Are We Being Smart?: Middlesex Turnpike & Economic Development
Last week, I published an article about the Middlesex Turnpike Transportation Improvement Project. You can find it at http://www.wickedlo
Although I am no expert, I have been giving a lot of thought and attention lately to the ideas of smart growth, housing, economic development, and living in a small town in Massachusetts that often seems in danger of being obliterated by the ambitions of Massport, corporations, and people who think golf courses are prettier than primeval forests. I am not one of those people. I am someone who can ignore the bugs and muck and actually enjoy the woods and weather of New England…even if it is not always convenient.
Having said that, I am in favor of this particular project, which I believe will give people a path of less resistance through the towns of Bedford, Burlington, and Billerica, MA. If there are more options and an easier, faster way onto the highways, or just generally through an area, traffic will tend to move there. People have to get to Route 95, and from 95 to the North– and Route 3 is not a great alternative because it ends at US95 and clogs. The way it stands, going down The Great Road in Bedford is shorter, if not easier to get through…and way more interesting than trying to go down Middlesex Turnpike…and so people do it, which has caused traffic to swell to over 20,000 cars a day in a town where the total population is only 13,000…including many children and others who don’t drive.
Second, regarding development. I would love to live in the woods of Maine or New Hampshire. Of course, I don’t because there isn’t work there…which is why populations are so low in Maine and Northern New Hampshire and they are so high here. I’m not in favor of unrestrained growth, but I think it is unrealistic to think that you can live near major infrastructure like Rte 95 and Hanscom Air Field, and big cities like Boston and Cambridge and Waltham and not have any type of economic development. Even saying, “okay we’ve got lots of economic development and now enough is enough” is a bit of problem. People want to live in the area because it has a country feel yet is very close to industry and commercial development…very close to the cities. If you prevent development, you create communities like Wellesley…but not everyone can afford to live in Wellesley. We already have a problem of affordable housing in the area. Prices keep going up, which has the effect of forcing young people out of the state and old people out of their homes. Massachusetts is rapidly heading toward a crisis because of our loss of young people due to the cost of living and housing. And those 40B developments, while helpful, are not all that affordable for the average person. Still, you do want to preserve a good quality of life in towns like Bedford, which is why you want to practice smart growth.
The project on Middlesex Turnpike, to me, seems an example of the kind of growth that is good for this area. It’s three towns working together to try to reduce traffic in their town centers and residential neighborhoods. It is a means of helping to contain industry in an industrial area. And although it will require the removal of trees, it has an environmental upside in that it will make improvements that actually enhance our water and wetland resources, while providing sidewalks that could encourage walking and biking to work. Also, in the story I wrote for the Minuteman you’ll notice that there are 178 replacement trees at a minimum that will be planted. Although 178 isn’t close to the number of trees that will be removed, replanting on a one-for-one base would not be in the best interest of the new trees since the woods that are being removed are wild grown, and naturally place so close that you can expect the majority of trees that begin to take root to die or grow in an unhealthy way. The fact that so many stay are testament to the resiliency of nature, but also enormous numbers of seeds that get spread. Think of all those little helicopters you’re always cleaning out of the gutters on your house. This is not to say that I would ever want to see all natural woods removed and replaced with cultivated trees, of course. I just believe that if you have to grow and develop an area…which you do in the case of Bedford…you have to consider ways to do it that make sense economically, ecologically, and practically and on a global as well as a personal level.