Need for $1M study, updates stressed
Officials: Morrissey Boulevard project must keep residents in mind
Officials around the Morrissey Boulevard corridor that’s being targeted with a yearlong, milliondollar study say the eventual overhaul of the stretch needs to be done right and keep locals in mind.
“This is huge — it’s so important,” state Rep. Dan Hunt, D-Dorchester, said about the project.
The planning initiative will focus on the length of Morrissey Boulevard, plus the nightmarishly busy rotary at the end of it at the JFK/UMass T stop with the goal to “improve mobility for pedestrians, transit users, cyclists, and motorists, and strengthen climate resiliency,” the city said this week.
The initiative will run from Neponset Circle in Dorchester to Preble Street in South Boston — a sizable stretch of the city’s waterfront — and include planning around the big development slated for the corridor.
The Boston Planning & Development Agency and the state will each kick in $500,000 for the study, which is expected to take a year.
“Something grand has to happen, and I don’t know what that is, but that’s the purpose of doing the large study,” Hunt said, specifically talking about Kosciuszko Circle. He said he’s glad the review is underway — and that the state already is committed to more immediate fixes aimed at cutting down on flooding on Morrissey Boulevard.
Hunt he said he imagines whatever happens to Kosciuszko Circle — an overpass, an underpass, lowering the rotary or something totally different — will certainly cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Eileen Boyle of the Savin Hill Civic Association said the officials need to get a move on.
“We’ve had so many plans on this — they should be starting somewhere. It’s ridiculous,” Boyle told the Herald. “I don’t want to hear a year from now, ‘oh, now we’re in a recession and we don’t have the money and blah blah blah.’ We need a guarantee that we’re going to have something happen from this.”
Boyle said she wants the area to allow more access for the locals to get to the waterfront.
City Councilor Frank Baker of Dorchester agreed, saying, “We need to be able to get through that area.”
He said multimodal access is important for the big Dorchester Bay City project on the site of the old Bayside Expo Center site to reach its potential.
“If we can get it to work right, it’s good for the economy,” he said.
State Sen. Nick Collins, who represents the area, said he was happy to have secured $1 million in the recent transportation bill to fund a study of what he called “this critical nexus in the city.”
“Morrissey Boulevard and Kosciusko Circle are in dire need of improvements for multi-modal mobility, climate resiliency, pedestrian safety, and congestion reduction,” Collins said. “With so many new projects in the pipeline, and our cornerstone public university adjacent, we have an obligation and a unique opportunity to plan and execute long overdue upgrades to the Morrissey Boulevard corridor so it’s a model for sustainable transit in Boston and beyond.”
At-Large City Councilor Michael Flaherty, who lives near the northern edge of the study area, said the planning announcement “is an exciting step forward.”
He said it’s important “the short and long term plans for the area adequately reflect the priorities and visions of those in the area — whether that’s transportation issues, affordable housing, vision zero goals and climate resiliency initiatives.”