MDC Refuses University's Request To Look at Plans for Underpasses

Plans for three underpasses along Memorial Drive are being withheld from the University by the Metropolitan District Commission, it was learned yesterday. One of the three reportedly threatens Weld Boat House and would come very close to Eliot House.

A high University official yesterday termed the MDC's refusal to reveal the plans as "highly abnormal." He said that it seems to indicate that the commission "has decided to go ahead regardless of what people in Cambridge think."

In the past, he explained, the MDC and the University have cooperated successfully in projects which concern them both.

Robert F. Murphy, MDC Commissioner, said last night that his agency would release plans for the underpass only at a public hearing scheduled for 10:30 a.m. next Friday. He commented that he was "surely not ... going to discriminate against anyone" by releasing the plans earlier to one group than to another.

A request by City Manager John J. Curry to see the plat's also apparently has been refused on these grounds, as has another by Charles W. Eliot, professor of City and Regional Planning. Eliot was recently appointed by Gov. Peabody to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.

Murphy indicated last night that his agency was obligated to build the underpasses by a 1962 legislative act.

Opposition to the underpasses seems to be almost unanimous in Cambridge. Besides the University, and many local officials, four civic groups are against the plan.

This fall the Cambridge City Planning Board proposed an alternative to the underpasses. The planning board's solution, which would cost approximately $100,000 in contrast to the $6 million for the underpasses, includes a computer traffic control system.

Meanwhile, a tentative route through Somerville and Cambridge for the Inner Belt expressway, an eight-lane highway connecting various parts of greater Boston, was revealed yesterday. Once the Inner Belt is completed, it will be linked up with the Massachusetts Turnpike, which will have an exit adjacent to Cambridge in Allston.

Opponents of the underpasses reportedly believe that this hookup will handle most extra traffic from the turnpike and will eliminate any need for radical alternations of Memorial Drive.

The attack on the underpasses will be centered at two public hearings, one next Friday at MDC headquarters in Boston, the other at the State House, Feb. 6. The second hearing may prove to be the most important as it could possibly lead to new legislation blocking the construction.

Cambridge Rep. Mary Newman has already filed a bill which would bar the underpasses by amending the original legislation authorizing them