A Boston Transportation Wishlist

Boston has a transportation problem.

Our city is home to 617,594 residents. Its population swells to over one million workers and shoppers, every weekday, including approximately 300,000 commuters, half of whom take public transportation. The other half, lamentably, drive. Meanwhile, more than 350,000 Boston residents have their own cars.

The city’s streets can’t handle this burden. Even if we continued to build new roads it wouldn’t reduce congestion or stop traffic jams. Experts believe that adding expressways, tunnels, and bridges only encourages more people to drive.

Instead, we need to promote the use of public transportation. Buses, subways, and the commuter rail can move larger numbers of people, and are cost-effective, too. (Public transportation has the added benefit of reducing the negative effects that automobiles have on our health and environment.)

Here are some of my ideas for making public transportation better and more accessible. (Many of the statistics quoted are from the MBTA website.)

Seaport District public transportation

Seaport District public transportation is a failure. Bus options are few. You can take the Silver Line bus line from South Station to three stops in the district, but it’s a slow and cumbersome trip. You can take the #4 bus, but it only runs six hours a day, and not on Saturdays or Sundays.

In order to help this new neighborhood succeed, plans for an improved public transportation system have to be developed, now, before all the planned development projects get started. A trolley right down Seaport Boulevard might do the trick, or I’d even settle for a new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line, but not one that requires passengers to switch at South Station, which is the case now on the Silver Line (which isn’t a BRT, no matter how many times we’re told otherwise).

QR codes for bus stops

I’ve been doing some research into QR codes, which are those bar codes you see popping up everywhere. Many brands of smart phones can read these to download data from websites.

The plan would be to have QR codes put up at every bus stop. Someone standing at a stop could wave his/her phone at the sticker and immediately bring up the schedule and “next bus” data. Currently, the information at each bus stop is limited; the bus line number is listed, if you’re lucky, and there might be a map of the route. That's it.

A QR code at each stop would allow riders to access up-to-date information, making bus use more convenient. It’s a low-cost solution that could be implemented right now.

Improvements to the #1 and other heavily used lines

Fully 40 percent of MBTA bus riders use just 10 of the MBTA’s 170 routes. The popular routes include the SL5, #66, #39, #1, and #57.

Riders of these routes appreciate the ability to take the bus to and from work and leisure activities, but the high levels of usage means there’s always pressure on the lines to carry their loads. More focus should be put on improving the reliability of the buses on these routes. They’re popular for a reason - they go from where people live to where people want to go. The T can take advantage of this by making simple improvements (cleaner, more-frequent buses) and some that aren’t so simple (before-boarding payment options to speed passenger loading).

Regrade Washington Street

Washington Street in Downtown Crossing should be regraded so that the street and sidewalks are at the same level. And, either have it open to traffic or completely closed to traffic, not open to taxis and police cars, etc., but only at certain times of the day. Or, even better, open to buses only - perhaps an extension of the Silver Line.

If and when the One Franklin project happens, transportation in the neighborhood will have to be improved, anyway; re-opening Washington Street to cars or closing it off completely should be considered at that time.

A monorail on the Rose Kennedy Greenway?

The Rose Kennedy Greenway suffers from being too much of a median strip located between six lanes of automobile traffic. In order to prioritize it as a place of leisure, there needs to be less traffic on both sides.

The city / state should reduce the number of lanes in each direction from the current three to two. The only people this would inconvenience are those who use the surface artery to get in and out of the city during rush hour. Why should their needs take precedence over ours?

The extra lane in each direction can be turned into a dedicated bus lane - perhaps an extension of the Silver Line (paging State Representative Aaron Michlewitz) running from North Station down the Greenway all the way to South Station. Or, in my dreams, a monorail.

Prioritize Boston-based projects

If I had my way, intra-city public transportation would take precedence over inter-city public transportation projects. These include the North South Rail Link, the Urban Ring, and the MBTA Red Line / Blue Line Connector (from Bowdoin to Charles Street/MGH).

Boston should have a bigger say in what gets built when it comes to public transportation. The city contributes $74 million toward the MBTA’s $150 million annual cities’ assessment; 49.8 percent, far and away higher than second-placed Cambridge, which pays $8 million per year (about percent). We contribute more; we should get more in return.

Limited only by our will

When it comes to public transportation, we’re limited only by our imagination … and by money. With a bit of both, we can improve every-one’s lives, commuters and residents alike.

Next week: Part 2: Ideas to improve transportation in and around the city.

To keep abreast of Boston / Greater Boston transportation projects, I highly recommend joining the conversation going on in the ArchBoston transit and infrastructure forum.