Now is time for Worcester to invest big in transit
Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke at the opening of the MBTA’s Green Line Extension in Medford and exhorted community leaders and local officials to think about the next generation of transit improvements and to “plan for the future.”
With once-in-a-generation funding for transit released through last year’s infrastructure bill and the more recent Inflation Reduction Act, Warren told the crowd that federal money was available to do big transit projects and that the money would not last. Worcester should heed that call.
As a national leader in regional bus service with its current fare-free program, the Worcester Regional Transit Agency does a good job of serving New England’s second-largest city. But Warren is right: Now is the time for Worcester to invest big in major transit enhancements.
Among the many types of transit improvements the city might consider, bus rapid transit is the most flexible and most well-suited for achieving a long-standing goal of the city: to better knit together the close, but not walking-distance close, core neighborhoods and destinations.
As the crow flies, Shrewsbury Street and the Canal District are just over a mile apart, but few people will do that walk, especially in December. Mass. College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences University students might want to visit Helen's Bakery Shop in South Quinsigamond Village five miles away, but current WRTA service takes three-quarters of an hour and only runs every 40 minutes or so during peak times.
BRT involves express routes between a limited number of “stations” or “hubs,” instead of stopping at every corner. BRT systems also reserve either exclusive lanes or priority lanes for buses, so they avoid being stuck in typical traffic congestion. These systems have been around for decades, with Pittsburgh’s being one of the first well-regarded systems in the United States and more recently the phenomenon spreading globally with much fanfare. A BRT system could get that MCPHS student down to Helen’s in under 15 minutes.
While the current WRTA system reaches most parts of the city, a BRT would serve a different need by focusing on bringing the city’s premier destinations together through fast, efficient and frequent service. Imagine a dozen or so of the city’s biggest attractions, places where a lot of people live: Downtown, Elm Park, Tatnuck Square, UMass, Main South/Clark University, Indian Lake and Shrewsbury Street. Through a system of two or three BRT lines, these hubs can be connected via Union Station to get people around the city and beyond (to Boston, Springfield or all the way to Chicago).
Young people today are overwhelmingly rejecting car ownership and embracing city living where they can get around by foot, bike and transit. Worcester can continue to grow through a BRT system that welcomes and supports this car-free lifestyle, which would reduce the city’s overall air pollution and carbon emissions, not to mention ameliorate traffic congestion.
The identification of a dozen or so hubs where these express buses would stop needs to happen through a community engagement process to hear from residents about their own mobility needs. But once identified, these hubs can be magnets for new transit-oriented development that can bring much-needed tax revenues into the city to support schools, public safety and other community priorities.
Working with my students, I am sketching out some rough maps of where these hubs might be and how they would connect Worcester’s neighborhoods. What’s quite remarkable is that a system of only a dozen hubs spread out across the city could allow more than 80% of the city’s population to be within a half-mile walking distance to a hub. Fast, regular service at 10-minute or less intervals with minimal switching of buses means that Worcesterites would be able to get around faster using BRT than they currently do using cars – while saving money and saving the environment.
The Green Line Extension took three decades to get built. BRT doesn’t require such a long timeline; it involves some important planning of hubs and routes, new road markings prioritizing buses in some street lanes, and new buses (though some existing WRTA routes could be eliminated or reduced to avoid redundancy), but an entire system can be built in just a year or so with the kind of federal resources that are currently available. Now is the time for Worcester to think big, act boldly, and create a 21st-century mobility system that will be an engine for growth for decades to come.
Justin B. Hollander is an urban planning professor at Tufts University.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Tufts prof Justin Hollander on urging Worcester to invest in transit
