Salem’s Last Road: Moving on

I’ve gotten a flurry of comments on the bypass road, all of them critical of the road and its impact.  I don’t usually respond to comments in the comments, figuring it’s a place for the readers  (and also that it’s hard to have a good dialogue in the comments, the way most blogs are set up.)

But one person (anonymous) assured me I had “no idea” of the traffic noise of the new bypass road at their residence.

Try me.

I took this video at the corner of St. Peter and Bridge, outside my apartment.  You can see it in the image that starts this post;  it is the pinkish-red building in the foreground.

I definitely hear traffic.  I hear trains.   I hear the “jake brakes” of large trucks as they go up and down the incline over the train tunnel.

I’ve said before I don’t like having a five lane road between me and the train station.  The Howard St. side of the Jefferson apartment complex is a cruel joke, locked in by roads on three sides.   The $16 million spent on the road looms large considering that the new train station will cost $30 million which could have paid for completely by the state, instead of having to seek private investment.

There’s a reason I called it Salem’s Last Road, because the cost (financial, municipal and emotional) of any more new roadways is far beyond any benefit we can get from them now. 

The bypass road is Salem’s counterpart to Boston’s Inner Belt Project, the proposed Rt. 695 spur off 95 that would have taken 7,000 homes and irreparably changed huge parts of Boston and Cambridge.

The difference is that the Inner Belt was stopped.  It turned out to be the beginning of the end for highways in Boston (heralding the Big Dig’s last hurrah.)

The Bypass Road wasn’t.

We can argue over which Bypass Road resident is most deserving of pity. 

That won’t change what happened.

Remember, too, that the northern side of Bridge St. was never “waterfront property”.  The Boston and Maine railroad property was there even before current residents of Bridge St. were born.

It was a transportation corridor to begin with.  No surprise that the state wanted to do something more with that right-of-way, and in those days that meant car traffic.

All of those years that politicians lobbied for new roads to solve our problems have come back to bite us.  I hope the next time I advocate for better pedestrian access and public transportation, that the bypass road critics will take note.

In the meantime, don’t blame me.  I only documented the project.  It’s not like the News or the Gazette would have spent time on letting citizens know what was being paid for in their name.  Talk to some of the dear old cronies out there sitting on their butts, the old Representative or Councilor or Mayor Whoosis’ who let this happen.

I’m not interested in tallying bypass road pity points.  I’m moving on.

P.S.  I’ve forwarded the comment about the motorcycle races to Mike Sosnowski.

Salem’s Last Road: John Keenan

John Keenan speaks at the Bypass Road’s opening ceremonies

Salem’s Last Road: Remarks of Luisa Paiewonsky, MassHighway

MassHighway Commissioner Luisa Paiewonsky speaks.

Salem’s Last Road: Kim Driscoll’s Remarks

Kim Driscoll speaks on August 18th, 2008 at the opening of the bypass road.

It was a windy day, and a little dangerous to get to the ceremony on the south end of the Veteran’s Memorial Bridge, as others have pointed out.

Past and Future of Traffic in Salem

The bypass road is open.  The complaints about traffic aren’t about to stop.  Now, the next round of screaming continues as the east ramp from North to Bridge Sts. is permanently closed to accommodate the courthouse project.

After following the bypass road project, the courthouse project and reading (and blogging) Jim McAllister’s article in the News several weeks ago, I ask: 

Why are we defending a highway ramp?  Why do we cry over “that poor slip ramp”, star of Harry Potter and the Magical Slip Ramp, that so many on Federal St. mourned?

Nathaniel Hawthorne didn’t drive on the ramp!  (He did use the old Salem Depot!)

I’ll say it again:  Hawthorne didn’t drive on the ramp.  OK, Federal St.?  OK?!

If we had truly valued history 50 years ago, we would have never built the overpass in the first place!  Yes, the railroad tunnel was desperately needed, but the road, not so much.

As McAllister points out, we lost so much of our history when we built that overpass:  Salem Arena, Leslie’s Retreat Bridge, Salem Depot.  Where’s the screaming?  Couldn’t be that the Federal St. gang wasn’t around then.  Nah.

The bypass road should have been canceled, too, when it was clear that it would be severely truncated from what was planned originally.  MassHighway took half of the proposed alignment in Salem and turned it into what is now a dog park.

The generation that built that overpass and demolished Salem Depot have a lot to answer for.  They remind me of the panelists on a local political show I used to crew for.

This show featured (and still features) current and former politicians in Salem who manage the political narrative for Salem, just as the late Tim Russert managed our country’s narrative for the elites he worked for.

One panelist, a former city councilor, was always complaining about Salem “these days”.  He complained about the loss of the old downtown and the loss of the front “castle” half of the armory after it was burned in an arson fire in 1982 and the city and the state dithered about its ultimate disposition, ultimately losing it a few years ago.

He was not a regular citizen, complaining about things he or she could not change.  He was a politician as inside as one can get, back in the days of smoke-filled rooms.

He was in office when the armory burned and afterwards.  He was around when our downtown decayed.  And he was most certainly in politics when decisions were being made about the train tunnel, the depot and the overpass after WWII.

There are still those like him around.  Saying how great it was in the good old days, complaining all the while about things and people of today.  They could have spoken out (if for no one else but for future residents of Federal St.) but didn’t.

I say to them:  Look in the mirror before complaining about those “kids of today”.  You made the decisions 50 years ago and we are poorer for it today. 

SATV Cablecast renovation progress

We are moving along on our latest renovation project at SATV. You can follow our progress so far on my other blog. We should be back to normal programming by the end of this week.

Salem’s Last Road: It’s Open!

Two and a half years—and almost 1100 pictures and videos—later, Salem’s Last Road is open!  It didn’t take long after the ceremony, opening around 3:45 PM today.

It has been a long process to record this road in pictures, but a fun one.  It was a great pleasure and I felt a great sense of purpose to document the road.  After all this, the bypass road feels like “my road”.  (If Regina Flynn can have “her” Common…)  It was the inspiration for this blog and one of my spurs towards being more involved in my community.

I only regret not thinking about this sooner, and even more regret not being involved in the public meetings for the road.  There’s a lot I still don’t know about the history of the project, and still much I have to learn about the road, and transportation in Salem in general.  I had hoped to produce a video documentary on the road, but I couldn’t put aside the time to make it work.  Salem’s Last Road would be a great subject for a  history project that I would love to make happen.  Perhaps I will “down the road”.

I’m going to make another post in a few days on what I think the road means for Salem, but this is the end of my regular posts on the road.  Of course, it’s near my house and I love taking photos there, so there’ll be more occasional shots to come.

One last photo for now. 

See a slideshow of "Salem’s Last Road” on Flickr.