The city project Go Boston 2030 is gathering feedback from residents about issues and concerns with the transportation system with the goal of developing an action plan by the spring of 2016.
Through community outreach, the city will continue to collect suggestions with a pop-up called “Ideas on the Street” that is currently touring more than 30 locations in Boston, according to an Oct. 9 release. There will also be “Idea Roundtables” held in November, the release stated.
“Our transportation Action Plan will lay out an ambitious roadmap to address inequities in underserved neighborhoods, connect our workforce to job opportunities, and prepare our systems for climate change,” Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said in a release.
Projects will focus on safety, reliability and access, the release stated. The plan will be completed by the summer of 2016.
Vineet Gupta, director of planning at the Boston Transportation Department, said he is hopeful that the plan would make jobs more accessible to residents.
“For example, not all jobs are in downtown Boston. There are jobs out in the South Boston area. There are jobs in the Longwood medical area. These are not well connected today. So we are hoping to make better connections for our neighborhood residents to get to those jobs in addition to jobs in the downtown area.”
The plan also aims to reduce collisions with the help of the Boston Police Department and emergency medical services and decrease wait and travel times by partnering with the transportation app Waze.
To connect with the residents of Boston, a question truck was dispatched during January and February that stopped at 15 neighborhoods in the city, The Daily Free Press reported on Feb. 2, 2015. Go Boston 2030 also hosted a “Visioning Lab” on May 8 and 9 to develop ideas for the future, according to their website.
Of the more than 6,000 Boston residents who contributed feedback through the Go Boston Advisory Committee, 19 objectives were identified and included in the action plan that represents the concerns of the majority of citizens, Gupta said. Main goals of this project are connecting various neighborhoods through equitable transportation throughout the city as well as updating the transportation system to prepare for climate change, he said.
Gupta also said there are parts of the city that are not well served by car shares, such as Zipcar, or the Hubway bike system. To accommodating these areas, the city will implement projects that recommend how to expand those networks, he said.
Climate change is another issue that the transportation system faces and that this project seeks to address.
“Similarly, we are looking for our action plan to address issues that have to do with climate change and so we are working with the [Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority] to see what the impact of sea level rise will be on all the stations that are hosting the subway system,” Gupta said.
Citizens can submit concerns and questions about the transportation system by simply tweeting with #goboston2030 or visiting the website goboston2030.org.
Several residents said they have had varying experiences with the transportation system, citing ways it could be improved.
Mike Lamb, 23, of South Boston, said Boston is in need of revitalizing public transportation.
“It’s the oldest system in the country, and it still runs like that. I know people who go to New York don’t have to deal with half the problems here,” he said. “Somehow when a big snow fall happens here they have to shut down the whole city for two days because no one can get in or out.”
Tyesha Brown, 26, from Dorchester said, the system could be improved by adding more buses to cut down on waits and make it more reliable.
“It could be better but at the same time it’s going to mess up somewhere else,” she said. “They are doing the best that they can.”
