| Newton MA News and Politics Blog

 

In a multi-pronged proposal to the City Council’s joint Zoning & Planning and Land Use committee meeting Tuesday, the Right Size Riverside committee (also known as Lower Falls Improvement Association) started its presentation for the Riverside MBTA station site (city documents here) with an usual request..

Don’t call the Riverside MBTA site a “Transit Oriented Development.”

Here’s how Right Sized explained its request in a memo…

“…Riverside is not robust.  Located at the terminus of the Green Line D Branch, with long travel times to most major centers of employment, and with only one MBTA bus line stopping at Riverside only a handful of times per day, transit at Riverside is weak. Indeed, what distinguishes Riverside from other Green Line stations in Newton (none of which are in districts named “TOD”) is its proximity to highways and its parking lot, making it a highly car-centric location. The current labeling of the District as “TOD” is both misleading and encourages reliance on labels. The label should be removed and the facts should be allowed to speak for
themselves.”

Do the folks at Right Sized Riverside know something the MBTA and hundreds of thousands of Green Line and bus riders (or even Wikipedia) don’t?

Is Riverside Station a transit oriented site? Yes or no?