Reference: www.metrofuture.org
The objective of this meeting is not just a presentation and Q and A. One of the goals is to inform and update on the MetroFuture Project. It is a three-year project, of which we are in six months. According to a handout, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), which is required by statute to develop a regional plan, recently launched this project, whose aim is to produce model legislation and public policy recommendations, among other results. As part of the projects ‘Initial Visioning’ phase, the team has spent several months traveling across MAPC’s 101 communities to collect ideas about the region’s existing resources, the challenges we face in planning for the future. These thoughts will be boiled down to subject areas for analysis whose aim is to develop a regional strategy.
The meeting began with a VIDEO, with an assemblage of thoughts in interviews of the man on the street:
What do you value about the local community?
There are a lot of places you can get to locally. The diversity of people in terms of business. The community in which people rely on each other. Lots of transportation. History. Commuter rail. Cosmopolitan, yet small town values. Education. The environment.
What are our challenges?
Public transportation. After school events, urban sprawl. Affordable housing. In Lynn, no Latino representatives. Schools: Because of money problems, courses have been taken away. The environmental budget cuts. Do we need a center to discuss all these things?
How do you envision the future?
Affordable housing—Needed for even high tech workers. Health care benefits. Commuter rail brings in commercial development [and crowding]. If we don’t control development, and have homes, we’ll lose a lot. We need police walking the street. Artists and people hanging out.
The next phase of the meeting was a Power Point presentation by Mr. Davis. The text of the presentation when quoted directly is in italics:
A New Approach to Planning
- Initiative to involve people across the region in designing their future.
- May 2002 Boston College Citizens Seminar
- Public approved participatory process.
- Nominated process design team.
- More than 170 people and over 100 organizations developed project’s framework.
- More than 50 meetings.
Interim Steering Committee
- Timing
- Membership
- Molded prior work into:
- Work plan
- Budget
- Timeline
Project Objectives
- Develop a sustainable growth plan.
- Increase visibility of regional issues.
- Link technology and information to community decision making.
- Take short-term implementation action as consensus emerges.
- Engage multiple sectors in implementation.
We have more that we agree on than we have issues. Engage commercial and business sectors or demographic sectors. Different gender focus: Since the Sixteenth Century, New England has been a center of social change.
Guiding Principles
- Our common problems must be addressed with a unified approach and broad public participation.
- Growth and development should be balanced with preservation of beauty and uniqueness.
- Regional equity is essential to strong, just growth.
- Our plan must be bold, compelling and achievable.
Project Structure
- Initial Visioning: What visions do people hold for the future of the region?
- Analysis of Current Trends: Where are we now and where are we headed?
- Developing Alternatives: How can we change the future, issue by issue?
- Integrating Scenarios: How do these alternatives fit together?
- Implementation Strategy: How do we make these visions a reality?
Common Elements
- Community Conversations.
- Subregional and cross-regional
- Sectoral and constituency groups
- Special interest groups
- Leaders at all levels.
- Project web site.
- University of Massachusetts Boston Poll
- Short-term implementation activities
- Boston College Citizens Seminars
Where are We Now?
- Halfway through Initial Visioning phase.
- Conventional and "unconventional" events have occurred across MAPC’s 101 communities.
- Finalizing slate of remaining visioning activities.
Where are We Headed?
- Determining planning dimensions.
- Assembling task forces.
- Hosting Fall 2004 Boston College Citizens Seminar.
- Purchasing decision support tools.
How Can I Get Involved?
- Join the MetroFuture e-mail list:
- Visit www.MetroFuture.org and click on ‘Get Involved!’
- E-mail MetroFuture@mapc.org.
- Join the MetroFuture team:
- Participate in a project task force.
- Conduct your own visioning session.
Comment
John Businger: Compliments on your initiative. I represented Brookline for many years, but everyone tends to be parochial in our region.
Brainstorming
Dan Wilson, Executive Director of Move Mass.: I would like to describe a year-2030 travel experience. As an example, in 1975 I moved to Boston and got involved in the Southwest Corridor project. It was supposed to have been cleared as a highway project.
We are now planning for thirty years hence. The young people of today are going to be the beneficiaries of this.
Curtis Davis: Question: Describe the nature of a travel experience in the year 2030.
How are you traveling? Who is going? How are they getting there?
A. We have to be thinking of people as walkers.
Q. Who is walking? Where are they going?
A. Boston residents are walking, not riding their machines. We should maintain pedestrian opportunities. We should still have a community thing.
Q. Tim Reardon: What does this look like?
A. Sidewalks on Storrow Drive. A welcoming pedestrian experience.
A. I live in Charlestown, rode by bicycle here this morning, but most people do not. Amsterdam has discrete paths and traffic lights for bicycles. By analogy, to be able to walk with regard to easy pedestrian access.
A. Re. the Longwood Medical Area: A lot more local workers will live locally.
A. As I walk to my bus stop, the bus will be arriving, going to Alewife, where a train will be waiting.
A. We must have a one-seat ride, North Shore to South Shore.
LMA: People will live there, have children who will go to local schools, which will prepare them for college training them for local jobs.
A. Trees every few feet. Therapeutic nature. Remediating gardens near the Charles River Dam.
A. Chris Hart, Adaptive Environments: We will start the AASHTO Manual over. True equity in bus and rail systems. Don’t cut services because there are only x number of riders.
A. Stoughton or Woburn must have interconnectivity with neighboring communities[, not simply transportation to and from Boston].
A. Transit: A system of buses that run on time. Signal preemption.
A. A visitor from the Midwest riding the Urban Ring from the LMA to JFK.
Integration of Modalities: Bicycle to the train or bus, then use the bike for local travel.
Walk around the neighborhood: Not thirty-story high rises. A quality environment for walking where there are trees, rather than tract housing where everything looks the same. The nicer existing buildings should be there. New building should enhance this.
Smooth walking surfaces so senior citizens have easy walking.
The existing transit system really integrates the community, rather than having drive-in stations.
Signs are easy to understand, rather than the new sign on Lomasney Way that is all acronyms. They should be understandable for people from other areas.
Vehicles should be smaller. Transponders on every street, charging people for the distance traveled. Parking lots at each business would be multiple use, [rather than exclusively for workers and empty at other times]. There will be congestion pricing.
John Businger: There is no idea out there that we have visitors from outside of Boston. There are signs that are taken down [or knocked down] that no one knows are missing, or else are turned around and not fixed. There will be a lack of silliness in signs.
Kuttner: What makes our area compelling is outside the city. One should be able to go to the periphery and visit. If I live in Brockton or Springfield, everywhere will be accessible.
What if there was a pedestrian-focus, as opposed to everyone assuming that everyone comes by car? Entrances for people, not cars.
Ms. Done(?), of the Bicycle Coalition: Porches spilling into the community.
In Depth: Detail That Makes These Ideas Real. For example, what is the purpose of a regional transportation system?
One of these things. In these visions, why is it appealing, and what are the barriers to it? What makes this an attractive vision to you? How does this increase the quality of life?
Barry M. Steinberg, Association for Public Transportation: Adding density of development near the commuter rail stations, so they can be destinations, not just parking lots for the train to Boston. In thirty years, there will be a train system matching people’s lives, so they will be able to get to places like downtown Newburyport or the commercial and cultural center of Plymouth without regard to limited scheduled service. This would make people more mobile.
What decisions would be made? We are getting older—not everyone is going to be 25 years old? I would be able to go to the station, drop off my dry cleaning and have a more integrated multi-modal transit facility in times and ways that don’t just involve home-to-work trips.
Chris Hart: The need for taxing to diminish the desirability of congestions. A gas tax that is on the European and Asian plan.
Kuttner: Worcester: A major inbound commute is the muscle market. The reverse commute takes time to develop. They become nurtured. Gradually, the regional rail system begins to stand on its own.
Tim Reardon: How do we think of creating service where they don’t have the muscle market?
Kuttner: Most of the lines already have been built. The City of Worcester wants ALL trains to come here, not just to Framingham. So signal and track capacity would rise.
Curtis Davis: We will achieve this by business as usual.
- Values
- I like to get out and get fresh air by walking or bike.
- I don’t want to be overwhelmed by traffic when doing this. That is, complementary movement.
What are the decisions making this a possibility? People at transportation organizations develop policies that build this.
Making transit more accessible for all these things. We must make the services more available. Not just urban core-centered. Improved service that increases mobility and improves the density of development. Density and variety in lives are increased. Breaking down barriers as to how resources are funded. Barriers of planning discussions. There are value-driven decision processes.
The next steps?
At the end of Phase 1, trend analysis will use Central Transportation Planning Staff-derived data. We are not looking at a specific solution to a specific problem. If we do, we GUARANTEE no consensus. Problem seeking is not problem solving.
What problems do you share that you want to work on together?
John Businger: Do the 101 plans, one for each city and town, address issues insular to the municipalities or are they concerned with more regional issues?
Tim Reardon: There are lots of shared values. There is a tapestry of shared concepts.
Businger: Governments have to be aware of this.
Davis: There is a continuing effort to engage the communities. We want to break you out of the normal way of thinking about these issues. We are going to be soliciting your opinions.
What is the PURPOSE of a regional transportation system? There is an idea about MetroFuture working in this.
Q: How are you going to take politics out of this?
A (Davis): We are not taking politics out of this. What about a metromayors’ coalition? This exists; it is happening. Leadership functions in different ways. Some follow the people's wishes; others lead the communities. We have to get these individuals to talk with each other.
Can we create a larger voice addressing common problems?
We have used up the Boston Transportation Planning Review vision of years ago. We should USE the politics of today, but in a different context.
How does the timing process of this work with the formal planning process that is going on?
Not easily, but the staff of these organizations are going to be addressed, supporting this regional vision.
Q: Are you doing outreach to the next generation?
A. (Davis) We are addressing Salem State College students. The Southwest Corridor Project engaged kids, some of whom got involved, and became architects.
Outreach alliances, like Move Mass. to raise funds to make alliances. Web-based tools will be available in more than 80 community-based technical centers, allowing people to do their things. This is not centralized.
People would have to buy into this frame of thought.
Notes on Move Massachusetts meetings are provided as a public service and do not represent an official statement of Move Massachusetts. The Association for Public Transportation is a member of Move Massachusetts.