link.
As time passed, the focus of CRT became not on the Artery
generally or on previous points of contention, such as East
Boston. The main target became the ultimate weak point in
the entire Central Artery project -- Scheme Z.
THE OPENING GAMBIT OF SCHEME Z
Fred had carelessly allowed himself to become vulnerable
on the river crossing. Possibly, his success in fighting Ed
King on the Leverett Circle Bridge had made him unduly
confident about finding a solution.
Still, he had won all the Artery battles by 1987. It
would only be human to expect Fred Salvucci to feel
extremely confident under the circumstances. Surely, Fred
had sufficient power and momentum to discount the
possibility of error and to believe that all opposition
would be ground up and neutralized. After all, Fred had
defeated the naysayers in the Reagan Administration and in
Congress. Who was Richard Goldberg to believe he could even
think of winning such a battle?
The Charles River crossing problems go back to the
original 1977-78 CANA plans, which locked EOTC into a
limited number of river crossing designs. The lack of
progress in solving the river crossing continued through
1986 and into 1987. Local FHWA officials had heard so much
of the state's desire for speedy action on the Artery yet
were frustrated by the inability to resolve the river
crossing. They perceived Salvucci to be muddled and
indecisive. So FHWA demanded that EOTC make an orderly and
comprehensive study of all reasonable alternatives and
select the best one.
In April 1988, the state study was completed, covering 31
alternatives in three general classes. One of those was
Scheme Z.
The key element of Scheme Z -- the notorious "double
cross" -- was a concept for crossing the river twice and
solving weave problems. This concept had been invented by
Tony DiSarcina in the mid-1980s. His long relationship with
his old friend may be the primary reason why Fred chose
Scheme Z in July of 1988.
In July 1988, Fred Salvucci announced his personal
selection of Scheme Z, and by August 1988 the first press
reports began coming out about the new plan. There were no
public meetings, so the public was quite unaware of the
raging internal debate over Scheme Z at many levels of state
and City government. Boston officials opposed Z for almost a
year before reluctantly accepting the plan in exchange for a
wide range of "mitigation measures" -- such as a second
Leverett Circle underpass.
By November 1988, a coming-out party for environmental
groups was held at South Station, as the model of Scheme Z
was presented to Conservation officials. The general
response was aghast bewilderment. There were awkward giggles
over the maze of ramps which appeared almost a caricature of
highway design. It almost seemed like a skit from Saturday
Night Live or Monty Python. In one telling moment, Rebecca
Barnes was asked a question and the facial expression said
it all: "I don't want to be here, I don't want to defend
this thing." It was my first inkling that the Joint Venture
staff was opposed to Scheme Z.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ALL TUNNEL PLAN
I had been invited to the November 1988 briefing meeting
by Liz Epstein, the Executive Director of the Cambridge
Conservation Commission. The invitation was extraordinary
because I had been quite critical of the Cambridge City
Manager up to that time and had not been involved for
several years in any aspect of the Artery project.
My response to the general horror and despondency over
Scheme Z was to decide to work up a new design alternative.
I did not feel that there was much chance of stopping the
Salvucci juggernaut. I had witnessed the awe that people
felt towards Fred's power and accomplishments and I felt
that Scheme Z was a done deal.
Nevertheless, I concluded that someone needed to make the
effort in the interests of history to place on the record a
design alternative to Z. It was simply to say that not
everyone had stood aside and let it happen. The natural idea
was to devise a tunnel crossing of the river, to extend the
positive aspects of the downtown artery
"Now-You-See-It,-Now-You-Don't" goal. This all-tunnel plan
was developed with virtually no chance of acceptance and was
done initially in a spirit of defiance.
In late 1988 and early 1989, I wrote to Fred Salvucci,
urging him to prepare an all-tunnel plan and abandon Scheme
Z. I never received an answer.
In early 1989, after sending the second letter, I began
the design of the All-Tunnel Plan with vigor. By early
summer the first version of the plan was prepared and shown.
By November 1989, Version 1.0 was prepared, with changes in
various ramp connections to accommodate more realistic
grades. Version 3.0 came out in early 1990 and Version 4.01
in May 1990. As comments, criticism and suggestions came in,
further revisions were made in an orderly manner -- Version
5.0 in November 1990, Version 6.0 in February 1991, and
Version 7.5 in December 1991.
While the idea of an individual citizen preparing an
engineering plan to compete with state plans was novel and
intriguing, many people were hesitant to respond to a plan
prepared outside the conventional government/consultant
hierarchy of recognized expertise. No credible technician
had really stepped forward to say whether or not the ATP was
feasible from an engineering viewpoint.
In August 1990, as the electoral primary season was
heating up, I wrote to project manager Bill Twomey offering
to personally stay out of the political campaign if the
state could provide a technical review of the All-Tunnel
Plan. Twomey then discussed the matter with design engineer
Rick Azzalina and they agreed to check it out. Azzalina
remains the chief designer for the Charles River Crossing
area, having designed or reviewed 76 different plans by
September 1993.
In a matter of a couple of weeks, APT version 4.0 had
been redrafted onto an engineering base plan, with evidence
of physical fit and compatibility. I didn't realize it at
the time, but this demonstration of feasibility was very
important in giving other groups reason to support the ATP
and oppose Scheme Z.
For all of his detailed planning, Fred Salvucci could not
have conceived of the possibility that a third party would
come up with an All-Tunnel Plan. How could anyone tackle
such a formidable challenge, using a living room table and
risking a state blacklist by daring to take on the state
transportation establishment?
My role as engineering design gadfly involved a peculiar
combination of skills. My only specific highway design
experience had been gained 20 years earlier -- at exactly
the same Charles River crossing area, during the time the
original Leverett Circle Bridge was contested. Indeed,
version 1.0 of the All-Tunnel Plan was drawn on a faded 1971
base map prepared by Bruce Campbell & Associates for the
MDC. My college training was as a Mechanical Engineer, not
Civil. My MDC and MEPA skills were primarily in the area of
traffic engineering, not highway design.
The All-Tunnel Plan and the North-South rail link were
respectively the first highway tunnel plan and first rail
project designs in my career. The work was done as a spare
time project, with my primary occupation being a 5-day a
week load of volunteer computer teaching of 200-300
elementary students.
Simply stated, a volunteer computer teacher who years ago
used to do traffic analysis for the state prepares a
credible river tunnel design in his spare time, for no fee,
while the Secretary of Transportation and Construction, with
thousands of engineers at his beck and call, says it can't
be done. The Joint Venture engineers check out the plan and
say, yes it can be. This process happened not once but
twice, first for the All-tunnel Plan and later for the
North-South Rail Link in the Artery corridor.
To his credit, Fred appeared to admire the effort, if not
the result. He was always very cordial and never derisive.
Other hard nosed engineers within the joint venture were
less appreciative. A BDRC member overheard one of them
suggesting that the best way to deal with the Kaiser problem
is to "put him on the payroll. That way we can shut him
up."
THE DRAFT SUPPLEMENTAL EIS AND JUNE 1990 PUBLIC
HEARING
In June 1990, the Draft Supplemental EIR/R for Scheme Z
and other project changes was submitted for review. A large
public hearing was held in June at the Federal Reserve
Building, during which time Boston stated its unswerving
support for the entire project, including Scheme Z. The
City's environmental chief even went so far as to describe
Scheme Z as the "best alternative environmentally." The show
of forces in favor of the project was overwhelming, with
only a few scattered groups and individuals criticizing
Scheme Z. The desire and extent of testimony was so great
that speakers were limited to 5 minutes, with little
tolerance for extension, and the hearing was extended over 2
days.
The MEPA decision on the Draft EIR was being watched
closely by Salvucci's office. DeVillars had been a loyal
foot soldier for Dukakis and had no evident environmental
attachments prior to his appointment as EOEA Secretary in
1989.
John DeVillars had personal goals to take significant
actions as Environmental Affairs Secretary and had
instructed his Public Relations staff to see to it that his
name appeared in the papers at least once a week. DeVillars
began to indicate informally that he was interested in
setting certain conditions and mitigation requirements on
the artery project, and Salvucci's office became quite
alarmed. The MEPA staff had already shown that they were not
about to roll over for EOTC's preferences, so EOTC
accurately foresaw the potential for dramatically
independent initiatives from EOEA.
With the close of the comment period on August 22, 1990,
Salvucci and Chief of Staff, Attorney Doug McGarragh,
appeared at EOEA to review the public comments and to
participate in the writing of the MEPA decision. Clearly,
this action was a poaching on the proper turf of
Environmental Affairs, but EOEA did not have the clout to
suggest that EOTC personnel not meddle in the writing of the
MEPA statement.
Ultimately, MEPA staff did generate an independent
assessment of the Draft EIR, but this text was immediately
subject to extensive editing by EOTC forces, working within
the Governor's office. EOEA was helpless to do anything
except allow this interference to occur. The exposure of
this incident by Peter Howe on December 2, 1990 triggered
the lengthy and almost daily series of Globe articles on the
Scheme Z affair.
The EOTC rewriting of the MEPA certificate had the effect
of removing any difficult requirements of commitments for
mitigation. EOTC had effectively written its own scope or
agenda for what should be covered in the Final Supplemental
EIS, scheduled for that fall.
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