INT: Who was Alan Altshuler?

FS: Alan Altshuler was a key figure in all of this. He was initially a political science professor at MIT who was called on by Governor Sargent to take a new look at where we were headed in transportation policy. Later he was made Secretary of Transportation by Governor Sargent and he presided over this Boston Transportation Planning Review, this review that culminated in basically stopping the inner belt and the southwest expressway, two major very destructive interstate highways, and shifting most of the funds into public transportation and initiating the studies that have now led to the Big Dig. Alan was the secretary who led that process and he also did an extremely skillful job at working to get the legislation needed to do these things. It's one thing to make a policy statement that you're going to transform the MBTA or that you're going to take highway funds and use them for transportation, but you had to change the law to make those things happen and Altshuler basically got a major reorganization of the BMTA through in 1973 and the same year he really was one of the primary architects of the change in federal law that permitted cities to make decisions to use interstate highway funds for public transportation, rather than the highway, and give what's now called flexibility.

That really was invented in Boston by Alan Altshuler. It was a very fascinating political process because you had a Republican governor, a Republican secretary of transportation from Massachusetts, John Volpe. You had Tip O'Neil, who was then Majority Leader, and Senator Kennedy, both of whom who has opposed the inner belt, but supported getting the money to come to Massachusetts to help rebuild the transit system. So you had a bipartisan effort coming out of out of this process, which really led to a change in national law along with similar coalitions in other cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago, New York, New Orleans.

There were lots of places in the United States that were getting caught in this same confrontation between the inappropriate scale and disruption of the urban interstate highways when those cities really needed transit much more. And what Altshuler was really a master at was sort of developing the process. Governor Sargent made the strategic decisions. Alan Altshuler probably didn't even agree with all of the decisions, but the Governor made the policy call and Alan then implemented it exquisitely in terms of changing both Massachusetts law and participating in the national coalition to change the federal law. People tend to talk about the 1991 so called Ice Tea Legislation as a big landmark when federal funds became more flexible. It really began in 1973 with the language in the law that was crafted literally by Alan Altshuler.

INT: How did you come up with the idea to suppress the Central Artery?

FS: A lot of people think that depressing the Central Artery was my idea. The fact is I know it's not. A fella named Bill Reynolds is the one who first proposed it to me. As I became convinced that this was the right thing to do and really begin working on it very hard, I found that there were lots of other people who had had the same idea. So I know it's not originally my idea, and Bill Reynolds, again, is the first fella I heard talk about it. But it's an idea that I believe in and am proud to have played a role in getting it rolling.

INT: Can you tell the story about Reynolds coming up to you and explaining it?

FS: Initially Bill Reynolds, who was a highway builder and the head New England Road Builders, came up to me and said that, "This big ugly elevated road is like a neon sign flashing, 'Roads are bad.' And it's just a bad advertisement for our industry and I'm convinced that the only way we'll fix this anti-highway attitude is by correcting the mistake and putting it underground." And my first reaction was, "This is crazy. You know, how are we going to shut the city down for ten years while we build a new road?" But what got me fascinated was first of all, it was a wonderful vision of the city with the road underground, instead of elevated, but, secondly, the more I thought about it, the more I felt and feel that you could build a new road under the existing road and not shut the city down.

INT: Could you tell me how Altshuler reacted when you came to him with the depression of the artery idea.

FS: Well, actually I say we went to Altshuler, but we went to Jack Wofford, who was Altshuler's deputy. So I didn't get the facial expression, but basically Bill Reynolds and I went together to Jack Wofford, who was director of the Boston Transportation Planning Review and reported to Alan Altshuler. And our theory was, since we disagreed on almost everything, if we agreed on something, they'd be willing to at least give it a study, which turned out to be the case. At the same time, Altshuler was really cautious about the idea because I was representing the mayor of Boston, Kevin White, and telling him that the mayor really wanted this to happen, but he was also hearing from the Boston Redevelopment Authority director that the mayor did not want it to happen. So Alan was very concerned that if he got out there identified with this project, the city might decide to oppose it when he thought he was doing it in response to the city. So one of the things he required was that I produce a letter signed by Kevin White requesting the study, to make it clear that the mayor of the city wanted this to go forward. And I did. Kevin, in fact, was very enthusiastic about this idea. He lived on Beacon Hill, walked to work, really cared about what the aesthetic quality of the City of Boston. He was very enthusiastic about this project. So he sent the letter and Altshuler agreed to do the study, but he was always quite cautious about it because he was nervous that there'd be a reaction from the business community, that the disruptiveness of the construction process would be excessive, and it was a rational thing for him to be concerned with.

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