By Nick Royle
May 15, 2008 12:44 am There's been a curious lack of public outrage over the quiet decision by the Massachusetts Port Authority to close one lane of the northbound Tobin Bridge for repairs this summer and fall. The fact that the Tobin is in urgent need of repair should not come as a surprise to those who use it regularly. It is alarmingly rusty in places and earlier this year I swear I saw small pieces of debris falling from the upper deck onto the roadway below. The Tobin has always held a horrid fascination for me. It reminds me of the Volkswagen Bug — ugly, but curiously cute at the same time. Approaching the northbound level of the span through a darkened maw of a tunnel, one is struck by its dizzying height and the rumbling and clattering one hears as vehicles ride over the joints. From the outer lane the driver peers down at a sheer drop to the Mystic River 135 feet below. Taking the center lane you'll find vehicles racing past you on either side, cutting in front, taillights maniacally flashing on and off as drivers dash home to family and sanity. For the next five months, that manic dash is history. And here is the stealthy outrage that is being perpetrated on the citizens of Salem, Gloucester and other North Shore communities: All of us want the Tobin repaired, but the timing of the daily work schedule truly boggles the mind. According to a Massport press release, the work with be undertaken from 7 in the morning until 5 in the evening, Monday through Friday, throughout the summer/fall months, ending in November and starting again in the spring of 2009. The simple fact of closing one lane has added 30 to 45 minutes to my and every other Route 1 commuter's journey home at rush hour. And as we wait to get on the bridge in the evening, we'll be clogging Storrow Drive and other downtown Boston streets with traffic. Right now we are desperately searching for other routes out of Boston. Will taking I-93 to Route 128 work better, we wonder. How many of us are there? In 2004 the estimated daily traffic volume over the Tobin was 65,000 vehicles. So let's be conservative and say that 20,000 of us are bound for the Tobin between 4 and 7 p.m. each weekday. Let me put this into a visual perspective — at 15 feet of roadway for every car; that is nearly 57 miles of now barely crawling traffic trying to get over the bridge! Whereas in the past we generally made moderate and steady progress, now we sit motionless, our 20,000 tailpipes spewing carbon monoxide and other vile particulates. In short, we have become a very nasty problem, and amazingly in this case, there is something that can be easily done about it. Why, one wonders, has Massport decided to work on such a critical metropolitan artery only between the weekday hours of 7 a.m. and 5 p.m.? Why have the mayor and governor not called Massport to account to prevent this unnecessary economic and environmental debacle? One can only assume these top officials do not use the Tobin often, or they are unaware of Massport's schedule and attribute the downtown traffic jams of the last few workdays to a welcome influx of out-of-state tourists. But it's about time elected officials on the North Shore voice their outrage for the inconvenience being foisted on their constituents and the environment of eastern Massachusetts. The cost to businesses in terms of lost productivity, let alone the pollution effects, must surely outweigh the dollar cost to Massport of getting this project over and done with by the fastest means possible. Massport should have found a contractor to do this work at night and over the weekends until competed. nnn Nick Royle lives in Manchester-by-the-Sea.
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