The SSA has been encroaching on and abusing Woods Hole since 1960. I’ve watched the whole thing from the beginning. Recently the Woods Hole Road was referred to as a state highway. It’s not a highway. It’s a dead end, two-lane road that has been transformed by power politics into an overloaded service road, and the neighbors be damned. I remember when they first widened the Woods Hole Road, and the SSA promised it would not be used for parking but was immediately used for just that. People parked their cars on the side of the road past Church street. Later, the SSA said it would never use the old train tracks for parking, but of course they broke that pledge too. They told Woods Hole people twice that the third slip in Woods Hole and the second slip in Vineyard Haven would only be used for repairs, winter layup, and emergencies. Fat chance. Indeed, when Vineyarders rejected the second slip plan the SSA had proposed, the SSA leaned on state legislators for whom they do favors to support legislation that exempted the boat line from Vineyard oversight. They promised they would not increase boat traffic, but they have. There is a long, shabby history of SSA lies to Woods Hole and Vineyard people. People on both sides of Vineyard Sound know it.

Some people may think that Woods Hole residents are silly or petty to want to keep what remains of the view over the terminal. The huge terminal the ferry line is developing does not begin to fit. It is the latest installment of a decades long mistake, in which SSA management and the feckless members who ought to represent the interests of the several towns are complicit. So the SSA expands, auto traffic expands, and fresh thinking is sidelined. Of course there are several ways to not obliterate the view, to move the building and make it smaller. But SSA planners say they are bound by regulations, and the members pipe down,

Woods Hole should scream loudly and long on this issue of the early boats and trucks. We are not the ones who hear the trucks thunder down the road before sunrise. The trucks are moving much faster there than they are when they crawl through Vineyard Haven or other Vineyard towns.

The SSA has no interest in Woods Hole, but it knows that every dollar it sinks into the Woods Hole terminal is an anchor that will reinforce its meritless argument that other ports, coordination in regional transport planning, or a reimagined modern fleet of vessels might create a future that respects the wishes of nearby residents and serves the traveling public better. So Islanders and Falmouth residents should pay attention. It is in the interests of both Woods Hole and the Vineyard to support one another in an effort to protect what remains of these once remarkable and unusual places.

Molly Cabral

Vineyard Haven