MBTA to Rule on Subway Agreement Today; Harvard May Receive $1 Million for Work

The board of directors of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) is scheduled to vote this morning on an agreement which would give Harvard about $1 million in exchange for contruction necessitated by the extension of the Red Line through Harvard Square.

MBTA Board Chairman Robert Foster said last week the board probably will pass the agreement, which negotiators from Harvard and the MBTA have been working on since the spring.

The agreement would give the University more than $600,000 in exchange for land easements in the Square and the cost of soundproofing University buildings bordering on Mass Ave.

Harvard has also asked the MBTA for about $320,000 to finance the dismantling and reconstruction of the brick and iron fence which borders the Yard, L. Edward Lashman, University negotiator with the MBTA, said last week.

The MBTA is extending the Red Line three miles northwest to the Alewife Brook Parkway. Total costs for the project, scheduled to be completed in May 1984, are estimated at about half a billion

"After we convinced the MBTA that they could not arbitrarily and unilaterally take our land--and that we want to cooperate with them--there were no major disagreements," Lashman said last week.

Officials from the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, which is financing about 80 per cent of the extension project, ruled last spring that the $1 million in compensation is justifiable, "in the peculiar case of a University."