Assembly Square Orange Line community meeting

Monday, June 29, 6:30 pm
Capuano Early Childhood Center Cafeteria
150 Glen Street (map)

Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone invites all interested individuals to a community meeting to discuss the design of the new Orange Line Transit station at Assembly Square. The meeting, sponsored by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), will be held on Monday, June 29th at 6:30pm at the Capuano Early Childhood Center Cafeteria, 150 Glen Street, Somerville. At the meeting MBTA project staff and the design consultant will provide an overview of the preliminary design for Assembly Square station, followed by a question and answer period. For more information please call 617-222-6757.

It is very important that the public turn out for this Assembly Square
Orange Line meeting. Although earlier traffic analyses by Federal Realty
and IKEA consultant VHB projected 100,000 vehicle trips per day for Assembly
Square, the settlement between the primary developers and Mystic View
requires a district cap of 50,000 trips per day as well as enhanced
pedestrian and bike paths and many other "smart growth" aspects. But "smart
growth" and "sustainability" are not achievable via sound bites. They are
only achievable via exceptional project execution. In the case of Assembly
Square this means that the Orange Line T-stop must be well-integrated with
all of the district's developable acreage. From the northern to the
southern end of Assembly Square is 9/10ths of a mile - the very same as the
distance between North and South Stations in Boston. When one stops and
thinks of just how many MBTA stops on all four subways lie in downtown
Boston, one starts to realize just how well we will have to integrate the
one new Orange Line T-stop with all of Assembly Square. The trips per day
reduction in the Assembly Square settlement equals the total increase in I93
capacity created by the $15 billion Big Dig. The Assembly Square trip
reduction also exceeds the estimated daily vehicle trip reduction of the two
Green Line extensions. Simply put, if this new Orange Line T-stop is not
everything it could be, we will not have a sustainable future in eastern
Somerville. Thus if we want to improve local environmental quality and
quality of life, and to preserve transportation capacity on roadways passing
through Somerville for higher value mixed use - at Assembly Square, in
Brickbottom / Inner Belt and in Boynton Yards / Union Square - the public
will have to work very hard with government and the developers to insist
upon project execution that lives up to the "smart growth" and
"sustainability" tags.