The South Boston Seaport’s seafood business is hooking collectively to oppose a metropolis transit plan that it says will harm their means to do enterprise within the space.
“Each day, there are many thousands of semi-trucks which travel in and out of the South Boston Seaport to service the seafood industry,” the Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative wrote in a letter to Mayor Michelle Wu and James Arthur Jemison, director of the town’s Planning and Development Agency.
“In the plan, as currently envisioned, many of the trucks would be incapable of navigating the altered streetscape. This would lead to traffic buildup and dramatic increase in idling diesel trucks, therein significantly undermining efforts to contain CO2 fumes, and putrefying the community environment.”
The Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, a nonprofit group that represents the seafood business within the Bay State, wrote its letter on behalf of the numerous seafood companies it represents within the South Boston Seaport, together with these within the Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park and Boston Fish Pier.
The letter was despatched in response to the town’s South Boston Seaport Strategic Transit Plan, which is aimed toward enhancing the operations, capability, and connectivity of the transit community serving the South Boston Seaport, in response to the Boston Planning and Development Agency’s web site.
In a press release, a metropolis spokesperson mentioned the BPDA and Boston Transportation Department admire the suggestions from the Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, and are persevering with to assessment public remark for the plan prior to creating their remaining suggestions.
“The BPDA understands the important role that truck freight serves both presently and in the future in the South Boston waterfront’s local economy,” the spokesperson mentioned. “BPDA and BTD staff will continue to evaluate the recommendations to ensure they are adequately accounting for impacts on freight movement, and will make adjustments as needed.”
Mark DeCristoforo, government director of the Massachusetts Seafood Alliance, mentioned metropolis plans for a sidewalk extension on Northern Avenue and a visitors mild the place Northern intersects with Haul Road would hinder the vans’ means to journey safely within the space.
The metropolis mentioned the Northern Avenue Improvement Project within the Marine Park is a separate effort from the transit plan, one that may make “sorely needed safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists,” and preserve truck turning and entry.
According to the letter, the 58 seafood companies that make up the South Boston Seaport yearly account for greater than $716 million in income, 1,555 jobs and $96.8 million in payroll. The metropolis’s rising seafood business has “local, national and global importance,” the letter mentioned, and “it would be a mistake to let this disappear into homogeneity.”
“It would be very bad for business and would be bad for the community if we were to be given this burden,” DeCristoforo mentioned.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”