Complete Streets Archives - WalkMassachusetts

Main Street and Union Street West Springfield Walk Audit

On Monday, November 15, 2021, with an invitation from the Town of West Springfield’s Mass in Motion coordinator, Becky Basch, Senior Planner at the Pioneer Valley Commission, WalkBoston led a walk audit focused on the areas surrounding Main The Town of West Springfield, and this residential area, is home to a diverse population with many languages and cultures represented.

The purpose for this walk audit was to follow up on a Park Access Project completed through the Mass in Motion program in 2019, that found that the Merrick neighborhood has the highest density of residential development and the smallest amount of park land available to residents in the immediate areas. As the Town has plans to make improvements on Main Street in 2022, the Department of Public Works is open to including recommendations from the Walk Audit in its plans. The Town is also planning to make improvements on Union Street in the next few years and is looking to improve connections for bicycle users to current projects on Memorial Ave and Park Drive.

The walk audit included portions of Main Street and Union Street that are home to popular markets, a food pantry, a charter school, Ascentria Care Alliance, and Main Street Playground. The recommendations provided in this report are broken down into both short- and long-term recommendations, which can provide temporary traffic calming measures and improved pedestrian infrastructure while more long-term interventions are planned.

Read the full report here.

Updates to MassDOT’s Complete Streets Program Funding Guidance

In March 2021, MassDOT released the new Complete Streets Program Funding Guidance for cities and towns interested in participating in the program. Launched in 2016, the MassDOT Complete Streets Funding Program is the first state program in the United States devoted to funding complete streets – streets that are designed to make travel safe, comfortable, and accessible for all users. Five years later, more than 50% of all Massachusetts communities are involved in the Complete Streets program.

Major changes to the Guidance Document include:

Update to the Tier 2 Prioritization Plan
Revision of the Tier 3 Project Application Template
Update to the funding eligibility criteria for Tier 3 grant recipients
New chapter on public engagement

Update to the Tier 2 Prioritization Plan

Tier 2 no longer has three entry options as previously indicated. The municipality must develop a Complete Streets Prioritization Plan and can still provide a commitment letter to MassDOT to pass the Complete Streets policy within one year. (This would be completing Tier 1 and 2 simultaneously).
Municipalities can request up to $38,000 in technical assistance funding (it is no longer $50,000).

Revision of the Tier 3 Project Application Template

Revised template is available on the MassDOT website

Update to the funding eligibility criteria for Tier 3 grant recipients

Effective Fiscal Year 2022, municipalities can receive a maximum award of $400,000 in Tier 3 funding within any four-fiscal year timeframe. Municipalities can receive several smaller grants within the four-year window or one full grant of $400,000. It is important to note that Tier 2 grants do not count toward Tier 3 grants. Municipalities can check to see if they are eligible for additional funding here.
If the municipality is applying for a project that costs more than the funding they are eligible for, they must include the amount of money they will need covered by external funding sources.
A municipality can apply for a 2nd (or 3rd, 4th…) construction project only after the prior awarded project has been completed.

New chapter on public engagement

The 2021 Guidance document includes for the first time a section on “Public Engagement and Complete Streets.” MassDOT strongly recommends municipalities engage with community members– especially marginalized groups– on identifying issues and areas for improvement in the community.
In order to engage with a community, MassDOT suggests:
- establishing working groups or planning committees with a diverse set of individuals, representative of the municipality;
- engaging and listening to community members’ experiences and feedback;
- speaking with the public during all three tiers of the Complete Streets Funding process and providing updates on any changes and final decisions; and
- removing barriers to participation, such as language, time, and access. To do this, MassDOT recommends:
  - Partnering with trusted community leaders and organizations to reach members of the community. Potentially compensate individuals for their time and involvement
  - Requesting time at a community/neighborhood meeting or hosting a pop-up at a public place like a grocery store or public library
  - Providing multiple options for individuals to provide in-person and online feedback at meetings and events
  - Translating materials and having appropriate translators at events and meetings
  - Ensuring accessibility for individuals with differing visual and physical abilities
  - Providing incentives for participation, such as food, childcare, or stipends

WalkBoston and the Complete Streets Program

WalkBoston has had a measurable impact on the success of MassDOT’s Complete Streets Funding program. We have worked on walking with 122 of the 267 municipalities that have participated in the funding program, with targeted assistance for the funding program provided to 25 cities and towns.

WalkBoston has assisted communities at each major program milestone: passage of a policy (Tier 1); development of a prioritization plan (Tier 2); and acquisition of capital funding (Tier 3). Specifically, WalkBoston provided technical assistance to:

25 different communities in at least one Tier
3 municipalities during Tier 1, 2, and 3
10 municipalities in both Tier 2 and Tier 3
19 municipalities that received Tier 3 funding, 11 of whom received funding for projects identified in walk audit recommendations

New Complete Streets Funding Announced

On July 20, 2021, MassDOT announced that $6.05 million have been awarded to 18 communities for Complete Streets Funding Program Awards. For the full press release and information on communities awarded, visit the website here.

Comments on Re-Imagining Massachusetts’ Post-Pandemic Transportation System

Comments to Senate Committee on Re-Imagining Massachusetts Post-Pandemic Resiliency

Dear Senator Hinds and Committee Members:

WalkBoston is Massachusetts’ primary pedestrian advocacy organization, working across the Commonwealth to make it safer and easier for people to walk for all activities of daily living such as access to transit, school and jobs. The COVID-19 pandemic gave stark evidence that walkable neighborhoods and communities are critical to physical and mental health, to reducing isolation and to the resilience of all Massachusetts residents and their neighborhoods.

In light of the pandemic, we have learned that key components of the transportation system to support walking should include:

Speed management. We need measures to control, and often reduce, speeds on Commonwealth roadways so that they are safe for all roadway users. During the initial months of the pandemic, there was dangerous speeding on roadways across Massachusetts. MassDOT’s ongoing initiative to create tools and measures to set and manage safe speeds on all MassDOT roadways (other than limited access highways) needs the support and encouragement of the legislature to ensure its success, and then to bring those same measures to municipal roads as well.
Safe connections to transit. As we learned during the pandemic, essential workers are more dependent on transit than many others. We need fully accessible transit and bus stops throughout Massachusetts, including safe street crossings and sidewalk connections to adjacent neighborhoods. These are crucial to a transit system that works for everyone.
More local funding to repurpose public space. The overwhelmingly popular MassDOT Shared Streets and Spaces program that was introduced in response to the pandemic has demonstrated that municipalities are interested and ready to rethink how they use their streets to enable more and safer outdoor recreation,
commerce, community activities, and mobility.
Chapter 90 and Complete Streets. Chapter 90 funds have been traditionally used to build and maintain municipal roads without requirements that sidewalks and crosswalks be included. We suggest that the Committee review this standard and consider including Complete Streets measures within Chapter 90, similar to those requirements set by the legislature for MassDOT roadways.
DCR Parkways. DCR’s recently released (and long delayed) Parkway Master Plan clearly demonstrates that immediate action is needed to vastly improve safety for people bicycling and walking. Parkways are cultural and historic landmarks and should remain fully integrated components of parks and open spaces, used and enjoyed by people for walking, rolling, and riding as originally intended. With a commitment to accelerated improvement in partnership with MassDOT, parkways should remain under DCR’s purview. We urge the legislature to set funding and regulatory standards for DCR as follows:
- Adopt MassDOT’s Complete Streets guidelines as their default design standard for all parkways;
- Utilize MassDOT crash portal data to implement quick-build improvements on the most dangerous parkway roads and intersections within the next 12 months;
- Align its parkway speed limits with local speed limits, especially in municipalities where the default speed has been reduced to 25 miles/hour or less;
- Provide DCR with the budget needed to complete the recommendations in the DCR Parkway Master Plan;
- Require DCR to set measurable goals to reduce the number of serious and fatal crashes on DCR roadways and report publicly and annually on progress toward these goals; and
- Require DCR to add analysis and recommendations for several key parkways currently missing from the plan.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Stacey Beuttell
Executive Director, WalkBoston
405 Waltham Street, Suite 309
Lexington, MA 02421
617-367-9255

Springfield Built Environment Study – Fall 2019

Between April 2013 to September 2017, WalkBoston conducted twelve walk audits in Springfield, Massachusetts. Seven of these walk audits were conducted around public schools as part of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Mass in Motion (MiM) program. The other five were neighborhood walk audits funded through the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS). After each walk audit, WalkBoston created and shared a report assessing safety, accessibility and comfort for people walking in these areas, and included short- and long-term suggestions for how the City of Springfield could make improvements along these walking routes. This study tracks the progress of WalkBoston’s recommendations in subsequent years, seeking to understand which factors made the City more likely to implement recommendations. The purpose of this study is to assess how WalkBoston can direct its efforts and project the success of different types of recommendations.

SpringfieldWalkingEnvironmentEvaluationFall2019

Belmont: Peer Review of Complete Streets Prioritization Plan Project List

In August 2019, WalkBoston conducted a peer review of the Town of Belmont’s Complete Streets Prioritization Plan (CSPP) Project List at the request of the Town Administrator’s Office. We reviewed the proposed recommendations, observed pedestrian and vehicular traffic patterns, and noted any possible additional fixes that could be made to further improve the walking environment. The memorandum linked below summarizes our understanding of the goals of the project list, describes our project review methodology, and summarizes our findings and recommendations from our site walks. It also includes a map showing the routes we walked to reach each proposed project location. Finally, the table below includes detailed comments about each proposed project location.