A Cambridge Monstrosity

IT'S BIG, ugly and coming your way.

It's Scheme Z. It's a serious eyesore--70 acres of concrete and steel ramps rising 110 feet into the sky. And it's slated for construction in East Cambridge.

However, the Scheme Z highway interchange is part of the $5 billion Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project, a desperately needed construction plan that will ease Hub traffic problems, create needed jobs and open up new space for development in down-town Boston. Scheme Z is currently the only plan that can link the Central Artery in Boston with Interstate 93 and the rest of the world, a project that must be completed.

The Central Artery must be built and some form of Scheme Z must be constructed in East Cambridge. But the monstrous design on the table now is too high a cost for Cambridge or any community to bear.

THE CENTRAL ARTERY project's replacement of downtown Boston's prematurely-aged elevated highway with a depressed underground version will be a boon for traffic-weary commuters, expansion-minded businesses and city residents who will enjoy Boston's newly created parkland.

But in a strange twist of logic, known only to bureaucrats and highway planners, what goes down must come up. When the elevated highway is buried beneath Boston, a new structure will arise in Cambridge. And sporting 16 lanes and 11 stories, it will come up with a vengeance.

The proposal has sparked a slew of protests across the city. Shocked at Scheme Z's magnitude, the Cambridge City Council and various community groups are crying stop Scheme Z and slapping the colossal project with a slew of lawsuits.

But let's face facts. Notwithstanding the indignant cries of environmental destruction and destroyed parkland, most of the outrage boils down to the fact that opponents don't want something big and ugly in Cambridge. A "not in my backyard" attitude may score political points, but it does not accomplish solutions or work toward a meaningful compromise.

That is not to say there aren't good reasons to oppose highways. There are, and Cambridge has successfully used them in the past, but Scheme Z does not offer itself to these defenses.

The last major highway projects to be proposed in Boston have been stopped short by concerns about neighborhood destruction and the seizing of homes. The Inner Belt and the Southeast Expressway, would have threatened the destruction of several thousand homes two decades ago. Both the Belt and the Expressway should have been stopped and they were.

But Scheme Z doesn't threaten any homes. In fact, its prime backers, former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and Frederick P. Salvucci, were leaders in the fight against the Belt and Expressway.

But while homes were the issue of the sixties, today's protesters are looking at the decade's hip new issue--the environment. And it is here that Scheme Z opponents strike, pointing to air pollution, noise and destruction of parkland environmental groups have raised serious concerns about the plan.

But the land on which Scheme Z will be built has for many years served as a trasportation corridor. Most of the land is undeveloped, cluttered with sand pits and railroad tracks.

When a highway project is evaluated, it can't be viewed in the light of the costs and benefits it will bring to one community, one political boundary. Transportation must be looked at as a regional issue. Otherwise, no highway would ever be built.

BUT THE BURDEN Cambridge is being asked to bear is ridiculously heavy--especially since the benefits of the Central Artery are disproportionately weighed toward Boston and its outlying communities.

Even though the compelling reasons Cambridge has used to oppose previous highway projects do not apply to Scheme Z, Cambridge has a right to complain. The problem with Scheme Z goes beyone what it will bring to East Cambridge. The real problem is what it will keep away. If Scheme Z goes through, no matter how wonderful the effects will be for Boston, North Point in East Cambridge will be doomed to remain a transportation corridor forever.

No amount of parkland can offset a tangle of ramps and roads the size of Boston Common. What person can relax, play or enjoy a park while thousand of cars circle above their head? No new housing can be built in the shadow of a colossal series of ramps and roads pooring soot and noise down on the land below. As Scheme Z opponent Gladys P. Gifford says, "You can't mitigate a monster."

Scheme Z won't wreck much--there isn't much there to wreck--but its sheer size and the smog it will create will keep all positive development out of North Point. Problems of aesthetics and traffic that have plagued Boston will be dumped on Cambridge. State officals should stop and look again for a more palatable alternative.

IT WON'T BE EASY to find an alternative. Salvucci and his department came up with 32 options (including Scheme A through Z, AA through DD and Schemes A and Q modified, for the record) before settling on Scheme Z. And Cambridge must understand that even a modified Scheme Z or a complete replacement will still be very large and extremely unattractive. In the real world, individual communities must sacrifice for the good of the Commonwealth.

But the plan shouldn't be so massive or create so much noise and pollution that it dooms North Point to a hopeless future. With the right planning, the railyards and sandpits of East Cambridge could become a new Back Bay or a new low income housing development--but not if the present plan is implemented. It is simply too big. It is simply too ugly. And it offers nothing to Cambridge in return.