Graney v. Massachusetts District Commission (MDC)

Supplemental Affidavit Of Thomas Revay In Support Of Injunctive Relief

I, Thomas Revay, do hereby affirm and attest as follows:

  1. My name is Thomas Revay and I live at 70 Sprague St. in Dedham, Massachusetts.
  2. I provide this affidavit as a supplement to the affidavit I have already prepared regarding obstructions commonly blocking the lane of travel of the Southwest Corridor Bicycle Path caused by the Metropolitan District Commission [MDC], the entity responsible for maintaining the bicycle roadway.
  3. My original affidavit stated that the Amtrak-related vehicles had been parking off the path and on the grass area. Now this has changed, apparently as the result of intercession and at the direction of the MDC.
  4. Since at least autumn, 1998, light pick-up trucks were being used by Amtrak along the path, as part of that organization’s work to electrify the adjacent rail line. To Amtrak’s credit, however, they consistently park their trucks on the grass, rather than on the bike path, where (as I attested in my original affidavit) MDC maintenance vehicles routinely park.
  5. For the last 3 weeks or so, beginning at 8 am, large construction vehicles, pick up trucks, and smaller automobiles have been driving and parking daily in the middle of the lane of travel of the Southwest Corridor Bicycle Path at multiple locations between Williams and Centre Streets, and sometimes farther east going up to the Police Headquarters.
  6. In one instance, David Wean and I were actually cut off between Williams and Green Streets by a dump truck that drove over the grass, and proceeded onto the Corridor path, directly in front of us.
  7. These vehicles appear to be part of the Amtrak high-speed rail line improvements going on in this area.
  8. In a few cases, these vehicles still do park fully or partially off the pathway, but most of the time, they don’t.
  9. In the past two (2) weeks, these Amtrak vehicles have been parking not on the grass along the side of the paved lane of travel of the bicycle path but in the middle in the middle of the path, obstructing the lane of travel of the bicycle path.
  10. I have been told that the trucks are now blocking the bicycle path at the direction of MDC officials, who have directed the workers not to park on the grass. I strongly suspect the command for the trucks to park on the pathway in order to place grass over human beings originated with Alan Morris, who is the MDC official responsible for the Southwest Corridor.
  11. I found it interesting that the people who drive these trucks, construction workers as well as transportation workers, initially recognized the bicycle path to be a travel corridor, and so avoided blocking the pathway, as any reasonable person would not block a lane of an expressway, a public street or a sidewalk.
  12. It is clear that the MDC does not treat the bicycle path lane of travel as one should treat a roadway, even though it was built as a transportation corridor and is used daily as a transportation corridor by myself and other bicycle commuters.
  13. At the outset, the Amtrak workers thought that the right thing to do was to leave the pathway unobstructed, and treat it as one would a proper transportation corridor such as a road or a railway, by conducting repairs as much as possible off the through-route. It’s only the MDC who fail and refuse to recognize this, and treat the bicycle path as if it is subject to a different, lower, standard in which the users of the place come last, after the trees, flowers, grass, fences, and paving and gardening materials.

Signed under the pains and penalties of perjury this ________ day of November, 1999

Thomas Revay