Transportation / Boston, Massachusetts

Credit:Courtesy of the City of Boston

In fall 2009 Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino established the city’s Complete Streets program with the words, “The car is no longer the king in Boston.” And it’s true: in downtown Boston, around 65 percent of trips during peak hours are nonmotorized. The city’s progressive transportation initiatives extend into the greater Boston metropolitan region, giving it a top ranking in our study.

The Complete Streets initiative, part of a nationwide movement by the same name, is intended to create streets that integrate pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit with motorists. Massachusetts has had very effective multimodal road policies in place since 2006, and the Complete Streets program has taken off in Boston. In January 2011 the city launched its Complete Streets website, which includes information on everything from smart street design to increasing the city’s green canopy.

But Boston has long been one of the least car-dependent cities in the nation. This historic city, densely built up around the center, lends itself naturally to smart growth and transit-oriented development. The public transit system is among the most widely used and extensive in the country, with rail lines stretching to highly trafficked neighboring communities like Cambridge, and dipping into the entirely separate metropolitan area of Providence, Rhode Island, allowing commutes between these centers without any time on the highway. More than 1.2 million people in the Boston metropolitan area take public transportation each weekday. And Boston is one of only two regions in the nation (the other, surprisingly, being Los Angeles) with a transit system employing all five of the major transit vehicle types: regional rail, subway, light-rail, electric trolley buses, and motor buses. And it has a ferry system to boot.

According to Charlotte Fleetwood, a transportation planner for the Boston Transportation Department, the city’s Complete Streets program has had a lot of successes already, even if residents were hesitant at first about initiatives like left-side bike lanes—as along Commonwealth Avenue—or reverse angle parking, which in fact make for safer, friendlier streets. Both ideas have since caught on, she notes.

“To me, the biggest success has been a change in attitude when we go to public meetings,” Fleetwood says. “Now we hear people embracing these ideas.”

Getting People Out of Cars...

Transit Access in Boston Metropolitan Region (light green lines indicate location of metro region with darker brown regions showing higher transit access), Credit:CNT H+T Affordability Index

According to the April 2010 summary report, “Sparking Boston’s Climate Revolution,” by 2020 Boston should be able to reduce vehicle miles traveled in the city by more than 7 percent through promoting the use of public transit, as well as by fostering transit-oriented development and encouraging ridesharing, walking, and biking. Transportation initiatives account for 31 percent of the city’s carbon reduction goals for 2020. These goals include both state and federal policies—such as a greenhouse gas standard to improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles—as well as many of Boston’s own programs, such as increasing enforcement and education on anti-idling.

Andrew Brennan, environmental coordinator for the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), said that some of the most effective strategies to keep Bostonians out of cars have been policies that make downtown parking difficult or expensive. There is already a downtown parking freeze that limits the amount of private parking that can be built in a downtown area, and it is quite expensive—as much as $30 per day – to score a spot. That is, if you can find one. The maximum number of commercial parking spots downtown is capped at 35,556, while more than 100,000 people take public transit into downtown each day. There are also resident parking permits reserved for those who live downtown, encouraging those who don’t live in the city to take public transit to get there.

…and Onto Bikes

For the past couple of years, Boston has also been enjoying the reign of the bicycle, thanks to city initiatives to put people on two wheels, such as the plan that has added 30 miles of new bike paths since 2008. In fact, from 2007 to 2009, the city saw a 43 percent increase in bicycle ridership—more than three times the national average increase. Furthermore, in July 2010 the city was awarded more than $3 million in federal funding to establish one of the country’s first bike-sharing systems, where riders can borrow, use, and return a bike with the swipe of a card—often right by a public transit station.

Using Technology to Promote Public Transit

Brennan said one of the most exciting and important things the MBTA is doing to make public transit ridership as easy as possible is using technology to provide greater access to transit information.

“There is just a slew of devices for your handheld,” he says, in particular a new GPS program for buses that allows users to see where the bus is in real time to plan trips. “That program alone has been wildly successful,” Brennan says, mentioning he’d used the app just that morning to get to work.

Extending Access to an Aging Transit System

However, Brennan admits one problem with Boston’s long-standing transit system: it is old. Decades of deterioration poses difficulties for maintenance and energy efficiency—which the city is working to upgrade and increase—and a built-up downtown means there’s no room to expand old stations.

“The rail system is pretty much at capacity,” Brennan says, adding that some lines, such as the green line, are over capacity. Many stations, especially in the city center, cannot be expanded, so the city is trying to figure out creative ways to shift the peak times of use, so that demand is more dispersed. “It’s about getting people as much access as possible,” Brennan says, “but it’s part of the downfall of a very successful system.”

The city may not be able to expand existing stations, but it is looking into extending lines and building new stations, which it hopes will foster transit-oriented development. One such future project of the MBTA is to extend the green line light-rail to the city of Somerville, which the MBTA imagines will be revitalized as the community of Davis was in the ’80s with the extension of the red line. “We’re really excited about this project,” Brennan says. It is slated to begin construction in 2012 and be completed in 2015.