Thursday, April 26, 2007

What BC Left Out of Their Traffic/Transportation Presentation

Officials of Boston College, and their associates, presented various details of their master plan on "traffic and transportation" to the April 17, 2007 meeting of the BC Task Force.

The following topics were not addressed at all:
  1. Details of moved BC T station. (MBTA planners not ready to present the details.)
  2. No information on employee / student "mode share", i.e., the percentages who:
    • drive a car to work
    • take city bus
    • take BC shuttle bus
    • take subway
    • bicycle
    • walk.
  3. What is their plan to reduce the one person / one car "mode share"?
  4. How many cars (parking) and people (transportation) would be moving from the main campus to the Brighton Campus? BC has made many statements of no net increase in numbers of people***, but their plans clearly move people from easily accessible sites on the main campus to less accessible sites on the Brigton Campus.
  5. Bicycles:
    • Harvard has made clear that their plan for Allston encourages bicycle use. BC avoided the topic altogether.
    • Would any bicycle lanes on streets be introduced? Where?
    • Would there be any bicycle paths on their main campus?
    • Will the development in the Brighton Campus include any bike-friendly paths or lanes?
    • How to connect bicycle routes between each of BC's campuses?
    • Increasing bicycle parking locations, showers, etc., to encourage bicycle commuting.
    • Do they even have a complete inventory of their bicycle parking spaces (racks) and shower facilities?
  6. Students and cars: Zip cars on-campus could reduce demand for on-campus student parking and off-campus illegal parking.
  7. Shuttle buses: How many will service the new Brighton Campus? Will shuttle bus system be opened to the public? How will expansion of parking spaces in Newton Campus be accomodated by increased bus support to the Main Campus / Brighton Campus? What will shuttle bus routes to Brighton Campus follow -- will they turn around, or continue on through to Foster Street? (Buses on Foster Street? It's conceivable.)
Can you think of any more that they left out?

Follow the conversation into the BC Neighbors Forum...


*** NB: This topic will be addressed in a future posting... they may have left a lot of people out!

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