Newton City Councilor Emily Norton is calling for scaling back the size of the Massachusetts Turnpike and Soldiers Field Road in the narrow stretch of land called the throat between BU and the Charles River – going from eight lanes to six on the Turnpike (three in each direction) and four lanes to two (one in each direction) on Soldiers Field Road, CommonWealth reports.
As a Newton city councilor, Norton acknowledged her proposal for fewer lanes on the Turnpike and Soldiers Field Road might not sit well with many of her constituents who commute into Boston from the west, which is another reason why better traffic projections are needed.
“I am happy to sell this to my constituents, but you haven’t given me anything to sell,” she said.
Climate Change? Designing for the future not the past? Middlesex County has the 2nd highest level of air pollution particulate matter in Massachusetts. Harvard research links particulate matter levels to COVID death rates, the map in the presentation given here shows the highest levels all along the Pike. https://www.mass.gov/doc/zev-commission-june-25-2020-meeting-slides/download
Maybe if our public transit service was better this would be far more palatable.
If the speculation that many employees may continue to work remotely post pandemic, this may not be such an unpalatable idea
Just another example of Councilor Norton not listening to her constituents.
Last week she railed against Newton’s two fair teacher contracts as “unsustainable” and blaming said contracts for larger class sizes and social workers being laid off! Wow. Never mind that class sizes at South grew last year when the teachers had NO contract — We are at or near capacity at both schools because of more students, not because of a proper COLA in one of the Northeast’s wealthiest cities.
I don’t know any taxpayer in her school districts, which include Horace Mann (look what happened there) who agrees with her scapegoating of the schools for our budget woes. Show me the polls!
Then she said on my FB post that we need progressive taxation and anything over $1 billion should be handed over. Maybe in Vermont but ain’t gonna happen in Newton! Which constituents of yours want that?
Time to listen to the voters!
Re sustainability, agreed public transportation improvements have to come first. And more EV credits, I am an EV driver, and we have the least amount of EV stations of any city close to Boston. Let’s offer EV credits etc. Councilor Norton has had some great ideas in the past on sustainability. I don’t see how increasing traffic via less lanes would help anyone??
I haven’t been following the details, except that the Twitterverse suggests that MassDOT’s much anticipated do-over of the Allston Yards plan last week was like a slap in the face to local advocates. There were a lot of out-of-the-box ideas floated around over the past several years for the new space. MassDOT stubbornly refused to even consider them for the longest time. Were they all ruled out? For example, @ofsevit’s ideas to elevate the rail instead of the road, or create interchanges and merge the two roadways for the length of the throat — the latter always struck me as an opportunity to lessen the pressure on Exit 17! And all of that was pre-pandemic. To put things back the way they are seems so shortsighted. Another MassDOT failure. Does anyone know if local advocates have preferred alternative plans at this point, or have they all been ruled out?
As for transit, we should accept nothing less than a transit-oriented design. A functioning West Station ASAP, connections over the Grand Junction to Kendall, and connections to local transit. All of which are critical to Newton. Counselor Norton is right to insist on modal shift, but it’s going to require more than congestion pricing. We need incentives like frequent, shorter rides to Cambridge.
MMQC writes:
That’s exactly the point. Allston Yard is the key to improving transit for everyone commuting from the West. MassDOT needs a plan that puts transit first.
The road diet for Soldier’s Field Road makes perfect sense, as witnessed right past it on Nonantum Road. It’s another case of a bloated “Parkway” that is both unsafe and unsightly. I hope MassDOT has enough sense to scale it down.
Emily’s hit a ten strike in terms of fairness and common sense. I have several friends who live in what’s left of a once vibrant residential area in parts of Allston near the proposed construction site. They are rightly concerned about the impact of this proposal on what is clearly a fragile and threatened neighborhood. We keep stressing the need to get more people out of their cars and onto public transit. Why not start with immediate inducements to get every employer to continue telecommuting systems established during the lock down phase of the current epidemic? Maybe not 5 days a week, but perhaps two or three at home and two in the workplace. Ireland’s thinking about making some of this mandatory and the effects on pollution and congestion would be immediate and far reaching, and would likely dwarf anything produced by transit oriented high density development in a comparable time period.
Didn’t we just spend 2 years debating how dense housing will lower the need for cars, while at the same time, demographers predict a reduction in school enrollment? Why should reducing the number of lanes on the Pike or School Budgets be a problem?
I was not aware that the people of Newton had any influence over the highway? If we did, we never would have agreed to split Newton in half for the mass pike..
Another way we set our priorities: what happens to rail during the long construction project? You’d think MassDOT would want to find a way to put more people on transit during construction.
https://twitter.com/PeoplesPike/status/1275216843205160966
I agree with Councilor Norton. Traffic on an interstate going through a booming city (which is what we want the Boston are to be) will ALWAYS be at capacity.
See: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
Yes, we also need the train to be better. The express buses should get their own lane (enforced HOV would work, too).
Even if expanding the highway worked to lower traffic (see above, it doesn’t), we shouldn’t be expanding carbon infrastructure. For our own health and well-being, we need to protect the river and expand parks, walking and biking infrastructure.
The pandemic has taught us that particulate matter from cars and trucks is bad for everyone who lives near a highway—which tends to be those most economically disadvantaged.
Councilors Downs and Norton have it right. Planning for the long-term should involve constructing public transit and bicycle lanes for those who commute into and out of Boston. We must move away from this addiction to automobiles.
Admittedly, riding on buses and trains during the pandemic gives all of us pause. Yet contact tracing around the world has shown that very rarely does Covid 19 spread through such commutes- it is a bit of a mystery.
Since these projects will take years to complete, I hope that the urban planners take the long view and plan for mass and non-polluting forms of transit to and from work.
@Bob—thanks.
FWIW transit is for much more than work. It is simply access. We want to eventually make it simple to attend marches, theater, go to restaurants or just shop Downtown Crossing—all by transit.
That also benefits those who work late or start early—how to get to Logan for the 4 am shift? Got to have transit that runs often and overnight.