“A T delay, and square is fuming”
Quotes from the article…
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Local politicians and community members are continuing to push to keep the MBTA’s planned Green Line extension beyond Lechmere into Union Square and West Medford on track. A proposal to push the project back three years drew adamant opposition from about 40 speakers at a recent public hearing before the Department of Environmental Protection.
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Under the current proposal, made by the Executive Office of Transportation, construction of the extension would not be completed until 2014, a revision of the 2011 end date estimated by the state last spring.
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That was also the complaint of Peter Varga, a Union Square resident and active supporter of the Green Line extension.
”I haven’t heard any of my Portuguese neighbors here speaking at this podium,” he said. ”I can only imagine trying to do this if English is not your first language, and these are the people who really need this.”
Varga said he couldn’t wait an additional three years for relief from exhaust fumes that he believes the rail extension would provide. He said he can’t open his windows in the summertime because his living room fills with fumes from traffic below.
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Resident Steve Mulder shared Varga’s concern, saying the quality of life in Union Square is overwhelmed by traffic.
”My cat has asthma. I’m not worried about my cat, but I’m very worried about the kids that I see playing around my neighborhood” who inhale fumes ”caused by dead-stopped traffic at Union Square,” he said.
James McGinnis, who also lives in Union Square, said, ”I’m not convinced that the completion by 2011 is not possible.”
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Public comment is open on the matter until Jan. 17, and the Department of Environmental Protection will make its recommendations to the state in early spring, said Ed Coletta, spokesman for the department.