Mayor Michelle Wu mentioned the disruptive Orange Line shutdown can also be alternative to pilot a brand new imaginative and prescient for metropolis infrastructure that locations much less emphasis on car-focused streets and extra on group areas related by quick, free and dependable transit.
“Public transit is our connection to everything: work, school, fun, community,” Wu mentioned Wednesday on the tenth annual National Association of City Transportation Officials “Designing Cities” convention in Boston.
“Accessible, affordable, reliable transit doesn’t just tear down barriers built by ineffective transportation systems,” she mentioned. “It creates opportunity and fosters community — actively, intentionally.”
Changes applied throughout the 30-day shutdown, similar to rejiggered streets constructed for buses, bikes, and pedestrians quite than private autos, and free commuter rail service, are concepts that Boston want to discover within the longterm, mentioned Wu.
Even previous to that, she mentioned the town has been making strikes to get vehicles off the streets, which has included limiting the quantity of parking areas in new developments, constructing pace humps and raised sidewalks to sluggish site visitors, and the just-announced plan so as to add 9.4 miles of protected bike lanes over the subsequent three years.
Some of those selections haven’t been fashionable, Wu mentioned, however she likened this second of transferring towards people-focused streets to the opposition seen when the “radical” concept for an underground subway system was first launched in Boston within the late 1800s.
“The MBTA is far from perfect, but it’s hard to imagine that Boston would be better off without a subway in any part of the city at all,” Wu mentioned. “My level is, change could be inherently disruptive. It’s exhausting and sometimes controversial.
“But to make real progress, you can’t be afraid to tear up the street — especially, if after all that tearing, we ended up with something stronger, safer, in fact, that connects us all even more.”
Jannette Sadik-Khan, former commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation and NACTO chair, added, “Let the driverless revolution plant itself around our people-first cities, with room to walk and bike and ride transit, instead of planning our cities around cars.”
Also talking Wednesday have been Boston Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge and Cambridge and Somerville Mayors Sumbul Siddiqui and Katjana Ballantyne.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”