StreetsblogMASS

Worcester City Hall, an imposing Italianate building with a tall clock tower, and Worcester's Main Street on a gray December day.

Worcester City Hall Poaches Longtime Brookline Planner for New Transportation Department

By Christian MilNeil | Dec 20, 2022 | No Comments

Worcester is in the midst of several big-picture planning initiatives, like the implementation of the 2020 Green Worcester Plan – which calls on the city to "shift more trips from cars to transit, biking, and walking" – and the upcoming Worcester Next long-range plan.

The aftermath of a car crash. A gold-colored Toyota sedan is buried in rubble with its front end poking into a barbershop on the ground floor of a two-story brick building with several small business storefronts. Above it, a section of the building's wall is completely collapsed, leaving second-floor offices exposed to the open air. Several firefighters mill about in the foreground across the street.

Driver Demolishes Small Businesses in Roslindale Square

By Christian MilNeil | Dec 19, 2022 | No Comments

On Sunday morning, a driver used their Toyota sedan as a wrecking ball to destroy a prominent commercial building in Roslindale Square at the corner of Corinth and Birch Streets.

A Bluebikes dock at the Green Street Orange Line station in Jamaica Plain.

Seasonal Station Removals Put Dorchester’s Bluebikes Network on Ice

By Grecia White | Dec 16, 2022 | No Comments

Since October, 56 Bluebikes stations have been removed across the system, mainly in the City of Boston.

MBTA Is On A Shopping Spree for Commuter Train Parking

By Christian MilNeil | Dec 16, 2022 | No Comments

On Thursday, the MBTA Board of Directors gave the green light for the T to spend a quarter-billion dollars to acquire Widett Circle, a 24-acre former food distribution center between Interstate 93 and the T’s Cabot Yards, to store commuter rail trains near South Station. During Thursday’s monthly meeting of the MTBA board of directors, […]

A woman wearing a sweatshirt, patterned skirt, and bike helmet pedals a battery-powered e-bike with a large cargo compartment that's covered in a red fabric tent in front of her handlebars.

Prospective Buyers Await Details of Mass. E-Bike Rebate Program

By Sam Mintz | Dec 15, 2022 | No Comments

It's still unknown whether people who buying e-bikes now could apply for rebates retroactively once the program is up and running.

A historic black-and-white photograph of Charlesgate Park before the Bowker Overpass and Storrow Drive existed. The photo is taken from an elevated vantage point looking down at the Muddy River and the bridges that carry Commonwealth Avenue, Beacon Street, and Back Street over it. In the foreground two Model T-type cars drive along a mostly empty Commonwealth Avenue while a man crosses the street on foot in front of them. In the background is the Charles River and the Harvard Bridge, and the Great Dome of MIT is visible on the other side of the river in a mostly industrial riverfront district in Cambridge.

MassDOT Plans to Tweak Its Highway ‘Blunder’ in Back Bay

By Christian MilNeil | Dec 14, 2022 | No Comments

Under the agency's current plans, the Bowker Overpass, the four-lane highway viaduct which effectively obliterated Boston's Charlesgate Park in the mid-1960s, will remain in place for at least another decade.

A rendering of a proposed Columbus Avenue busway, looking down at the street from above, with the Northeast Corridor railroad tracks at left, the Southwest Corridor bike and walking paths, and center-running bus lanes on Columbus Avenue, with bus shelters located between the bus lanes and the general-purpose motor vehicle lanes.

Our First Look at Boston’s Plans to Extend Columbus Ave. Bus Lanes

By Christian MilNeil | Dec 13, 2022 | No Comments

The project would more than double the length of the existing busway that opened on Columbus Avenue last year.

A large crowd of people celebrate the Green Line extension's opening day outside a snowy Ball Square station while some kids play on a snowy hillside next to the station entrance.

Opening Day: The Green Line Arrives In Medford

By Grecia White and Christian MilNeil | Dec 12, 2022 | No Comments

The pre-dawn opening brought out hundreds of transit enthusiasts – including many Tufts students – to the new stations along the line on Monday morning.

It's not like some public hearings you may have been to – we really, truly do want to hear from you.

We Want Your Feedback: Take Our Year-End Reader Survey

By Christian MilNeil | Dec 9, 2022 | No Comments

How is our news coverage useful to you? And how could we make our journalism even better?

Five college students in winter clothes stand around an older man wearing a Franciscan monk's habit, and a poster-sized display board with the title "Listen to Me! Stories of the unnoticed" on a grassy lawn in Boston Common. Downtown high-rises are visible on the horizon under grey skies.

Emerson Students Amplify Under-Represented Voices from Boston’s Streets

By Grecia White | Dec 9, 2022 | No Comments

“We wanted to shed light on the true narratives of underrepresented persons and connect them with the people of Boston," says Father Tom, Executive Director of St. Anthony’s Shrine.

A bicyclist wearing a green scarf and a gray coat bikes down a bike lane next to cars.

How To Bike Through a New England Winter

By Grecia White | Dec 5, 2022 | No Comments

This summer witnessed a surge of interest in bicycling for transportation, as people got together to organize bike convoys during the Orange Line shutdown and the Bluebikes system set numerous new ridership records. Even Boston Mayor Michelle Wu started biking to work from her home in Roslindale to City Hall and the City of Boston […]

A diagram showing recommended installation heights and four varieties of signage from MassDOT's bike route signage design guide. Gray outlines of a person walking and a person riding a bike are shown for scale against a light grid of horizontal lines that indicate height in 1-foot increments. The four example signs all have 7 feet of clearance underneath them. The leftmost sample sign, which is indicated as 18 inches tall by 24 inches wide, shows icons of a bike rider and pedestrian in white on a blue background above the words "Linear Route Name." To the right, the next sample sign shows two signs mounted on a single pole: the top sign is a smaller 8-inch-tall blue-background "Linear Route Name" indicator sign; below it, a green sign split vertically into three sections has three white arrows pointing in various directions next to three copies of the word "Destination." To that sign's right, a third sample sign shows the same 18-inch-by-24-inch blue "Linear Route Name" sign over a smaller sign with a single, bold white arrow on a green background. The fourth and rightmost sign, specifed as 6 to 8 inches tall, says "Street Name" in white on a green background.

New Wayfinding Guide Aims to Help Riders Find Their Way Across the Commonwealth

By Christian MilNeil | Dec 1, 2022 | No Comments

If you’ve ever found yourself bewildered on Boylston Street, lost in Lowell, or stranded in Sandwich, the state has a new plan to help you get your bearings on your bike rides. The new Bike Wayfinding Design Guide from the state’s inter-agency MassTrails team establishes a system of consistent, easy-to-read signage for bike routes and […]

Load more stories