It’s not bad! The proposal seems respectful of the site and will make a lot of improvements to the stadium that will benefit Boston’s student athletes, who will continue to use the stadium for most of the year. (Said improvements won’t actually benefit Boston’s American football players, since that sport, which is currently played at White Stadium, will no longer be allowed there. I’m okay with this because given what we know about what American football does to players’ brains, I don’t believe schools should be offering this sport anyway, but I recognize that I’m an outlier in this.)

They’re replacing bleachers with seats and adding amenities and not cutting down a ton of trees. And, as a daily user of the park, I’m in favor of bringing more people into it. It’s a beautiful, historic, and very underappreciated and undermaintained, and I’d love to see more people enjoying it.

So far so good!

But the transportation options for game days are just laughably bad. They want to bring 10,000 fans to games. And there’s essentially no on-site parking. The closest MBTA stop is close to a 20-minute walk up a steep hill. The proposal calls for shuttle buses from the Jackson Square and Forest Hills T stops as well as from some yet-to-be-named satellite parking lots.

Now look. I’m excited to have a league that hosts some of the world’s best players happening within walking distance of my house. I’m sure a lot of city folks will support the team. But if you want butts in seats, you’ve got to get suburban butts in those seats.

And it’s here that the organizers just seem wildly out of touch with reality. The idea that a girls’ soccer team from the suburbs is going to take 2 trains and a shuttle bus is tough enough without even considering the fear and loathing that many suburbanites have for the city.

I know from having taught in the suburbs that a fair amount of suburbanites believe that merely existing in an urban neighborhood is inherently dangerous, that your personal safety is compromised by being anywhere but a tourist area. Jackson Square and Forest Hills are used by a very diverse group of people. Jackson Square literally abuts the Mildred Hailey Apartments (f.k.a. the Bromley-Heath Projects.) Suburban girls’ soccer teams will not go there.

So I believe the project is doomed to failure. Boston had an NWSL team before—they played at Harvard Stadium in Allston, which is a long walk from a T stop and had limited on-site parking. And the team went under. I think the new team is headed for the same fate. Which is too bad, but not a tragedy for the city or anything. In fact, if the team owners sink millions of dollars into stadium renovations and the stadium is used exclusively by Boston Public Schools students, this will probably be a win for the city.

But my optimism here hinges on the idea that the folks making this proposal are either brightsided by positive thinking or else wildly out of touch with suburban soccer fans. There is another, darker possibility, which is that the team knows very well that their transportation proposal is laughable, and they’re going to get halfway through the renovations and then suddenly announce they can’t make the project work without taking park land for parking.

Mayor Wu says that paving any parkland is an absolute dealbreaker, and I believe her. But I also believe that the power dynamics change dramatically in the middle of the project, when the owners can threaten to walk away from a stadium that’s been torn up but not yet rebuilt unless they get their way.

I hope the city is prepared for some contractual shenanigans from the wealthy people who own the team (because, let’s face it, a well-developed sense of ethics is inimical to making the kind of money these folks make), but more than that, I hope I’m wrong.

#Boston #BosPoli #transportation

Multi-year plans and modest emissions reductions are insufficient. We need emergency action to combat the climate emergency.

Now, there are a lot of things we can and should do that will require time to put together. Center lane busways on every 4+ lane street in Boston, for example, while far less expensive than new rail lines, will still take time to put into place.

But there are two things that Massachusetts can do right now in order to help respond to the climate emergency. The first is to free the MBTA. Bus, subway, ferry, commuter rail—make the whole thing free. Denver saw ridership increase 22% when it made public transportation free for a month in 2022. Making the T (and, for that matter, every other form of public transportation in MA) free will ease traffic and reduce carbon emissions and make the entire Greater Boston area more liveable.

“But how are you gonna pay for it?” Same way we paid for throwing millions of dollars at GE to not build a headquarters in the Seaport, I guess. But also, eliminating fares will save tons of money on fare collection. No more machines, no more server farms running the fare system, and far less stress on bus drivers, so less turnover. (Also, going fare-free helps improve bus efficiency, since all doors can open at every stop. This saves on fuel costs.)

The second instant emergency climate change-fighting measure is such a no-brainer I can’t believe nobody’s even proposed it yet: close Hanscom Field.

Hanscom Field is an airport in Bedford, Massachusetts, that is the primary airport for private jets in Massachusetts. In fact, it’s almost exclusively dedicated to private aviation.

Even in the best of times, the idea that Massachusetts taxpayers should fund a landing strip for the 1%’s private jets is pretty onerous, but during a climate emergency, it’s inexcusable. No one needs to travel by private jet.

I believe private aviation should be banned altogether, but that’s something that needs to happen at the federal level. The least Massachusetts can do is shut down the airfield that makes this an attractive place to fly private jets in and out of.

Maybe there are better ideas. If so, I’d love to hear them. More than that, though, I’d love to have someone acknowledge that the situation we’re in is an emergency.

#Massachusetts #ClimateChange #MBTA #Transportation