Four decades later, ex-rep would like do-over on I-95

LYNN – James E. Smith has regrets. The attorney and former state legislator who helped keep an interstate highway from bulldozing through Lynn 40 years ago now thinks the project could have provided his hometown with “total access” to a key roadway network.The Swampscott resident was in his 20s when he battled on behalf of his West Lynn constituents to block proposed I-95 expansion plans from crossing the marshland paralleling Route 107.The project, under various configurations, would have sliced across the Saugus-Lynn line through the city on a course roughly following Parkland Avenue and Pine Grove Cemetery into Wyoma Square across Lynn to the Peabody line.Today, Peabody enjoys quick access to I-95, and Smith wishes Lynn benefited from even a highway link spanning the Saugus marshes to Route 1 North. A Saugus sand embankment and an abandoned Route 1 exit ramp stand in mute testament to the failed endeavor.?It?s taken me years to say, ?That?s what we should have done.? That?s where we fumbled. That?s what we should have focused on getting,” Smith said during an Item interview.Multi-lane highways with complicated cloverleaf interchanges were being built across America in the early 1960s when plans emerged for the Eastern Seaboard?s major interstate to expand in the greater Boston area.By 1964, planners and politicians were talking about the “Parkland Avenue connector” and “Wyoma Square bypass” in connection with the I-95 plans. Opposition formed against the highway proposal with the late Thomas W. McGee weighing in to block plans.?Dutchie” and Helen Smith?s son grew up on Gateway Lane near the highway?s initial proposed path through Lynn. The brother of Ernest Smith and Deborah Smith Walsh attended West Lynn schools and ran for West Lynn state representative at the age of 21 – the same year he became eligible to vote.Smith lost the election, but learned a lesson in defeat: “We came close enough to say, ?We can win this thing.?”Win is exactly what he did in 1970, and for eight more years until a Democratic Congressional primary loss, Smith served in the Massachusetts House.?At the time there were three parties: traditional Democrats like Tom McGee; others like myself and (now-U.S. Sen. Edward) Markey; and the Republicans,” he said.Facing opposition from Smith and other highway opponents, planners revised, scrapped and reintroduced plans as residents lost homes to eminent domain takings and Pine Grove Cemetery and Lynn Woods were successively threatened with highway-related takings.Smith said the I-95 expansion?s death knell could be heard after planners plotted the project through sections of Cambridge and Brookline. In 1973, former Gov. Francis Sargent administered the coup de grace. “No Lynn I-95,” trumpeted an Item headline.Forty-two years later, Smith wishes opponents, including himself, had approached Sargent and urged him to preserve the highway connector to Lynn paralleling 107.?None of us focused on what we should have salvaged,” he said.But he said opposition to the project – and support – widened a gap that compromise could never span.?It was simple: There were two camps – build 95, stop 95,” he said.Smith shares city officials? visions of high-rise development dominating the city?s waterfront, but he said it will be a Blue Line expansion or similar transit project that will make the dream reality.?Roads,” he said, “are not the future.”