Inner Belt: II

Governor John A. Volpe has probably preserved his image. The eight-month delay in selecting the Cambridge-Somerville route for the Inner Belt was long enough to satisfy most people that the state had been "objective" and picked the best path for everyone. At the press conference called to announce the decision, Volpe was asked whether he thought he had wasted time by ordering the review of the highway. He wasn't happy over the lost months, the governor conceded, but now he felt that his conscience was clear because the decision had been carefully scrutinized.

The story as it actually happened is not so pretty. In March, 1966, the DPW first selected the Brookline-Elm St. route for the Cambridge section of the highway an sent the recommendation to Washington for federal approval. Volpe suspended the decision in October while campaigning hard for reelection. From Volpe's perspective, the campaign was placid. The polls showed him far ahead, and his opponent had yet to find vulnerable spots in the governor's record. But the Inner Belt issue was potentially disruptive. Opponents of the Belt looked menancing; they were threatening to make the highway a volatile election issue. Thus, after meeting with leaders of the anti-Belt campaign, Volpe announced that new facts had come to his attention and that, as a result, he had ordered the DPW "to start from scratch" in finding a route for Cambridge.

Actually, there were no "new facts." The Portland Albany route that Cambridge citizens proposed as an alternative was the same in October as it had been in March. The main difference was Volpe's attitude: in March, he was untroubled by the DPW's selection; in October, he was worried.

Moreover, his pledge proved to be only partially true. There was no "start from scratch" in searching for an Inner Belt route through Cambridge. The DPW did make an intensive comparison of the Brookline-Elm St. route with the Portland-Albany alternate, but that was all. The DPW made it clear that Brookline Elm was still the route to beat and that only astounding new in formation would convince it otherwise. Even though eight months and $30,000 were spent on the new study it would have been surprising had the DPW reached a new conclusion. The department used the same criteria to evaluate the same information, and naturally it reached the same decision.

Proponents of Portland-Albany were not asking for this repeat performance. They wanted a deeper and more sympathetic review of the social consequences of the highway for Cambridge. They never got it, and, for that the Governor is to blame more than anyone else.