I participated in one of the “planning Amherst” gatherings sponsored by the Comprehensive Planning Committee. It was an idea-gathering session, and we were quickly divided into groups for a facilitated discussion. It’s early in the process. I didn’t get an overall picture of what people have been saying, although I did get the impression the first couple of sessions were not well attended. I’ve been reading about the effort, and I’ve participated in such exercises before. Unfortunately, so far I’ve seen little that encourages me to think we’re going to create, get wide public support for, and actually adopt a Master Plan.
Why not? First, Amherst is a small place, with most of its major land use decisions already made. We’ve done well at protecting open space and, to the extent a town can do it, agriculture. But we have very little buildable land still available. In our groups we were encouraged to “think big,” but we don’t have room to make major additions or changes.
For example, our main roads are in place. We don’t have the opportunity to build by-passes without immense disruption to, and consequent opposition by, people living in the way; in fact, we haven’t had that opportunity for decades, as those who can remember the proposed “north-east by pass” will recall.
One result is that traffic can be bad, and efforts to move it are only going to make the problem worse somewhere else. Some people expressed a wish for a “pedestrian mall” downtown where cars are banned. If we close North Pleasant Street (what other street would we close to make a pedestrian mall?), where do we think the drivers of those cars will go? Many will go to Lincoln Avenue, where residents are currently engaged in an effort to get their street made into a dead-end to stop the traffic to and from the University even though Lincoln Avenue has been a major route to the University since it was built. It’s my observation that every through street that can be used by people driving to or from work (or dropping their kids off at school on the way to work) is quite heavily used, and we won’t improve the situation for most people by removing one or more of them. I’d rather see us find ways to slow traffic on many streets in town. Planning is important. We need information about where the drivers on our roads live, where they are going, and why. I believe that many of the cars on, say, Bay Road or North East Street or Route 9, are not stopping in Amherst at all, but passing through, going from Belchertown to the malls or Route 91, or Leverett south over the Notch, etc. I’m guessing, but I don’t see how we can plan sensibly if we don’t have good information on who is going where. Similarly, we need to know what the two colleges and university plan to do, and how that affects us in our little town. We also need to recognize that their plans are not subject to referendum; if UMass, for example, plans a major expansion, there is very little Amherst can do to stop it. Residents often succeed in blocking construction of private projects if they require a zoning change or a special permit, but if student housing, for example, is built in Sunderland instead, e will still have to deal with the people and the cars. Our planning efforts need to be realistic about what challenges we have to deal with. Which leads me to the other major reason I’m skeptical about the possibility of adopting a Master Plan: people don’t want any possibly troublesome activities or uses nearby. It’s easy to say we need housing that people who work in town can afford, or a YMCA-type recreation center, or parking lots “on the periphery” so commuters can park and ride busses into the center and UMass, or in-fill development in order to protect open space. But where, exactly, will these desirable facilities be put? Whose neighborhood is going to accept them? Having struggled with many of these issues for years, on the Planning Board, Select Board, and in Town Meeting, I’m tired, and glad to give others a chance. I admire the people who have the stick-to-itiveness to work on the Comprehensive Planning Committee, and I wish them luck. But me? I think I’ll take a hike on some of our conservation trails. It’s been a glorious fall.