Car-Free State Street Is A Possibility In City Reconstruction Project

On Thursday, planners and engineers from the City of Boston installed a pop-up park on State Street in downtown Boston to solicit ideas and feedback from passerby about a planned reconstruction project that would completely rebuild the street between the Old State House and the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

State Street is a heavily-trafficked pedestrian route for office workers and tourists, but its existing sidewalks are narrow, in poor condition and create accessibility issues for wheelchair users. According to city data, nearly twice as many people travel on State Street on foot as by motor vehicle, but the vast majority of the street's public space is set aside for cars and trucks.

On Wednesday, planners from the Boston Department of Public Works and Boston Transportation Department cited those statistics to frame conversations about what a new, completely rebuilt State Street could look like. From a pop-up open house occupying one of State Street's parking spaces, planners handed out Halloween candy and asked passerby to stop and participate in a sticky-dot exercise to gauge support for a range of concepts illustrated on presentation boards.

One of the more popular ideas on display was a car-free street concept (shown below).

"It's something we've been looking at," said Ashley Biggins, a Senior Civil Engineer for the Boston Public Works Department who is managing the project. "If people support that idea, it could be a possibility."

Banning cars from State Street could have significant traffic-reduction benefits on other downtown streets, including Congress and Court Streets around Boston City Hall. It would also represent a significant achievement in Mayor Walsh's effort to cut car use in half by 2030 in order to meet the city's climate change reduction goals.

The city has set up a webpage for the project and is soliciting additional feedback through an online survey.

A schedule for the project has not been determined, and would be dependent on the scope of the reconstruction plan, according to Biggins.