Politics makes strange bedfellows.
Former State Senator Dianne Wilkerson and President Donald Trump are not natural political allies. But they both have issues with Mayor Michelle Wu and could find themselves connected by a common issue:
Opposing the Blue Hill Ave center lane bus project.
A coalition of residents, merchants, and community leaders has now taken the extraordinary step of asking U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to withdraw approximately $80 million in federal funding for the project. According to the coalition, more than 2,200 residents signed a petition to stop the project. Their letter argues that after years of meetings, public hearings, and attempts to engage City Hall, they have run out of options to stop or redesign the project.
The project goes back to what was called 28X in Gov. Deval Patrick’s day. When there was community opposition, state officials withdrew an application for federal funding for the project.
The plan has been discussed for years.
Mayor Wu has proposed the project again. I told Stephen Gray of Grayscale Collaborative that they needed to understand the history of the project. He said, “They wanted to start with a clean slate.” Starting with a “clean slate” sounded good but translated into an attitude and an action that resulted in years of prior feedback being discarded.
What would happen to the cars that double parked along Blue Hill Ave, for church on Sunday, the loss of parking, and the resulting business impact?
Instead of incorporating prior feedback i.e. we have heard your prior concerns, and this is how we are going to address them, they simply ignored them to the peril of the project. Grayscale was taken by surprise, but shouldn’t have been, when the first community meeting became contentious, because so many people opposed the project from the beginning. City officials were asking what residents wanted, but many residents felt they had already answered that question; “Not this project.”
I noticed that the report the consultants put together for the city explained the process and recorded many comments from the residents but none of the comments were negative or critical of the project. That was not a true reflection of the community.
When candidates were running for State Legislature seats and were asked their position on the project ,they all said no with the exception of Rep. Nika Elugardo, and when they said no, large crowds cheered. People were writing editorials against it and when you went to the city’s website on the project, you could only infer from all of the positive comments that the community was 100% behind this. They weren’t.
I knew opposition was getting serious when campaign signs opposing the project started appearing in the windows of businesses. When a petition to oppose the project gathered thousands of signatures, that should have been a warning. But none of this feedback seemed to make it to the mayor’s office, or perhaps it did. Which is why we are where we are.
That feels very similar to the White Stadium project, where a number of people felt their concerns weren’t being addressed, and wanted stop the project in its current form.
Former State Senator Dianne Wilkerson has framed the issue in even broader terms. White Stadium is the largest public investment to take place in Boston’s Black community in decades, yet many Black community leaders (residents and businesses owners) argue they were never granted a meeting with the mayor to discuss their concerns (around the loss of business, parking, economic and environmental harm.) The same issues that prompted the mayor to attend multiple meetings with the residents of Charlestown, who had concerns about the proposed Everett soccer stadium.
They argue that the same pattern occurred with the Blue Hill Avenue center lane bus project. Regardless of whether one supports or opposes either project, both would have significant impacts on predominantly Black neighborhoods. To many residents, the question is not simply the outcome but whether those most affected were given an opportunity to have their concerns heard at the highest levels of City Hall.
When thousands of residents sign petitions, community organizations mobilize, and elected representatives raise concerns without securing that direct engagement, some begin to conclude that participation is being managed rather than valued.
Whether one agrees with the opponents or not, both controversies reveal the same underlying challenge: once residents believe decisions have effectively been made before community concerns are fully considered, trust begins to erode. The recently presented parking plan for White Stadium will only further worsen the mayor’s relationship with the Black community.
The challenge for government is that trust is cumulative. Every time residents feel their concerns are dismissed, skepticism grows. Eventually people stop distinguishing between individual projects and begin judging the entire process. At that point, opposition is no longer about bus lanes, stadiums, bike lanes, housing, or development. It becomes a referendum on whether public engagement is genuine or merely procedural. Once that trust is lost, rebuilding it is far harder than winning any single policy debate.
Public engagement is not measured by the number of meetings held. It is measured by whether participants believe they were heard.
Today the debate has escalated from neighborhood meetings to the desk of the Secretary of Transportation of the United States.
That should concern everyone.
The ultimate lesson of Blue Hill Avenue is not about bus lanes.
It is about trust.
When people believe their voices are being ignored, they eventually stop talking to City Hall and start looking for someone else who will listen.
Ed Gaskin is Executive Director of Greater Grove Hall Main Streets and founder of Sunday Celebrations
