The City of Somerville earlier this month decided to reroute federal stimulus funds from a project to extend a community bike path to the construction of a new Orange Line T station in Assembly Square.
Somerville Transportation and Infrastructure Director Michael Lambert said the $3.5 million in federal funds were originally intended to support an expansion to Lowell Street of the Community Bike Path, which currently runs from Davis Square eastward to Cedar Street.
Since the bike path's design is not scheduled for completion and approval before the federal grant expires in September, Lambert said the city had to consider other options.
"On the other hand, the Orange Line T station will be ready to go out to bid for construction in April," Lambert told the Daily.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) in 2009 announced plans for a jointly funded project to develop and rejuvenate the Assembly Square area through the construction of public infrastructure, including the Orange Line stop between the existing Sullivan Square and Wellington stations. The project was part of a longer-term effort to rebuild a 66.5-acre stretch of industrial space on the Mystic River waterfront.
The Massachusetts Bay Transport Authority (MBTA) and the developer Federal Realty Investment Trust collaborated last month on an agreement that would allow them to move forward with construction on the stop.
In the meantime, Somerville has applied for a $500,000 grant from the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization's Clean Air and Mobility Program to fund work on the community path's extension sometime during the next year, Lambert said. He added that the city has already set aside $1.5 million for the path.
The new Orange Line stop, along with the extension of the Green Line through Medford and Somerville slated for completion in 2015, is part of the city's ongoing effort to improve public transit availability for its residents, Lambert said.
"Right now, 15 [percent] of our residents live within a half-mile of a T stop," Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone told the Daily in an e-mail. "Once the Green Line extension and the Assembly Square Orange Line station get built, then 85 [percent] of our residents will live within a half mile of a T stop."
The Orange Line station will help bring more private investors and ultimately a long-awaited urban renewal to Assembly Square, according to Lambert.
"The T station is a critical first step to bringing serious economic development there," he said.
Once the bike path is paved from Cedar to Lowell in the coming year, another future expansion of the path will follow the Green Line extension, Somerville spokesman Michael Meehan told the Daily.
Meehan compared the anticipated revitalization of Assembly Square to the resurgence of Davis Square after the MBTA built the Red Line station in 1984.
"Before that T station, Davis looked nothing like it looks now," Meehan said. "It was run-down and not at all an attractive place to be. Then the T station came in, and people began to invest in the area."
Federal Realty Investment Trust, which in 2005 purchased property in Assembly Square, already plans to change the face of the area with office space, over a million square feet of retailers and new residential units, according to Meehan.
Meehan said that despite the setback in funding, the bike path project has not been abandoned, and that the extension will provide both recreational and commuting opportunities for Somerville residents and visitors.
"We're trying to create multimodal transportation," Meehan said. "You can ride a bike to the T station and then ride a train to where you want to go."
Over the next several years, once the Green Line extension is complete, the Commmunity Bike Path will eventually connect to join a unified route all the way from Bedford to Boston.
"If the path is made to run all the way through Somerville, it links up to the Kennedy Greenway and puts you straight into Boston," Meehan said. "Regionally speaking, that would give you something very few cities have."
