To the editor:

I was sent a recent report by Nahant Selectman Patrick O’Reilly, which urges federal officials to block funding for the Lynnway Multimodal Corridor Project. I’d like to offer a different perspective — one grounded in the needs of the thousands of people who depend on public transportation every single day.

Mr. O’Reilly’s analysis focuses almost entirely on the inconvenience to people driving private automobiles. But the Lynnway is not just a commuter highway for car owners. It is a lifeline for over 70,000 weekly bus riders — many of them working-class Lynn residents without access to a car — who currently endure slow, unreliable service on a roadway designed exclusively around motor vehicles. The report counts the minutes that drivers might lose. It does not count the hours that bus riders lose every week because there are no dedicated bus lanes.

The project’s benefits are substantial and concrete: 2.6 miles of dedicated bus lanes, faster and more frequent service, connections to the Blue Line, commuter rail, and the Lynn Ferry, over 600 feet of new sidewalk, 34 ADA-compliant wheelchair ramps, and up to 250 new street trees. This is not a minor adjustment — it is a long-overdue investment in equity, sustainability, and the future of our region.

Mr. O’Reilly raises emergency response concerns, but the project includes upgraded signal infrastructure and transit signal priority — tools that can actually improve emergency vehicle movement. His report projects worst-case traffic modeling while ignoring the mode-shift benefits of getting more people onto faster, more reliable buses.

For decades, the Lynnway has been a barrier — to the waterfront, to pedestrians, to cyclists, and to the community of Lynn itself. This project finally begins to change that.

I urge USDOT to move forward with funding. The residents of Lynn — especially those without cars — have waited long enough.

Lynn Nadeau
Marblehead, MA