transit Archives - Page 2 of 8

Commonwealth – For walkers, the last six inches are important

MassINC/Commonwealth: “For walkers, the last six inches are important”
By Wendy Landman and Brendan Kearney

WalkBoston has been talking about transit as the middle leg of a walking trip for many years. We understand that even the most avid walker or walking advocate knows that many trips are too long to make a single-mode-walk trip possible. Now, the transit and active transportation worlds have become more attuned to the facts that buses serve the broadest network of transit riders, are often the transit mode that serves low-income riders, and are the transit mode that can be modified most easily. For American communities – urban, suburban, and rural – to become truly walkable, they must also be served by transit. Understanding how the bus and walking networks must be linked is critical to shaping investments in transit and the built environment.

Posted June 25, 2018

March 2018 Newsletter

Building on nearly 30 years of advocacy in more than 100 cities and towns across the Commonwealth, WalkBoston has adopted a framework on how to make Massachusetts more walkable. This framework is guided by a set of principles that will challenge us to evaluate new technologies, continue to create evidence-based best practices, and address equity and inclusion more specifically in our community engagement. This newsletter edition is the second in a two-part series designed to share our goals with the larger WalkBoston community and encourage each of you to lace up your shoes and get involved. Click here to read the first newsletter in this series.

“Age-Friendly Walking – better walking for all ages”
By Adi Nochur/Project Manager, WalkBoston
“The pedestrian/transit connection—walking to transit”
By Erik Scheier/Project Manager, MBTA
“#ClearCurbCuts Letter to the Globe”
By Carol Steinberg/Board Member, WalkBoston

Download the March 2018 Newsletter PDF

The pedestrian/transit connection—walking to transit

By Erik Scheier/Project Manager, MBTA

More than 30 percent of MBTA customers rely on the MBTA bus system for all or part of their daily commute. Almost all bus customers traverse public roads and sidewalks to access their bus service, which serves over 7,600 bus stops. Providing pedestrians with a safe, accessible, and convenient path of travel to and from each bus stop is critical if the MBTA is going to adequately serve the public, including seniors and persons with disabilities.

The MBTA’s Systemwide Accessibility Department (SWA) recently completed an accessibility audit of all bus stops throughout the system. The audit revealed that a significant portion of the MBTA’s bus stops have varying degrees of accessibility and safety deficiencies. WalkBoston has been a very active participant in the advisory committee and with MBTA staff carrying out these audits under the Plan for Accessible Transit Infrastructure (PATI).

It’s not uncommon for a bus stop to be located along a busy roadway where there are no sidewalks present. For a pedestrian to get to the bus stop, they must travel along the edge of the road — often less than a foot from a busy vehicular travel lane. In other cases, bus customers are dropped off on an isolated sidewalk or traffic island without any ramps or sidewalk connections. For someone in a wheelchair, they are literally stranded. A significant portion of bus stops don’t meet ADA requirements; pedestrian ramps are too steep or non-existent and sidewalk paths of travel are blocked.

The MBTA is currently advancing a program that starts to address these deficiencies and dramatically improve walking connections to bus service. Starting this summer, the MBTA will be engaging in a yearlong project to construct improvements at over 140 bus stops located in 20 different communities. These bus stops were identified in the recently completed audit as being the worst bus stops in the system in terms of accessibility.

Improvements will include new sidewalks, curbing, pedestrian ramps, signage, and general path of travel improvements. New crosswalks will be installed at multiple locations and several of these will be provided with flashing beacons or warning signs with flashing LEDs. The project will also include limited construction of bulb-outs, bus shelters, and benches.

Along with removing serious safety hazards and barriers to access, these improvements will improve and enhance walkers’ experience along sidewalks and streetscapes. Reconstructed and fully accessible bus stops with customer amenities will improve the experience of our current customers, and encourage new bus riders.

In addition to the MBTA, 15 Regional Transit Authorities (RTAs) provide bus service to cities and towns across the state. WalkBoston is expanding our work to help RTAs meet walkers’ needs. By improving customer conditions at RTA bus stops and stations, we can further expand transit use and reduce driving trips.

This article was featured in WalkBoston’s March 2018 newsletter.
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Transportation and Climate Comment Letter

Dear Secretary Beaton and Secretary Pollack,

Thank you for this opportunity to comment on transportation sector strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve climate resiliency in our Commonwealth. WalkBoston believes that policies and programs that encourage equitable, compact, mixed-use transit oriented development and that drive mode shift from single occupancy vehicles to walking, biking and transit are critical to meeting these objectives. We look forward to working with your agencies and our partners in the transportation advocacy community to advance these issues.

Read the full letter: WalkBoston-Comment-TransportationClimate

Comments on L Street Power Station Redevelopment South Boston ENF/Expanded PNF

July 7, 2017

Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Matthew A. Beaton
Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA)
Attn: MEPA Office, Alex Strysky
100 Cambridge Street, Suite 900
Boston MA 02114

Brian Golden, Director
Boston Planning and Development Agency
Boston City Hall
Boston, MA 02201

Re: EEA No. 15692, L Street Power Station Redevelopment, South Boston
ENF/Expanded PNF

Dear Secretary Beaton and Director Golden:

WalkBoston is pleased to see the proposal for a mixed use development of the large South Boston waterfront site that will include the re-use of the historically and architecturally interesting L Street Power Station. Putting this portion of the City back into a productive use that invites public access is a positive change for the City and for South Boston.

The overall site design will help to integrate this large parcel into the neighborhood, and create new opportunities for people to walk from East 1st Street to the waterfront and help to link the residential portions of South Boston into the site which was long cut off from the community by fences and other obstructions. The partial extension of the local street network onto the site and between and around new buildings proposed for the site seems appropriate in scale. With sidewalks that are sufficiently wide and landscaped, both community residents and people living on-site will be served by the new connections.

Our comments below are focused on questions that we hope the proponent will respond to in subsequent filings about the project.

1. Waterside Pedestrian and Open Space Environment
We understand that the new dedicated harborside freight corridor that will connect Summer Street to Massport’s Conley Terminal and remove heavy truck traffic from East 1st Street will provide very important, and long-desired improvements to the South Boston neighborhood. But this shift will also present challenges; the new harborside route will place an access barrier and significant truck traffic (with its accompanying noise and air pollution) between the development site’s primary open space and the harbor.
We urge the developer to consider creative ways to mitigate the truck route’s impact on the
open space. This could include grade changes that place the open space higher than the truck route (Figure 3.5b may hint at this); landscaping that both masks and frames views,
soundscapes to mask truck noise, and the addition of viewing platforms that allow open space users to gain unimpeded views of the water. There may also be ways to capitalize on the site’s industrial past and on-going use through interpretive elements. WalkBoston is concerned that without such special treatment the open space will not be very attractive to the public.
If possible, the proponent might also explore with Massport whether it would be possible to
schedule truck traffic so that is interferes less with daytime and weekend use of the open space.

2. Encouragement of walking and walking-transit trips
At the direction of the City, the proponent has used South Boston adjusted trip generation rates to develop trip tables for walking/biking, transit and vehicles. However, the site is at a
significant distance from other land uses that would seem to justify such significant numbers of walking trips, and to suffer from overused bus lines and significant distances to the Red and Silver Lines. Figure 5-1 illustrate the 5 and 10-minute walking zones, neither of which include a great many retail, job and civic land uses.
We urge the proponent to develop mitigation measures to make the development a more
realistically mixed mode project. These could include such things as: subsidies to the MBTA to provide more frequent bus service, or creation or partnering with other South Boston
developments to provide shuttle services to the Silver and/or Red Lines.

3. Bicycle facilities
The proponent mentions that Boston has flagged both East 1st Street and Summer Street for
protected bicycle facilities, however Figure 3.5a shows an on-street bike lane.
We urge the proponent to work with the City, and perhaps provide funding for, separated
bicycle facilities on both East 1st Street and Summer Street. The distance of the site from transit and a mix of retail, job and civic facilities will make bicycling a more likely mode of off-site trips than walking.

We look forward to working with the City and Redgate as the project plans are developed in greater detail.

Sincerely,

Wendy Landman
Executive Director

Cc Ralph Cox, Greg Bialecki, Megha Vadula, Redgate
Elizabeth Grob, VHB

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