MGNA: Medford Green Line Neighborhood Alliance

An announcement from the MassDOT Green Line extension project team:

In September, MassDOT will host two educational public meetings to kick off the Preliminary Engineering phase of the Green Line Extension project. These meetings will also help inform the public Station Design Workshops, to be held later in the fall. Two educational meetings will be held, one each in Somerville and Medford. The presentations at the two meetings will be the same. The meetings will outline the requirements the MBTA uses to design its stations.

Each meeting will begin at 5:30 pm with a “Green Line Extension 101″ presentation for those who are less familiar with the project. New material will be presented starting at 6:15 pm. A meeting will be held on September 29 at Medford City Hall (Council Chambers), 85 George P. Hassett Drive. As soon as the date and location of a meeting in Somerville is finalized, we will send a follow-up announcement.

Please see the update below on the field work scheduled for the next two weeks:

Field Survey:

Weeks ending 8/27/10 and 9/3/10:

+ Finish railroad portion of maintenance facility survey on tracks as well as perform detailed bridge survey of Red Bridge in Somerville.
+ Survey of drainage system inverts* within the Lowell Line Commuter Rail corridor

*Inverts are elevations of the interior bottom of the existing drain pipes measured at a drainage structure.

Boring Program:

Weeks ending 8/27/10 and 9/3/10:

+ Borings within the MBTA Lowell Commuter Rail Line right-of-way from Harvard Street in Medford to Brookings Street in Medford.

Boring typically occurs between 7:00 AM and 3:30 PM on weekdays.

Please note that, as field work continues along the future Green Line Extension right-of-way, passing trains are required to blow their whistles whenever they are within the areas of the field work. While we recognize that this as an inconvenience for nearby residents, trains are required to blow their whistles as a vital safety measure along the right-of-way. We estimate that the work will continue to move north through October, and we will provide weekly updates until it is finished. We apologize for any disruption this may cause.

More information about the Green Line Extension project, including information about upcoming public meetings, can be found on the project website.  Should you have any questions, please contact Kate Fichter, Project Manager for the Green Line Extension, at katherine.fichter@state.ma.us. Kate is also blogging about the project at the MassDOT blog.

Thank you for your interest and participation.

The Green Line Extension Project Team

For transportation news and updates visit MassDOT at our website, blog, or follow MassDOT on twitter at www.twitter.com/massdot.

The Community Corridor Planning (CCP) Advisory Team has released the final report of the CCP Community Design Workshop for the Green Line Extension project. The report features station design ideas, recommendations, and guidelines prepared for submission to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) by Somerville, Medford and Cambridge residents.

During three working sessions, community members met to discuss and evaluate the current MassDOT station designs, and to create their own designs. These designs were aimed at both influencing the state’s final plans, as well as preparing the community to participate in the MassDOT station design process. “The people who live and work in these neighborhoods have so much to offer,” says CCP Advisory Team member Claudia Rabino. “The goal of the workshop was to prepare community members to participate in the state process by helping them visualize, articulate and document their ideas.  By that measure, the CCP station design workshop was a great success.”

More than 120 members of the Somerville, Medford and Cambridge communities participated in this process and teams were organized around the seven stations.

Small groups were facilitated by volunteer community residents and local design experts.  Von Grossman and Associates, a local urban design firm, served as primary facilitator and compiled the final report.  The final presentations were publicly held on June 2, 2010, at the Prospect Hill Academy in East Somerville.

A number of themes and clear priorities emerged through this process with community members. These include:

+  Station designs integrated into fabric of existing communities

+ A strong need for multi-directional walking, biking, transit and spatial connections between the stations and the surrounding neighborhoods

+ Visible stations that function as community symbols and iconic landmarks

+   Stations that serve as community meeting places that provide real neighborhood amenities

+ Station access as means to leverage business and job opportunities in surrounding neighborhood

+  Incorporation of  sustainable and environmentally friendly design and materials

+  Encouragement of development that supports and enables the long-term economic health of the community.

This fall the state will conduct a series of community workshops and public hearings to gather public feedback for the implementation of the Green Line Extension stations. The workshop has stimulated the development of new ideas, while the follow-up report provides formal materials that will support community members taking a more active role in the state process.  As MassDOT begins its public design workgroup process, CCP hopes this report will function as a reference guide for the development of stations that truly benefit the neighborhoods they serve.

The MassDOT board of directors was unable to vote on the $24.5 million contract for preliminary engineering for the Green Line Extension project at today’s board meeting.

During board discussion of the matter, it was revealed that Parsons Brinckeroff was one of the subconsultants to lead consultant Vanasse Hangen Brustlin (the subconsultants were not listed in the contract given to the board in advance of the meeting).

Upon hearing this, director Elizabeth Levin recused herself  to avoid any appearance of a potential conflict involving the contract.

That left the board without a quorum, since director Ferdinand Alvaro was absent because of illness, so no vote could be taken on the matter.

Director Janice Loux suggested a special meeting be called to take up the contract again.  According to the calendar on the MassDOT website, the next regular MassDOT board meeting is Tuesday, September 7.