Belmont Community Path

  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...

I've been on hiatus fron this blog after Nitsch's submission of the 25% design plan at the end of 2021.  All that time, I've continued to observe the CPPC meetings; they have been as interesting as watching paint dry. Nitsch's Michalak seemed to avoid the CPPC but, a few times, the CPPC succeeded in having Michalak show up to give a report of ... non-progress. This was confirmed by someone with knowledge of the project within the MBTA who complained to me of how Nitsch was not delivering the necessary engineering plan although 1 year had lapsed since the request made in 2022. Engineering plan vs design sketch  My MBTA interlocutor explained that an engineering plan is different from the design plan. The latter is a sketch; the former is plan that shows location of items and structures in the subsurface and surface of the project area.  The subsurface items include pipes and cables because you don't want to start digging - for example - to build a wall and then fin...