What Should Boston's Transportation Future Be?

Mayor Marty Walsh today Friday that Go Boston 2030, the City’s Transportation Planning Initiative, reached a major milestone. The project has moved from setting a vision for the City to identifying specific actions.

As part of this announcement, the City released a draft transportation vision, developed by the Go Boston Advisory Committee through conversations with over 6,000 Bostonians. That vision will be the foundation for engaging residents on what transportation projects they most want to see pursued in Boston.

”The City of Boston launched Go Boston 2030 to better understand the public’s aspirations for transportation throughout the city and to build a bold, innovative transportation future based on an unprecedented level of public engagement,” said Mayor Walsh. “Our transportation Action Plan will lay out an ambitious roadmap to address inequities in underserved neighborhoods, connect our workforce to job opportunities, and prepare our systems for climate change.”

To build the Action Plan, the City is launching a series of community outreach efforts. Suggestions can be submitted by visiting the ”Ideas on the Street” pop-up which is currently touring over 30 locations citywide and by attending ”Idea Roundtables” in November.

The collected project and policy suggestions will inform the priorities and implementation strategies to be included in the Action Plan. The plan will be completed by Summer 2016. Schedules are available at http://goboston2030.org/participate/. Ideas can also be submitted online at http://goboston2030.org/submit-ideas/.

As part of the Go Boston 2030 initiative, the City is already taking steps to improve transportation.

“We have identified early action projects to improve safety on our streets, fight congestion, and improve access for pedestrians and bicyclists,” said Boston Transportation Commissioner, Gina Fiandaca.

The Vision that will inform the action is a result of extensive public participation. Based on over 5,000 questions from the public about getting around Boston in the future and comments from the 600 people who participated in the Visioning Lab, ambitious goals and aspiration targets have been identified around nine themes.

The following themes with their associated goals and targets rose to the top:

Access

• Goal - Make Boston’s neighborhoods interconnected for all modes of travel, and connect low-income communities to job-rich districts.
• Target - Every home in Boston will be within a 10 minute walk of a rail station or key bus route, Hubway station, and car-share.
• Early Action - A commitment to sign a Mayoral executive order making Complete Streets the city’s design policy to balance public space among transit, cars, walkers and bicyclists. DriveBoston, an expansion of car-share in the neighborhoods with 80 new spaces to be located on city streets and in municipal lots to add to those in off-street garages. Green Links, a plan that will connect residents in every neighborhood to Boston’s greenway network and park system.

Safety

• Goal - Collaborate on design and education to substantially reduce collisions on every street.
• Target - Eliminate traffic fatalities in Boston.
• Early Action - Vision Zero Boston, a joint effort by BTD, the Boston Police Department and EMS to eliminate traffic fatalities and dramatically reduce collisions involving motor vehicles.

Reliability

• Goal- Prioritize making travel predictable on Boston’s transit and roadway networks.
• Target - MBTA customers will experience waits and travel times that are longer than what is scheduled only 10 percent of the time.
• Early Action - A data sharing partnership with Waze, a smartphone app, to facilitate signal timing adjustments and enforcement of double-parking and “Don’t Block the Box” to improve commute times.

The complete draft Vision Framework report can be viewed and commented on at http://goboston2030.org/vision-framework.