Street Design

City of Boston, MBTA Release Refined Designs for Blue Hill Avenue Transit Project

The City of Boston and MBTA have released new conceptual designs for the Blue Hill Avenue transit project and will host three open houses in Mattapan and Dorchester in the coming month to vet the refined plan with neighbors and bus riders.

By Christian MilNeil

12:58 PM EST on November 8, 2024

A rendering of a wide street from a birds-eye perspective. The center of the street features a red dedicated busway, with two lanes (one in each direction) separated from adjacent traffic with landscaped medians and bus stop waiting area platforms. General motor vehicle traffic is confined to 1-2 lanes on either side of the busway. Along the sidewalks are green dedicated bike lanes, which are generally separated from the adjacent car lanes by gardens surrounded by curbs. A label in the upper left denotes the Mattapan Branch of the Boston Public Library, and another label denotes the intersecting street as Walk Hill St.

A 2024 rendering of the proposed Blue Hill Avenue bus rapid transit project at the intersection with Walk Hill Street (at right). The large building on the left is the Mattapan Branch of the Boston Public Library. Courtesy of the MBTA.

The new concept-level designs are the first step towards drawing up detailed blueprints for a construction project, which is still not expected to begin until 2026.

Blue Hill Avenue is the busiest bus route in New England. Unfortunately, the T also estimates that bus riders collectively waste over 3,000 hours every weekday due to traffic congestion and illegally-parked vehicles that block their bus stops.

Because Blue Hill Avenue traverses neighborhoods where the majority of Boston’s Black and Brown populations live, the costs of those delays overwhelmingly fall on people of color.

In an effort to make buses faster and more reliable for residents of Mattapan and Dorchester, Mayor Wu announced earlier this year that her administration would invest in a major redesign of Blue Hill Avenue with center-running bus lanes, protected bike lanes, and preservation of trees in the Avenue’s landscaped medians.

“This corridor is vital as it carries over 40,000 riders each day, comparable to ridership we see on the Blue Line daily,” MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said in a statement provided to StreetsblogMASS. “Updating the layout of this roadway will improve travel for all along this corridor and make bus trips safer and more efficient for our drivers and riders.”

City Hall, MBTA seek feedback on station locations

While previous plans for Blue Hill Avenue had been limited to abstract cross-sections and rough sketches, the new plans released this week get into considerably more detail about specific locations for new stations, traffic lights, crosswalks, tree plantings, and bike lanes.

A satellite view of Blue Hill Avenue in Grove Hall, with the Post Office and Warren Street at the far right edge, and Pasadena Street at the far left, with Blue Hill Avenue running horizontally across the middle. An overlay over the satellite image shows the MBTA and City of Boston plan to redesign Blue Hill Ave with two center-running bus lanes with two boarding platforms on either side of the Wayne Street intersection near the left side of the image. A green bike path runs along the sidewalk on the northern curb, and green hatched areas indicate places where the project would replace asphalt with new landscaping and trees. — A detail of the Grove Hall segment of Blue Hill Avenue from the MBTA and City of Boston roll plan for the Blue Hill Avenue transit project. Courtesy of the City of Boston.

The city and MBTA are still soliciting feedback on details for specific station locations and street layouts in a few key locations.

The conceptual plans include alternative designs for stations near Morton Street, American Legion Highway, and the Blue Hill Avenue Fairmount Line station.

The precise siting of those stations will affect other elements of the street’s design, including the number of crosswalks, availability of curbside parking, and turn lanes for motor vehicle traffic.

The city and the MBTA will need to determine a final choice between those alternatives before the project moves into more advanced design next year.

To help them make those decisions, the City of Boston is hosting three project open houses in the next month:

On November 19th from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Sportsmen’s Tennis and Enrichment Center in Harambee Park at 950 Blue Hill Avenue;
On November 21st from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., at the Grove Hall Branch of the Boston Public Library at 41 Geneva Avenue;
On December 4th, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Josh Kraft Mattapan Teen Center at 10 Hazleton Street

The MBTA has also published a new project website with additional details about the design, along with an online survey to collect feedback on station alternatives.

Download a PDF of the concept design here.

This story was updated on Monday Nov. 11 to add the quote from Phillip Eng and add links to the new MBTA project website.

Christian MilNeil

Christian has edited StreetsblogMASS since its founding in spring 2019. Before that, he was a data reporter for the Portland Press Herald in Maine. Got tips? Send them to me via Signal, the encrypted messaging app, at 207-310-0728.

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