City Shares Findings From Community Engagement Process On Future Of Blue Hill Avenue

Today, the Streets Cabinet announced the results of a 20+ months community engagement process regarding transportation on Blue Hill Ave. For almost two years, the City of Boston has been working with community-based consultants and organizations to learn more about residents’ experiences with Blue Hill Avenue between Grove Hall and Mattapan Square to understand how to best move forward with the Blue Hill Avenue Transportation Action Plan. The newly released Blue Hill Avenue Community Engagement Report synthesizes feedback gained from an unprecedented amount of outreach that included contact with 23,000 households along the corridor and collected over 2,000 comments, which represents 12% of project area residents. This feedback will be used to inform the redesign of the corridor in collaboration with other agencies including the MBTA, the BPDA, and the Mayor’s Offices of Economic Development and Housing.

The comments reflected areas of shared concern among project participants. These include: 

• safety concerns among travelers of all modes
• a perceived lack of respect among travelers
• the need to protect community members and businesses from potential negative impacts of infrastructure investment, and
• the need to support a thriving civic and commercial corridor along Blue Hill Avenue.

In June, based on feedback during the public engagement process, the Boston Transportation Department (BTD) presented two alternative design approaches - the “multimodal corridor” and the “enhanced existing conditions”. The concepts build on the concerns raised and evaluate how each design approach would best resolve these issues. This evaluation can be found here.

“We heard from residents that Blue Hill Ave. is an essential corridor for the communities it connects, but that travel today is often unsafe, unreliable, and inconvenient,” said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Chief of Streets. “The majority of those traveling Blue Hill Avenue during rush hour are on buses, and 96% of those riders walk or bike to reach the bus. We in the Streets Cabinet believe that a multimodal corridor approach will best address the shared concerns raised through the engagement process while supporting neighborhood businesses and  providing safer and more reliable options for those who travel, shop, or live along Blue Hill Ave.”

The information in this summary report will be shared with the broader public and with elected officials this fall with the goal of deciding the design direction by the end of the year. After this decision is made, public engagement will continue as the City works with communities along the corridor to finalize the design.

“For the last four years, we have worked closely with the City to explore options for enhancing this corridor's safety, access, and vitality,” said MBTA General Manager and CEO Phillip Eng. “Based on the engagement summarized in this report, we know our bus operators and our bus riders want to see improvements for Blue Hill Avenue in order to better serve Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. Moving forward with the multimodal design approach will provide the best service for the more than 35,000 bus riders who rely upon the corridor today and is critical for expanding service as a part of Bus Network Redesign. We value our partnership with the City as we jointly strive to create a safer, more accessible place through public transit.”

Blue Hill Ave. provides vital access to and from the city's major employment centers for Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan residents. It is a vibrant commercial corridor full of locally-owned businesses that represent the diversity of the surrounding neighborhoods, and it connects residents with places of education, worship, and recreation. ​

More than half of the people on Blue Hill Avenue during rush hour are on buses. Route 28 runs along this entire stretch of Blue Hill Ave. and is one of the most used bus routes in the entire MBTA network. Each weekday, more than 37,000 people get on and off buses on Blue Hill Ave, carrying more riders than any individual branch of the Green Line.

In its current state, the section of Blue Hill Ave. between Grove Hall and Mattapan Square can be challenging to navigate regardless of the mode of transportation. It is on the city’s High Crash Network, meaning that there is a high number of vehicle crashes that result in serious injury or death. Combined with a lack of crosswalks, this makes many people feel unsafe crossing the street.

In 2021, the City of Boston was awarded a $15 million RAISE Grant from the federal government to transform Blue Hill Avenue. The City relaunched its engagement process to understand residents’ experience with moving on this corridor before settling on a design approach. 

More information on the future of the Blue Hill Avenue Transportation Action Plan is available here.