Below are links to the presentation from a Urban Ring meeting earlier this month. It shows plans for a bus stop at the intersection of Stadium Way and Western Ave and one at the intersection of North Harvard and Cambridge Street. There is also a bus stop and commuter rail stop behind Malvern St near the BU campus.This route through North Allston clearly favors the eastern side of the neighborhood and Harvard's future campus. A route slightly to the west (North Harvard St to Franklin St to a commuter rail stop near the Sports Depot - drawn in red) or further to the west (Everett St to Cambridge St) would more equally serve North Allston and North Brighton and put the commuter rail station within walking distance of a larger population that now has no good mass transit access to downtown. It seems rather redundant to put a commuter rail stop so close to the existing Packards Corner stop on the B branch of the Green Line.
Complete presentation (7MB file). Slides most specifically referring to Allston
Were residents from the area ever presented with this aspect of the plan? It seems there has been a lot of community input to other sections apart from Allston, which has been added at the last minute request of Harvard. Perhaps there is still time to voice the alternatives.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused, are you proposing to run buses down Franklin St? If so, are you kidding? I could see Everett, but Franklin is a two-way street barely wide enough for one car with parked cars. Putting a commuter rail stop at Everett St (at the vacant Harvard 'science' building) would be a fantastic idea.
ReplyDeleteI'm not kidding for a second about the need for large-scale creative thinking about how our neighborhood will need to change to accomodate 15,000+ additional people working and living on Harvard's new campus.
ReplyDeleteDozens of buses a day already use Franklin St bringing kids to and from the Gardner School. Replacing the Franklin St pedestrian bridge with a bridge that could carry cars/buses would remove some pressure from the overloaded North Harvard / Cambridge St area.
I'm not pretending to have the magic answers to how we change our infrastructure to accomodate the future demands of Harvard's expansion. Any or all of the specific ideas I have might be all wrong. But I think it is essential that we feel free to share a wide variety of ideas about how thousands more people will be able to walk, drive, bike, and take public transportation. Our current system of roads can barely get the job done now and major gridlock won't be fun for anyone. And as Harvard's planning gets more approvals and more construction starts we will only have fewer and fewer options.
If you want to see some real big ideas, check out Chris Weller's www.cityminustraffic.org.