Inner Belt Group Urges M.I.T. To Reverse Decision on Highway

The Cambridge Committee on the Inner Belt has appealed to M.I.T. to reverse its stand on the Cambridge portion of the highway.

The committee, a private group of planners, has been working since last fall against the Brookline-Elm St. route, which would wipe out from 1000 to 1500 homes and pass close to Central Square. Last Sunday M.I.T. vehemently rejected the two routes most often mentioned as alternative locations for the Belt. These routes, which would infringe on the Institute's campus, were pictured as causing $80 million in damage to M.I.T.

M.I.T. is truly concerned with the problems of Cambridge, it should reject in no uncertain terms, any route in the Brookline-Elm St. area," Robert Goodman, member of the committee wrote Monday to James R. Killian Jr., chairman of the M.I.T. corporation.

Goodman urged M.I.T. to use "the world renowned technical resources of highway design, traffic engineering and city planning. . . to design a route which will the least detrimental effect on the groups concerned."

The route of the Cambridge segment of the highway will probably be announced sometime next month by the State Department of Public Works. The City has until March 1 to recommend any alternative to the Brookline-Elm St. plan. Last month traffic consultants hired by the city an alignment along ralroad tracks in East Cambridge would be a feasible alternative. However, this was one of the routes opposed by M.I.T.

Goodman chastised the institute for its position. "We believe that an institution which has helped devise methods of sending men from one planet to another . . . can surely find a way to send traffic two miles from the Charles River to Somerville without the great personal hardships which will attend the presently-favored Brookline. Elm St. route."