Dozens of Charlestown residents lined up beneath the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge on Friday as if waiting for a starter’s gun to go off. Some 698 feet away in Cambridge, an equally anxious contingent stood ready to charge in their direction.
Between them lay the largest pedestrian and bicyclist bridge ever built in Boston, a $10 million, steel-piped architectural wonder dubbed the North Bank Bridge.
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Awesome! Now, if we could only get a walking bridge built from East Cambridge to the planned Lechmere Green line station so that the residents of East Cambridge don't become road kill crossing Msgr O'Brien, we'll really be doing well with urban planning.
Cindy Williams has already lived the nightmare of being unable to protect a son who found himself in mortal danger through no fault of his own. She has fought the battle of escorting her son to school, changing schools, fighting off bullies, and battling a bureaucracy that so often fails to focus on a problem until after tragedy has struck. And she has known the pain of losing her son. Derrick Williams was 20 years old when he died on July 20, 2006, four months after he was shot and five years after he was first targeted, his mother says, because he didn't want to join a gang. So her heart went out to Towanda Kellam this week. Kellum is the mother of Lance Hartgrove, a 15-year-old who was stabbed to death Tuesday behind a federal building in Dudley Square, heading home from a pickup basketball game. His mother said he has been threatened and pursued for months, and that no one did anything about it.************The bridge, built by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and the Department of Conservation and Recreation, is the FIRST OF THREE pedestrian and bicyclist bridges expected to open along the Charles River between the Museum of Science and the Charles River Locks. That stretch ......."LOST HALF MILE," because it was home to rail yards, potato sheds, and jail parking lots, making it largely inaccessible for RECREATIONAL uses".***** EACH BRIDGE COST $10 MILLION DOLLARS. $30 MILLION DOLLARS. IMAGINE HOW MANY POLICE DETAILS $30 MILLION DOLLARS WOULD BRING TO MS. KELLAM'S NEIGHBORHOOD. HOW MANY CHILDREN WOULD IT HAVE SAVED?