Who will prevail within the Battle of the Bridges?
Will it’s Boston Mayor Michelle Wu in her try and rebuild the Long Island Bridge at value of $100 million?
Or will it’s Gov. Maura Healey who’s making an attempt to switch the 2 historic Cape Cod bridges, first the Sagamore after which the Bourne, for $4.5 billion?
The Long Island Bridge, devoted in 1951, was demolished in 2014 after it was deemed unsafe, though its underpinnings are nonetheless in place.
At its dedication, former Boston Mayor Maurice Tobin, then Secretary of Labor, known as the bridge “a symbol of compassion” in that it linked “the aged, the infirm, the needy and the lame” to medical and caring services on Long Island.
Mayor Wu would love the bridge to characterize the identical factor, solely now for these by medication and despair. The bridge is her effort to deal with the rising variety of drug addicted individuals who have turned Boston’s Mass and Cass space into the New England heart of habit, homelessness, dread and loss of life.
She desires to ship them to Long Island to proposed habit restoration services constructed on current constructions that want restoration.
Unlike the Cape Cod bridges, which had been constructed and owned by the U.S. authorities, the Long Island Bridge was constructed and is owned by Boston.
But the primary impediment to changing the bridge has been the opposition of Quincy officers and residents of the Squantum space of Quincy.
They are involved about elevated visitors and the potential hurt to the surroundings and their high quality of life. The solely street entry to the Long Island Bridge is thru Squantum.
Back then, when authorities appeared to work a lot better than it does in the present day, Tobin praised Quincy officers for his or her assist in getting the bridge constructed.
It is totally different in the present day. Current Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch has a special outlook.
He instructed the Herald, “I have said from day one that the city of Quincy was going to do everything in its power to keep the city of Boston from building that that bridge.”
Perhaps Mayor Wu ought to change techniques to win Quincy assist. One method is to rename the bridge after a cherished and revered Quincy resident. That may work.
Long Island, in spite of everything, solely acquired its title as a result of it was a protracted island, and no person got here up with something higher.
Wu might name it the Bellotti Bridge, after lifelong Quincy resident Francis X. Bellotti, a person of compassion, who gained state and nationwide fame after serving as an excellent legal professional basic for 12 years. He is now 100 years outdated.
Healey might do the identical factor with the 2 Cape Cod Bridges that had been in-built in-built 1934 and had been decided to be “functionally obsolete” years in the past.
As it stands, Healey is making an attempt to get federal funds to switch one of many two getting older bridges somewhat than cash to switch each.
Healey got here up with the plan after the Massachusetts delegation to Congress, all Democrats, did not get President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, to approve the $4.5 billion appropriation for each bridges.
The state will now search $1.45 billion towards the $2.15 billion it is going to value to switch the Sagamore Bridge, after which later search extra billions for the brand new Bourne Bridge.
We all ought to dwell so lengthy.
To quicken the method, and to suck as much as Biden– whereas there may be nonetheless time –Healey, like Wu, ought to think about renaming the bridges. She might name them the Joe & Jill Bridges, the Sagamore for Joe and the Bourne for Jill, his spouse.
There shouldn’t be an excessive amount of opposition to the title adjustments, if the billions of greenbacks are flowing in. Sagamore would nonetheless be referred to as a bit of the city of Bourne. And Bourne was named after a long-forgotten politician anyway.
But all of it is likely to be irrelevant within the Battle of the Bridges.
As Soviet Union chief Nikita Khrushchev as soon as noticed, “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there is no river.”
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com”