Councilor Flynn Opposes South Boston Transportation Action Plan, Asks neighbors to attend Community Meeting this Thursday

Dear Neighbors,

Please note the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) and Boston Transportation Department (BTD) will be hosting an in-person meeting on the South Boston Transportation Action Plan (SB TAP) this Thursday, June 27th from 6pm to 7:30pm at the Tynan Elementary School Cafeteria, 650 East 4th Street in South Boston. I am respectfully asking neighbors to attend this important community meeting. You can provide your comments both at the meeting and by emailing [email protected].

As you know, I have expressed my opposition to the recent draft recommendations of the South Boston Transportation Action Plan due to concerns about public safety response times and the potential for negative impacts to our small businesses.

Residents and small businesses overwhelmingly highlighted concerns at both the City-held meeting as well as the Listening Session I held at the Condon School about narrowing streets like East and West Broadway – with bike lanes or not – and the ability of our dedicated first responders (Boston Police, Boston Fire, Boston EMS) to navigate through existing conditions like commercial truck deliveries who are unloading product to our storefronts and restaurants, MBTA buses, Uber/Lyft/third-party food deliveries, and outdoor dining.

Every second counts in an emergency. If we narrow our main streets, commercial roads, and high-traffic corridors further, I have serious concerns that we will replicate the issues that we currently have on West Broadway (between F Street and Perkins Square) elsewhere – with cars and buses as it is now often dangerously crossing the double yellow lines. I have frequently heard from neighbors who are worried that our first responders may subsequently be unable to navigate all of these conflicts with a narrower road space for cars to move out of the way and to allow them to meet their emergency response times, especially in the event of a snowstorm and hazardous conditions.

I would rather see us focus on compromising with residents and small businesses by placing bike lanes on alternative routes, and focus on traffic-calming infrastructure in these areas to force speeding cars to slow down with strategically placed raised crosswalks, speed humps, rapid flash beacons with pedestrian crossing islands, and curb extensions for shorter pedestrian crossings.

I strongly encourage you to attend in person to listen and share your feedback with the BPDA and BTD, and to please share information on this upcoming meeting with your families, friends, and neighbors.

Thank you,

Ed

For more information, please contact Councilor Flynn’s office at 617-635-3203 and [email protected].