Despite detours, Arborway rail plan on smoother ground

by Mac Daniel
The Boston Globe, January 13, 2002

The restoration of light rail service to the Arborway in Jamaica Plain has long been a contentious issue.

A year ago, residents would have booed when Michael H. Mulhern, then assistant to former general manager Robert Prince Jr., showed up at a neighborhood meeting on the issue.

The MBTA was accused of purposefully pulling rail service from the neighborhoods in 1985 and labeled as an enemy of the transit-loving public. At one meeting last year, whenever Mulhern spoke vaguely of restoring ''service'' to the line, residents interrupted him, yelling out the word ''trolley'' in mid-sentence.

But two months after the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to restore rail service to the line, relations between the agency and the neighborhood have taken a noticeable turn for the better.

A case in point: At a meeting last week to discuss how decisions will be made about the still-tenuous project, Mulhern's presence was suddenly praised. One resident even suggested that the T take the word ''acting'' out of Mulhern's new title of general manager and officially appoint him head of the transit agency.

In addition, for the first time, officials from the city's transportation department showed up for a meeting on the proposed project. Commissioner Andrea d'Amato expressed her personal commitment to the project before listing concerns about commercial truck access, pedestrian safety, street crossings, signals, parking, and unimpeded access for public safety vehicles.

Residents even agreed to form a single project advisory committee rather than two separate committees focusing on community and technical issues. And everyone left happy. ''Best public meeting on this issue in years,'' said one JP resident who did not want to give his name.

But challenges remain for the rail line, with final support needed from the city.

Jim Mansfield, a spokesman for the Boston Transportation Department, said further study is needed before the agency stakes out a position.

''Paramount are the operational needs of the fire department, EMS, and police,'' said Mansfield. ''And working together, we assume that that can be done, but I wouldn't say that we're adamantly against it and I wouldn't say that we're adamantly for it.''

The city has the means to hold up the project, by denying key permits or through court action, if it does not like what the MBTA comes up with, city officials have said.

Last November's state order to restore the service ended a 16-year battle between neighborhood and environmental activists and the transit agency.

The MBTA shut down the two-mile section of the Green Line's E branch from Heath Street in Mission Hill to the Arborway after the line was deemed inefficient. It was replaced by bus service, which drew the ire of residents who wanted the convenience and speed of ''one ride'' from downtown Boston to J.P.

Now the city's concerns, along with access for the disabled, are huge hurdles for the project to jump, especially in a corridor where curb-to-curb measurements on South Street alone are as narrow as 40 feet. In addition, a fire station sits along the proposed route, and parking is at a premium. Sixty-four businesses have signaled their support for the project, but others have said the impact of two years of construction could hurt more than help.

All this after two MBTA studies found the rail restoration project unfeasible. And then there's the bottom line: trolley restoration will cost at least $85 million, about $25 million more than it would cost to bring so-called clean-running buses on the line, a notion the community has opposed.

But some of the toughest hurdles have yet to be discussed.

Bill Lieberman, a prominent light rail consultant brought in by the MBTA to help with the Arborway project, said the final product will be ''as much art as it is science.''

Residents and the city may have to decide on major traffic reconfigurations, including re-routing traffic down arterial streets and making sections of streets along the proposed rail line run one-way. There is even the possibility of making sections of the rail line into car-free zones similar to Downtown Crossing.

Streetside parking will be gobbled up by the project, and Lieberman admitted that it will not decrease car and truck traffic along the corridor, which is often clogged during rush hour.

But as they have done since trolley service ended here in 1985, residents and local activists plan to keep on keeping on. They see the project as a means of further enlivening an already revitalized area, bringing more people to local businesses and diluting traffic's impact on the neighborhood's often clogged roads. All this despite what long-term construction could do to local businesses and the overall impact on the area's quality of life, not to mention local parking.

The project's timetable has construction beginning in 2004, with completion set for 2006.