Alarming Contradictions

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Dan Greenbaum’s commentary on the roundabout issue in last week’s Gazette is instructive in that he, as a respected (retired) traffic consultant, concedes that building the roundabout now, or hopefully ever, is not a do-or-die situation — neither from the funding nor the traffic perspective. The roundabout is really not needed now, he says. That is helpful given that the rushed and flawed process at the MVC to approve this over-engineered, and unwanted (by the public) suburban feature was predicated on an imminent funding schedule established by the DOT. If an experienced traffic professional is now saying that the money will be there in the future when such a traffic control measure may actually be necessary, then the need for haste simply never existed. Now we know.

I’m happy that Mr. Greenbaum has now taken a more nuanced position than he has before. Several of the commissioners who voted to approve the roundabout cited his letter of support in the DRI hearing record as their reason for voting in favor. Neither in that letter nor in his commentary, however, does he indicate that he is a member of the MVC’s Joint Transportation Committee. Whenever the roundabout has come up in its deliberations he has given it a high priority and supported its construction. Too bad it’s too late for those commissioners to change their vote now that he has, seemingly, somewhat changed his mind.

Two underlying aspects that he addresses in his commentary are alarming. The first is the mantra that vehicular traffic growth on the Island is a given and inevitable, which seems to be an article of faith for not only traffic consultants, but planners in general. In this instance, the design engineer hired by the state for the roundabout is using an annual traffic growth of 1.5 per cent over the next two decades to justify the roundabout. On the other hand, the MVC’s actual traffic counts indicate traffic through the intersection has decreased by about 1 per cent per year over the past five years or so. At the very least, this contradiction between sacred assumptions and actual data should have been reconciled before approval was granted. Among many other issues, it wasn’t.

Be that as it may, there is little reason to accept without question the inevitability of ever more cars on the Island, or at that specific intersection. Is it not true that some time ago the towns voted to tell the Steamship Authority not to increase the car-carrying capacity of the ferries, especially during the summer months, precisely to put a lid on traffic congestion? Is it not also true that part of the MVC’s portfolio is comprehensive transportation planning, which is fundamental to maintaining the character of the Island? And isn’t that the precise mission of the MVC, i.e., preserving and maintaining the character of the Island? Why is it then that we must accept, willy-nilly, that vehicular traffic will only go up when we have effective tools already in hand to control it?

The other aspect of this troublesome issue that I find vexing is the marginalization of public sentiment by the MVC and the DOT. Notably, there is also no recognition of the widespread public opposition, as such, to the roundabout in Mr. Greenbaum’s commentary. His assertion that, “ . . . it is only in the last year that it has become so controversial,” couldn’t be further off the mark. From the get-go, sometime in 2004, the public has had a strong negative response to the idea of a roundabout at the blinker. But he, the MVC and the DOT behave as if the public doesn’t really exist, or somehow doesn’t matter. The very negative public reaction that has manifested itself again over the past six months is in part because many people, including this writer, thought the roundabout, for whatever reason, died a well deserved death years ago. It had been all but invisible for years until the DOT hearing back in April.

Mr. Greenbaum decries the level of emotion he says is attached to the issue, and dismisses the need for it. That is puzzling. When a very large number of people repeatedly (2004, 2006, and currently) have signed petitions saying, “We don’t want a roundabout!” and are repeatedly ignored, why wouldn’t they become angry and emotional? In recent weeks I have witnessed Island residents literally lining up, when they realize someone is collecting signatures, to sign the current petitions. The signers now number in the thousands, and counting. Obviously Mr. Greenbaum’s assertion that a roundabout would essentially be a benign change is not shared widely.

It’s of no little consequence that at least two towns (Edgartown, and West Tisbury) are now going to court to appeal the MVC’s unfortunate decision. To my knowledge, such a circumstance has never arisen before. If nothing else, the appeal says the selectmen in those towns see the flaws in the project, in the process, and hear the public’s outcry.

Richard Knabel

West Tisbury

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Railroad Job

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

For several months now I’ve been trying to understand why roundabout proponents think we need a roundabout. The most compelling reasons seem to be “the state’s paying for it” and “you can’t fight town hall.” In his Nov. 24 op-ed, Yield to Rationale at Roundabout, Dan Greenbaum seems pretty lukewarm about the idea himself. That’s encouraging. Perhaps we can stop this thing before we have to go down to the intersection and occupy the bulldozers?

Mr. Greenbaum doesn’t believe that the project warrants “the emotional responses that have been expressed.” Having attended a bunch of meetings, read a bunch of documents, and done a bunch of research, I disagree. I’m pretty emotional myself: astonished, angry, and disgusted at the way this project has been pushed through with flagrant disregard for common sense, the facts, and popular opinion.

In 2004 and 2006, petitions containing more than 2,600 signatures of Vineyarders opposed to the roundabout were presented to the Oak Bluffs selectmen. They were largely ignored. So were the citizens who showed up to speak at various meetings and public hearings. In September 2006 the selectmen voted 3–2 to proceed with the project. Oak Bluffs voters never got a chance to express their opinion, either at town meeting or at the polls.

Any Vineyarder with a map and a driver’s license could see that a major change at the blinker intersection would have impact beyond the town of Oak Bluffs. Why didn’t the Oak Bluffs selectmen see it? Why didn’t the Martha’s Vineyard Commission see it? Either they were asleep at the wheel or they chose to ignore the obvious regional implications of what they were doing. Whichever the case, I want those individuals called to account. If this constitutes one of the “personal attacks” that Mr. Greenbaum deplores, so be it. How else are we to keep this from happening again?

After September 2006, the project slipped below radar for over four and a half years. Many Vineyarders thought it had died. When it resurfaced this past spring, I and quite a few others finally woke up. Thanks to the West Tisbury selectmen, the roundabout plan was at long last formally referred to the MVC as a development of regional impact (DRI). Some commissioners took the referral seriously. Others seemed to consider it a pesky nuisance that might delay or derail the headlong rush to roundabout. The two “public hearings” were orchestrated to showcase the roundabout plans and minimize discussion about whether the roundabout was necessary. Who set the agenda for these hearings, and why were they stacked in favor of the state and its chosen contractor? If asking such questions constitutes a “personal attack,” so be it.

The discussion devoted to the project was, to put it politely, less than rigorous. Don’t take my word for it. The hearings and meetings were all filmed for MVTV. You can watch them yourself. When the roundabout project was conceived, in the early 2000s, accidents were a serious issue at the blinker intersection. With the institution of the four-way stop in 2003, both the number and the severity of the accidents dropped significantly. Nevertheless, at the Sept. 1 DRI hearing, both the state’s contractor and Oak Bluffs officials continued to emphasize safety as the compelling rationale for the roundabout.

A month later, when the MVC voted 7–6 to approve the project, safety had receded into the deep background; now it was all about traffic congestion. We were subjected to a classic bait-and-switch: Lure the marks in with “Safety! Safety!” then deliver the roundabout as a cure for traffic congestion — without discussing whether seasonal traffic congestion is a problem serious enough to need solving and, if it is, what other options are available. Why? The opposition had shot holes in the safety argument. The average annual “crash rate” at the intersection is only 4.25, and most of the accidents are fender-benders. Virtually no studies indicate that roundabouts are safer than four-way stops, and quite a few studies suggest that roundabouts can cause trouble for bicyclists and pedestrians. Mr. Greenbaum argues otherwise; perhaps he knows something that the state’s contractor didn’t?

The short version is that we’re being railroaded by a small number of people who think they know what’s best for the rest of us, and because state funding has been arranged behind the scenes they don’t need the voters’ permission to proceed. That’s why I’m angry. I want to know why this is happening, I want it to stop, and I don’t want it to happen again. If that makes Mr. Greenbaum uncomfortable, so be it.

Susanna J. Sturgis

West Tisbury

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Rational or Rationale?

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

In his piece on the roundabout controversy which plays on “rationale” and “rational,” Dan Greenbaum never addresses the very real objections of many, many Vineyarders to the massive scale of the project, the almost 10-year flawed process which produced it, or its quadrupled cost.

Instead he asserts that the project does not warrant so much negative energy and goes on to say that there will be “little impact on the Vineyard, whether or not it is built at this time.” This, of course, immediately raises the question: Why build it at all, with its questionable impact on safety and traffic flow and its clearly negative impact on the Vineyard landscape?

One would hope that Mr. Greenbaum, as a member of the Joint Transportation Committee of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, would at least mention the viable, practical alternative to the roundabout, an inexpensive smart traffic light, programmed to handle the peak traffic during the summer and then adjusted to handle the lighter traffic in the off-season. Why have the selectmen of Oak Bluffs, the JTC, and MVC so consistently ignored this very workable, low impact, and inexpensive solution?

Instead, Mr. Greenbaum treats Vineyarders to a lecture on accepting this bad public project with its dubious solutions to the problems of the intersection. Vineyarders deserve a better, more rational solution to the problem, not a rationale for the present flawed project, in effect saying that it doesn’t matter whether it goes forward or not.

It does.

Nancy A. Huntington

Vineyard Haven