Bostonia: Any advice for minimizing travel or other disruptions during construction?

The traffic management plan for the Allston project has yet to be developed. The project development phase will be an intensive one. We will focus on making sure people have access to alternative routes, but also alternative modes [of transportation], like transit and commuter rail. We never say that a construction project is going to be unnoticeable. We do pay a lot of attention to minimizing this disruption, but people will notice it going on, and at various phases of the project, people’s travel will be affected. But that’s something that we take into account as the design nears completion. 

What makes it a little different is that it is so concentrated in this site. It’s realigning the Turnpike, putting a lot of modes of travel in one area, largely within the 92-acre [rail] yard. It will be a very concentrated investment in transportation infrastructure in this neighborhood. But because of the level of investment and because of what we are investing in—not only the highway, but also commuter rail, west–east rail infrastructure—it will have impacts statewide.

Bostonia: That project has seen a split in opinions. MassDOT wants to put tracks for train parking and maintenance in an open strip near the project. Harvard, which owns the strip, and the city want to build housing there. Can you elaborate on MassDOT’s position?

Our view has always been [that] transportation and housing are very compatible. We think that they can coexist very well on this site. We don’t view it as having to choose between what undeniably are two public goods. The Healey-Driscoll administration strongly supports housing all across the state and transportation. And we’re certainly not telling Harvard how to develop its land. But we think there’s plenty of room for two essential public goods to coexist.

That said, we are in discussions with the city of Boston to see if there’s another location in the city where we could put the layover tracks. The tracks are necessary because the commonwealth is expanding its commuter rail and intercity passenger rail over the coming years. And you can’t have transportation service without transportation infrastructure, including supporting infrastructure like layover tracks, because trains don’t operate continuously around the clock. They have to stop, be inspected, lightly maintained, cleaned, then get back into service again. 

People in the neighborhood would prefer the layover tracks to be elsewhere, and we’re open to their relocation out of [the rail] yard. We can’t do without them, but we’ve started a study of alternate locations. We are fully engaged with the city. Presumably, that won’t be settled until the study is done. I think it will take a matter of months. In the meantime, we’ll be filing the environmental documents, and we have cautioned the neighborhood that they will include four [layover] tracks in the yard. However, if we’re able to find a new location, we’ll pull them out.

Bostonia: What’s the need and importance of those Cape Cod bridges to the commonwealth?

We are building brand-new bridges right next to the existing bridges. The reason is that they are 90 years old. They are reaching the end of their service life. They need significant maintenance and preservation on an ongoing basis. They’re owned by the federal government—not the commonwealth—by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and we have an agreement with the federal government that we will take the lead on replacing the bridges, and then we will take ownership of them once they’re completed.

I’ll start with their importance to 230,000 year-round residents of Cape Cod, who absolutely need those bridges to be functioning at all times. They’re the only roadway connections to the mainland. They’re the only roadway emergency evacuation route. They carry workers from the mainland to Cape Cod and Cape Cod to the mainland. Every day, they support emergency services, school [and] recreation travel. They’re vital to Cape Cod, but so important to the commonwealth as well, because they carry 38 million trips a year. Between the two of them, they are major contributors to the Massachusetts economy because of the tourism there. People traveling there during the tourism period are spending a lot of money. So the bridges are not any old bridges. 

The Sagamore Bridge will go first, and Sagamore is fully funded. We don’t have the funds for Bourne yet. We are applying for a major federal grant this summer. We will be building the new bridge right next to the existing Sagamore. It will be wider. Right now, [it has] two pretty narrow, 10-foot lanes, a six-foot sidewalk, and very little room for breakdown capacity. So when there’s a disabled vehicle, traffic backs up a lot. Because the lanes are so narrow, the potential for head-on collisions is higher. 

The new bridge will be a twin span. There’ll be two travel lanes in each direction, 12-foot lanes. There will be an auxiliary lane going most of the length of the bridge to enable traffic to move smoothly. Part of the reason for congestion on the bridges isn’t just that they’re very narrow. It’s also that the interchanges at the [bridge ends] are not great. We’ll be reconstructing the interchanges as well. There will also be breakdown capacity.

Bostonia: How confident are you that there will be money from the federal government for the Bourne Bridge as well?

Projects of this size draw from multiple funding sources, so we’re not putting all of our eggs into the federal funding basket. We’re hopeful that our application will be persuasive, because of the importance of the bridge and the fact that it’s a federally owned asset. In the meantime, we’re continuing to look for resources to support the Bourne Bridge, and we do think there’s a strong case to be made for substantial federal support for this bridge.

Bostonia: How did your education at MET help prepare you for your career and current job?

I chose MET because it offered the opportunity to attend classes at night while working full-time at MassDOT. Henry Henderson was the chair of the city planning department when I was there, and he was a great professor. He really challenged us. Studying there helped me understand my profession much better, to take my day-to-day practical experience and understand the theoretical and academic underpinnings of the profession. When I had the degree, I subsequently became the director of transportation planning at MassDOT. The degree helped propel me forward in my career. I just really appreciate the education I got at BU.