Belmont Community Path

 I keep hearing town hall people blame the MBTA for the switch from tunnel jacking to cut & cover.  From the sequence of events that I witnessed, it was the town's own fault that the project started off with jacking. PARE vs NITSCH   It all started with the PARE to Nitsch switch at the design stage which was a very unconventional move. It's all described here  FIRST MEETING WITH NITSCH  At the first meeting after being hired, Michalak made mention of tunnel jacking. The committee members expressed some surprise saying they had expected cut & cover. Their surprise surprised me since the Nitch bid was so  much about jacking.  Michalak made it clear that the method to be used was jacking. SECOND MEETING WITH NITSCH At this meeting, Michalak talked about jacking but now he implied that he was obeying the town's wish to use jacking. This was quietly accepted by the committee members.  I was slack jawed at how responsibility for jacking had...

 Much of the space where the town wants to build the path and the underpass is already occupied by MBTA utilities as you will see in these videos and photos. These are videos and photos of the area where the town/Nitsch plan to put the underpass. It is the area where you will see small sheds connected by tubes to the tracks.  The large white tanks are propane tanks used to keep the switches from freezing in the winter. There are also many MBTA manhole covers that access cables laid along the length of the tracks.  According to an abutter to this area "Last summer, the trench they [MBTA] dug for the positive train control cable was 4 feet deep. "  However, Nitsch's Michalak has said that the tunnel must be placed 3 feet under the RR tracks to avoid our high water table. T his means is that the tunnel and the MBTA's underground conduit of cables are at odds with each other.   As anyone can see, the Alexander location will be a tight squeeze for the tunnel but...

  Briefly, in my own words, based on what Nitsch's Soltys said at the SB on Monday: A - waiting for the MBTA permit to conduct the SUE.  As soon as that is done, revision of the 25% design for submission this July.  B - review process is generally 30 days but it can be more.  Nitsch hopes for a 30 day review and approval of the 25% sometime in August, 2025 C - once 25% is approved, Nitsch can submit the 75% in September with another hoped-for 30 day review and approval which brings it to sometime in October, 2025. D - Nitsch then working on 100% while ROW gets done.  Nitsch expects this phase to last 11 months. E -  Nitsch expects to submit the 100% in Sept 2026 which is FY 2027. Below is Nitsch as quoted from MassDOT public records ["Ad date" = MassDOT puts out contract bid]: As discussed, attached is our DRAFT schedule showing a 2026 TIP year. Please note the following: 🔺Ad date listed for 9/12/26, the l...

SCHEDULE DELAY   I have the thread of emails and docs on this matter from MassDOT public records ( link to docs ) so my suspicions about the fact they have been stuck at 25% have been confirmed.  In addition, Nitsch engineers came before the town and admitted it  twice ( link to 3/24 SB video - Nitsch at 1 hr 30 min; for the 3/19 CPPC recording, ask CPPC Chairwoman Muson). The project is still stuck in the first step. The 25% design plan has not been approved.  Nitsch still needs to do  the Subsurface utility survey - Class B (SUE) which is essential for the sketching and structural design of the tunnel.  Hence, they don’t have a clue as how to design the tunnel at this point.  Cutting corners, they submitted plans for a 75% for the rest of the path in the absence of a 25% revised and approved plan. Wisely, MassDOT rejected it because the 25% was missing.  In their own defense, Nitsch argued that,as they saw it, the tunnel was a “minor spur” an...

 I am going to start going through my files and posting for historical reasons.  Soon I will post what is really happening with the Belmont Community Path and all the associated lies.  But here is a blast from the past.   After the town decided to switch from PARE to Nitsch unexpectedly, I wrote Amy Archer. To me it was an unfair decision.   To Amy Archer, PARE engineer July 20, 2019   I am sorry that this town won’t be working with Pare to develop the commuter path.   Besides stonewalling residents, it would seem there are other undercurrents at work that I find very upsetting. The choice, as far as I understood based on the discussion I heard the Friday of the presentations, had nothing to do with your credentials or quality of work.  As a matter of fact, your competitor’s presentation was subpar and seemed to reveal that they had not even read your feasibility study.  What I observed was a group of people trying to come up with reasons ...

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive " Abutters have asked for the engineering plan for the 25% design submittal or what Stanton called the "revised" 25% design.  Since, on January 10, Michalak (PE or Project Engineer) announced that the Public Hearing had been scheduled then this revised plan had to exist at that date.  JS requested it from MassDOT Public Records on Februaru 23 and waited and waited.  Finally around March 14-15, JS received documents: the original, unrevised 25% design submission from November 2021, ROW papers, and the bridge worksheet with a submission date of January 24. (It's a tunnel or underpass but technically it becomes a bridge).   Note that it is the original 25% not the revised design so it still has a figure indicating that the tunnel will be "jacked".   The other fun part is that the bridge worksheet was submitted on January 24th not by December 21, 2023 as Michalak had said at the Dec...