by Naveen Anwer

Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone and the Board of Aldermen held a meeting July 8 at City Hall regarding traffic and public transportation during the Democratic National Convention, taking place July 26-29.

“ We are doing everything we can by working with the traffic department. This convention is costing the city a lot of money—don’t ask me how much. We don’t like the situation, but we are dealing with the hand we have been dealt with,” said Curtatone.

“We have the most densely populated city in the country with very dense neighborhoods, we just hope everyone cooperates so we can get through this weekend without any complications,” he said.

Barry Wante, Homeland Security Coordinator of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (M.E.M.A), said the M.E.M.A started planning for the convention more than a year ago.

“For the past seven months, we have been developing an ‘all hazard’ plan for the 365 districts in the Commonwealth. This plan will provide four services: transportation, security, public health, public and private sectors,” he said.

With heightened security in the possibility of a terrorist attack, the “state of emergency” plan will go into effect during the DNC. “We can’t just focus on Boston—there are 365 other cities in the Commonwealth. That is what the ‘state of emergency’ plan is for,” said Wante.

Prior to the weekend of the DNC, there will be more than 1,000 permitted events in Boston and surrounding cities, Wante said.

The Somerville Police Department has established an Emergency Communications Center at the station. From the Incident Command System, they can monitor and control activity by maintaining communication and being aware of any problems, Wante said.

“We did a test run of the electronic protocol and everything worked pretty well, especially for a test. So we can only expect it to get better,” Wante said.

He asked that residents and civilians report any suspicious activity they see. “We would rather have to attend to a false alarm than have an incident on our hands.”

Lt. Paul Upton of the Somerville Police presented a public safety and traffic briefing.

“July 25 is when we are expecting the large protests to take place. We don’t believe the protests will be in Somerville; however, we will have officers on stand-by in locations we are anticipating the demonstrations might happen,” said Upton.

Storrow Drive and Memorial Drive will close at 4 p.m. on July 26 – 29 at Western Avenue, in Allston and the Boston University Bridge causing traffic to flow into Somerville and congest Prospect and Washington streets and Somerville Avenue.

“We estimate a 230% increase in traffic between Medford Street and Prospect Street,” said Upton.

Upton said there will be several road closures from East Somerville to Union Square starting at 4 p.m during the DNC, increasing traffic on Mystic Avenue, McGrath Highway, Broadway, Webster Avenue, Prospect Street and Somerville Avenue.

The Home Depot exit near Mystic Avenue and Sturtevant Street will be blocked, and the police will manually direct the heavy traffic from 4 to 8 p.m. “The reason we’re closing the Home Depot exit is because we know from experience and accident studies that it’s likely for an accident to occur there,” said Upton.

People coming in from Medford trying to get to work in Boston will affect traffic on Mystic Avenue. “People who don’t want to come through Somerville—they are being forced to. There are some people out there, if they don’t go to work, they don’t get paid,” said Upton.

One lane will be left open for emergency vehicles and ambulances to Somerville Hospital, Upton said. The police are also planning to ban parking on several city streets between the hours of 2 and 8 p.m. during the DNC.

“The goal is to have everything back to normal by Friday, July 30, and cleaned up over the weekend,” said Upton.

Police officer Lieutenant Michael Cabral, one of three 911 operators, said that adding a fourth operator is being considered.

Alderman-at-Large Bruce M. Desmond said, “I have seen all the work that has gone into developing this plan, and it looks good. Union Square is going to have the worst of it. We’re hoping to manage the problem by creating extra lane space and by controlling traffic.”

Stephen Mackey, president of the Chamber of Commerce, said that the major challenge the police face is keeping traffic on Mystic Avenue moving.

“The traffic could cause a lot of nuisances, from UPS federal delivery of medical supplies being delayed to someone getting caught in traffic when they only went out to get some milk.” Mackey said.

“But people are beginning to understand the scope of traffic there is going to be during the DNC between 4 p.m. and midnight. Hopefully, we’ll just manage,” he said.