The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 18

THE BOSTON GLOBE MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1997 StartsawStops THOMAS C. PALMER JR. At hearing, most say Greenbush train line should be left defunct 1 p. it increase, according to a Texas Tf rbpCDf7? Or fh-i I isi i i GLOBE STAFF PHOTO JONATHAN WIGGS A public-private partnership of the MBTA, Massachusetts Highway Department, and Cabot, Cabot Forbes brought a "horizontal elevator" into service last week at the Mystic Transportation Center in Medford. The 55-second ride connects a parking garage with the Wellington Center station.

ith the first two legs of the MBTA's Old Colony com muter-rail line up and running, opponents of the third leg the Greenbush line to Scituate -may have been feeling left out So they turned out in large numbers Thursday night in Hing-ham for a legislative transportation committee hearing. There were a few Back on Track rail proponents in the audience, supported by the occasional South Shore Chamber of Commerce representative, or a resident of a neighboring town, like Norwell or Weymouth. But the 200-plus people at Hingham Town Hall most of whom stuck it out for three hours of repetitive speeches laden with technical terms about safety, noise, and environment were overwhelmingly against restoration of the 18-mile branch. "It's like riding the Toonerville Trolley on a trip to Mars and paying for it with a first-class ticket," Hingham Selectman Martin Crane said of the plan to restore heavy-rail service through his historic district. Both former governor William F.

Weld and Acting Governor Paul Cellucci have said that rebuilding Greenbush defunct since 1959 -is the right thing to do. But the MBTA is doing a lot of construction, and the estimated $285 million to construct Greenbush won't be easy to come by. (That figure, recently increased from $215 million, does not include a tunnel under Hingham that most would like.) Andrew Brennan, the T's environmental specialist, said a final environmental report won't be done until spring. Service wouldn't begin until mid-2001 at the earliest. Foes say Greenbush is a boondoggle because: It would only carry about ml 4,300 riders a day.

It would remove only 1,330 cars destined for Boston from the highways daily. The estimated travel time from Scituate to Boston would be 60 minutes, compared to drive time today of about 70 minutes. There would be 30-32 street crossings, with the consequent accident risk. As many as 14 would be in Hingham, with five downtown and eight in a stretch of about 1 mile. Noise and vibration could damage historic buildings in Hingham.

Five and a half acres of wetlands and waterways would have to be filled. A research group has found that diesel trains emit 10 times as much of some kinds of pollution as automobiles carrying the same number of passengers. Water transportation is already available and could be expanded to carry a greater portion of Boston-bound commuters. "Greenbush is not a baby you would want to kiss," Crane told Representative Joe Sullivan of Braintree, chairman of the transportation committee, who presided patiently and didn't commit himself. Clearly, the has some hills to climb on this line.

We get letters Jim of Rowley says cars are whizzing through the tunnels under City Square in Charles-town, which connect Route 1 and I-93, at unspeakable speeds because the State Police no longer monitor speeds there. But State Police Sergeant Peter Quinn said radar is still used in the tunnels, though perhaps not as often as before. It's not the safest place to pull speeders over, Quinn told us, and sometimes the officers from that barracks have higher A University study. The four subway kiosks at Park Street and Boylston, 100 years old, have been designated national historic landmarks and will be restored next year. You can't get there.

i he Congress Street onramp to northbound 1-93 was scheduled to reopen at 5:30 a.m. today, after a Big Dig closure of several months. That also means the end of the traffic diversion in the Dewey Square Tunnel during overnight hours. The indoor South Station passageway to the Red Line has reopened. The escalator from the subway platform is working again, though there is a new route connecting the station lobby.

Until at least 1998, inbound traffic on the Forest Hills Overpass of the Arborway will be restricted to one lane for about two-thirds of a mile approaching the Centre Street rotary. The MWRA is rebuilding two water mains. Some changes as the MBTA replaces its temporary signal system on the Green Line with a permanent one: Passengers are being shuttle-bused on the Cleveland Circle Line and the Riverside Line, 9 p.m. until nightly close of service, Monday through Saturday, and 5 a.m.-noon on Sundays, through the end of the year. officials advise allowing 10 extra minutes.

We answer as many inquiries each week as space allows. Please, no phone calls. You can reach us via e-mail at startsglobe.com. The column is also on Globe Online at Boston.com, which can be found at www.boston.com Use the keyword starts. Our mailing address is Starts Stops, P.O.

Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378. A source told us a new visual landmark is about to greet those leaving the traffic mess at Logan Airport Mary E. Hines, director of marketing for Boston Parks and Recreation, gave us the details about a new billboard. "Beautiful," she called it. Lady Bird Johnson might not agree.

But this one, in a space that's had nothing much on it for a long time, will indeed be different The three-message billboard, called trivision, will rotate. Acker-ley Communications will sell ads for two sides, and the third side is a message of the city's choice. "The first one will be Welcome to Boston from the with the city seal, in beautiful blue," Hines said. It will carry a holiday greeting in December, and the city can change its message monthly. The board is owned by Parks and Recreation, which gets $6,000 ina a cellular service Big Dig wage-law violations persist sanies mm all the extras.

priorities. "They do ticket there," he said. "We haven't had any problems with the court." The speed limit is marked only on one side of the lanes and not the other, which apparently was an argument in court against conviction. Police would like to see clearer markings, so fewer would speed, and so those who do couldn't contest it Richard and others continue to comment on the relatively new color scheme on the Green Line -in which green doesn't play much of a part. "Is the really thrilled with the new (non-) color?" he wrote.

We're afraid so. No plans to change it back, officials say. And the first of a fleet of new, low-floor (easy access) cars arrives in January, for a year of testing before the others are put in service. Sunday number 2330 SUNDAY PAYOFFS (based on $1 bet) EXACT ORDER All 4 digits $5,850 First or last 3 $819 Any 2 digits $70 Any 1 digit $7 ANY ORDER All 4 digits $487 First 3 digits $273 Last 3 digits $273 MEGABUCKS Sat. Oct25 3 12 24 33 36 39 Jackpot: $760,793 There were no jackpot winners.

PREVIOUS MASS. DRAWINGS Saturday 6142 Friday 7152 Thursday 2588 Wednesday 9117 Tuesday 3074 WEEKEND NUMBERS AROUND NEW ENGLAND Sun. Rhode Island 6793 Saturday's Powerball 15-23-24-28-35 Powerball 30 Jackpot: $36.5 There was one jackpot winner. Sat. Maine, N.H., Vermont 3-digit 548 4-digit 0067 hc Boston (dlobe HAVE YOU SEEN THE GLOBE TODAY? For home delivery call 617-466-1818 5lol)c COUPON 0 COTS 00 PARTICIPATING LOCATIONS INCLUDING: Dracut.

Lowell, Tewksbury, Westford, Hingham, Jamaica Plain, Norwell, South Boston. Two accidents in Chelmsford, Andover hurt 4 Accidents in Chelmsford and An- dover yesterday injured four people, one seriously, police said. In Chelmsford, police and rescue personnel worked more than 30 minutes to free a Tewksbury man from his car after it collided with another vehicle. Anthony Petrovich, 49, was taken to Lowell General Hospital and was in the emergency room late last nightlnformation on his condition was not available. The 7:10 p.

m. accident on Route 3 also injured two people in the other car, Lawrence Manning, 36, of Wakefield, and Mary Hronik, whose age and residence were unknown. Manning was treated for minor injuries and released from Saints Memorial Medical Center in Lowell; Hronik was in stable condition there late last night In Andover, a one-car crash op Route 495 injured Matthew Bergerr son, of Salem, N.H., police said. He was in stable condition last night at Lawrence General Hospital, where he was treated for facial J. for roaming for numeric paging for basic voice mail (20 OFF Motorola Digital Phones with a month under the three-year contract won by Ackerley.

Visitors soon may be greeted by: "The frog pond is open for public skating." Pit stops I he new Old Colony trains have four electrical plugs for laptop computers in each car. The first of 18,000 applicants in the T's lottery to hire bus operators started taking qualifying tests over the weekend. Amtrak says its Twilight Shoreliner between Virginia and Boston carried 28 percent more passengers than the Night Owl service it replaced. Now if it can just avoid a strike by tomorrow night. The Steamship Authority planned a weekend test of a high-speed, 350-passenger catamaran to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

Only five major cities have reduced traffic congestion since 1988, while 42 have seen devised, and more than a year after truckers first went to authorities -some drivers are working for less than the official wage. Even drivers who own their rigs owner-operators, or independents are supposed to be paid enough by the hour that they can pay for equipment costs and get the $28 wage. After the deadline for implementing the state's plan to fix the problem was delayed several times, it went into effect on Oct. 10. But at a high-level meeting of truckers and Big Dig officials last week, it was clear the problem has not been solved, sources said.

If every driver were paid for each hour worked, as required by law, the cost to the brokers, to the contractors that employ them, and to the Big Dig itself would rise. Brokers try to get the most out of their driver-employees by paying them by the truckload or by the ton instead of by the hour so that if they are voluntarily parked or sitting in a coffee shop, they are not making any money. Sometimes delays are unavoidable, though. If there is traffic congestion, or excavation is going slowly, or the trucks have a long way to go, the drivers cannot make enough round trips in a day to earn the equivalent of the prevailing wage. When they work overtime, they must be paid time and a half, which also cuts deeply into the broker's profit margin.

Trinello said the best jobs he has worked on pay by the hour and put enough managers on the jobs to make sure the drivers keep working. "Forget the load, forget the ton -just start the truck at 7 a.m. and pay him," said Trinello. "Mass. Highway has got to pay attention." Coincidentally, Harshbarger's office issued a press release yesterday saying that $8 million in unpaid wages had been recovered by his office in the four years since the re-ponsibility for policing wage violations was given to his office.

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The Massachusetts Highway Department appropriated millions of dollars more as of July 1 for ongoing Big Dig contracts, which were bid. when contractors apparently thought they could get away with paying below the legal limit But even with that money available, trucking industry sources agree that the law is not always being obeyed in a business that is aggressive and sometimes chaotic, with fiercely competitive players. Revere truck owner Tony Trin-ello said his drivers are working 11 hours, but at least one trucking "broker," or organizer, is advising them to record that they worked only eight hours so they will appear to have been paid the prevailing wage. "The guys are putting in for eight when the trucks are working 11," Trinello said. For that reason, he said, he let six of his trucks sit idle last week rather than misrepresent the number of hours worked.

A Big Dig source said last night that project officials are looking into reports of continued cheating in the payment process. They are examining the paper slips filled out when trucks are weighed at job sites in Boston and comparing those to the hours that brokers and truck drivers claim to have worked. There are also reports of truck overloading, which could lead to accidents and blemish the Big Dig's so-far excellent safety record. Spokesman Andrew Paven said, "We intend to enforce the prevailing-wage law." But project officials and potential bidders agreed on that years ago, before construction began, and all agree now that the law has been almost universally flouted. State officials came up with an elaborate plan to end the law-breaking last summer, but even today -almost three months after that was CALL (800) 640-9700 NEXTEL tUTHOMltO 0(AL( Offer good through October 31.

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