Side-running bus lanes are great, but moving bus lanes to the center of the street removes conflicts and helps bus service reach its full potential.

This walkshop will showcase the Columbus Avenue project, a collaboration between the City of Boston and the MBTA that sets a new standard for bus facilities in Greater Boston. The project features center-running bus lanes, bus-boarding platforms with enhanced amenities, and pedestrian safety and accessibility improvements along the corridor. We’ll visit the vibrant Egleston Square neighborhood to tour the installation on foot and by bus. We’ll discuss the benefits and challenges of center-running bus facilities, lessons learned, and how the project improves transit equity on a critical corridor.

Accessibility: Moderate walking, accessible bus stops. Please note that a portion of the route will use shuttle buses which are temporarily replacing the Orange Line subway. While the coach-style buses are accessible, if you need wheelchair or other mobility device access, you may be more comfortable in one of the accessible vans that is available for the Orange Line diversion. Please contact William Moose (william.moose@boston.gov) if you would prefer to use this accessible van service.

Click here to see the details of the map and route. 

Mode

• Pedestrian/Easy

Leader

• William Moose, City of Boston

Speakers

• Sarah Leung, Disabilities Commission
• Matt Moran, Boston Transportation Department

Explore the latest, greatest and safest bicycle infrastructure in Boston. We'll start with the Harvard Bridge, where advocates partnered with the state DOT to use traffic cones to install a 4-to-2 road diet for the busiest bicycle route in the state. Then, we'll visit the Western Avenue cycletrack, which was named People for Bikes’ "best bike lane in America" in 2015. We’ll travel there via the quick-build lanes on Mass Ave, which were constructed thanks to a groundbreaking Cambridge city ordinance. Later, we'll return on the Paul Dudley White bicycle path, a 1970s-era riverside path which offers good views and will soon be rebuilt as part of a large, multimodal project in Allston.

Click here to see the detailed map and route.

Speakers

• Jeffrey Rosenblum, Toole Design
• Paul White, Superpedestrian

Mode

• Walk/bike/scooter; Walking Pace will be moderate to brisk. Total distance: 5.3 miles. If you have particular accessibility needs that need to be accommodated, please contact paul.white@superpedestrian.com

East Boston is in the midst of rapid transformation, as shipyards and vacant factory sites give way to luxury condos and revitalized greenspaces. Across the harbor from downtown, the neighborhood faces impacts from climate change and is uniquely disconnected from the rest of the city–leading to the highest transit mode share of any Boston neighborhood. Yet, the area's growing population is straining traditional travel options, and emerging job centers aren't well-served by transit. The neighborhood's evolving needs require smart policy and investment in multimodal options.

Join planners from the Boston Transportation Department and the Boston Planning and Development Agency to learn how the City is responding to these challenges and opportunities. We’ll follow the Mary Ellen Welch Greenway, with stops to highlight efforts to reconnect commercial squares, reimagine public spaces, and ensure a resilient future for one of Boston's most diverse neighborhoods.

Click here to see the map and detailed route.

Mode:

• Bike and Boat

Leaders and Speakers:

• Kim Foltz, BTD
• Nick Schmidt, BPDA
• Chantha Son, BPDA

Take a tour inside the iconic Boston City Hall and explore an overview of the newly renovated City Hall Plaza. In the 1960s, urban renewal planning transformed the heart of Boston to jumpstart its flagging economy. Over the course of a decade, the site became known as Government Center, with the municipal hall as its Brutalist keystone. Learn the context of the master planning changes by I. M. Pei and Harry Cobb—dramatically altering roadways, building sites, functions, and pedestrian routes—and how that challenging legacy is being addressed to provide equitable access to government, improved sustainability, enriched urban life, expanded programming, and enhanced connectivity across the city.

The discussion will explore the building and plaza’s recent evolution and future conservation. This tour will be led by Mark Pasnik, a principal in the design firm OverUnder and author of the book Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston. He will be joined by Dion Irish (Chief of Operations for the City of Boston), Eamon Shelton (Commissioner of Property Management), Kennan Rhyne (Deputy Director for Downtown & Neighborhood Planning at the Boston Planning & Development Agency), and Mo Gomez (Senior Associates, Landscape Architect at Sasaki).

SPEAKERS

• Dion Irish, Chief of Operations, City of Boston
• Eamon Shelton, Commissioner of Property Management, City of Boston
• Mark Pasnik architect at the design firm OverUnder 
• Kennan Rhyne, Deputy Director for Downtown & Neighborhood Planning at the Boston Planning & Development Agency.
• Mauricio (Mo) Gomez, Senior Associates, Landscape Architect

MODE

• Walking; Stairs are necessary, Walking and standing, going up and down elevator

Motional is a global leader in driverless technology, developing Level 4 autonomous vehicles for

ride-hail and delivery applications. Formed in 2020 as a joint venture between automotive technology expert Aptiv and Hyundai Motor Group, Motional is uniquely positioned to fundamentally change the way the world moves

through safer, more accessible, and more reliable transportation.

Motional works closely with public and private partners to pair industry-leading technology with a

viable path to commercialization. We have begun fully driverless operations on public roads and

we’re more tightly integrated with the ride hail industry than anyone else. We operate the world’s

longest-standing public robotaxi fleet in Las Vegas, where we’ve safely conducted over 100,000

public rides.

Our headquarters are in Boston and we have global operations in Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Santa

Monica and Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Seoul. We invite you to join Motional’s leaders for

presentations and a tour of our Boston operations facility located in Black Falcon Pier. You’ll get

an inside look at our advanced driverless technology and will hear from Motional’s experts on

how we’re pioneering accessibility research to better serve riders, our path to safe deployments,

the industry’s policy challenges, and more.

Mode: Walking

Join this walking tour with community transportation and climate action leaders, as well as City of Boston Environment Department staff, to discuss the intersection of climate and transportation planning in Chinatown. We'll also explore how economic revitalization efforts related to the COVID-19 pandemic recovery have facilitated place-making and summertime cooling through outdoor dining. Learn about the role that transportation infrastructure plays in shaping urban environments, and how holistic planning approaches that center equitable access can transform the public realm and improve quality of life.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Transit/ Pedestrian, Easy

Leaders

• Zoe Davis & Kat Eshel, City of Boston

Speakers

• Lydia Lowe, Chinatown Community Land Trust
• Debbie Ho, Chinatown Main Streets
• Karen Chen, Chinese Progressive Association
• Jeena Chang, Asian Community Development Corporation

What is a fair fare? Learn about the many ways the City of Boston is working to tackle this issue. We'll start by taking a fare-free bus from Ruggles Station, where we'll get to see all-door boarding in action, to Nubian Station. On the way, we'll talk about what fare-free buses have taught us so far, and what more we hope to learn. Then, we'll walk around Nubian Square Main Streets, a vibrant business district and one of the locations for the City's Main Streets Free Transit Pilot. We'll learn how that pilot was structured and designed, and what the main takeaways were. After, we'll hear from advocates at LivableStreets, one of the first major proponents of fare free buses in the Boston region, to learn more about how and why they continue to push the conversation around fair fares forward.

MODE

• Transit/Pedestrian; ADA Accesible, Involves a moderate amount of walking and standing.

As Boston cleaned up its polluted harbor in the 1980's, a team of civic rock stars leveraged colonial laws to create requirements for public paths along the waterfront. The result was Boston’s Harborwalk, a near-continuous, 43-mile linear park along the city's shoreline that enables public access to and installs pride in our harbor and rivers. Our tour will highlight the history and challenges of the project, now nearly 40 years in the making. We'll explore best practices (and not-quite-best practices) in public access, water transportation connections, and connectivity along a completed section of the Harborwalk that has been built iteratively over decades and now needs to prepare for climate change.  We'll also discuss the tools the Boston Planning & Development Agency has deployed to leverage land and resources from private development to make space for waterfront walking and placemaking.

Click here for the detailed map and route.

SPEAKERS

• Rich McGuinness, Boston Planning and Development Agency
• Pat Sullivan, Seaport Transportation Management Association

MODE

• Transit/Pedestrian; ADA Accessible, Curbs, Walking and standing

Big changes are underway to make Tremont Street better for people of all ages and abilities! Join Boston Transportation Department staff on a tour of this vibrant corridor in Boston’s walkable South End, a neighborhood that encompasses the city’s rich cultural and architectural history. We’ll see construction crews building transformative changes like raised crosswalks, lane reallocations, separated bike lanes, and more!

You’ll learn about how a community process that centered the experience of people walking succeeded in building consensus around impactful design changes. We’ll discuss these designs, how they were influenced by input from the Mayor's Commission for Persons with Disabilities, and how they will transform safety and accessibility for all people using Tremont Street. We’ll also touch on how Boston’s history of race, class, and urban renewal reverberates in the South End, creating the need for an honest reassessment of the project and the ways Transportation Department staff engage with residents.

Click here to see the details of the map and route

Mode

• Pedestrian/Easy

Leaders

• John Monacelli & Nathaniel Fink, Active Transportation, BTD

Speakers

• Patricia Mendez, Commission for Persons with Disabilities
• Andrea Burns, Age Strong

Kendall Square has been called the densest square mile of innovation on the planet. Its information technology, social media, genomic research and biomedical research companies attract thousands of employees and visitors. Many of these organizations have relationships with MIT and Harvard, and bring in staff from the region’s many research hospitals.

With people coming and going all day, Kendall Square needs a strong approach to transportation management. In 1998, Cambridge adopted the Parking and Transportation Demand Management (PTDM) Ordinance, which helped shape travel patterns to the neighborhood. PTDM is a national model for reducing drive-alone trips, and the policy was crucial in the City’s effort to shrink the share of single-occupancy vehicle commuters from 54% in 2004 to 35% in 2019.

On this tour, we’ll show how a partnership between planners working on PTDM, infrastructure and transit shaped developments in Kendall Square. We’ll talk about effective ways to reduce driving, and examine the negotiations, equity challenges and outcomes of the program.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Pedestrian: easy-to-moderate. Walking/standing for about 1.5 hours. There will be spots around the route where people can take a break and sit. Wheelchair accessible, although there will be multiple construction sites that may block sidewalks.

Leader

• Stephanie Groll, PTDM Officer, Cambridge Community Development Department

Speaker

• Mike O’Hearn, Boston Properties

Learn about the rich history of Boston's transportation and housing activism. We’ll tour the precedent-setting Orange line corridor, and hear from one of the nation's top scholars of the “people before highways” movement, Dr. Karilyn Crockett. We’ll discuss the history of the Southwest Corridor, as well as the activism that allowed nearby communities to successfully mobilize against a massive interchange. Then, we’ll stop by Back Bay to learn about the Pullman Porters, visit Tent City to talk about housing activism and walk along the Southwest Corridor to see the lasting impact of the pioneering Boston and Cambridge activists who, in the 1960s, fought the interstates and won.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode 

• Walking. Covering two miles.  

Leader & Speaker

• Dr. Karilyn Crockett

Experience the brand-new Somerville Community Path Extension, a dramatic two-mile shared-use path running alongside an active rail corridor through the heart of New England’s densest municipality. Learn how grassroots and official advocacy created a viable funding strategy for the Path via the MBTA Green Line Extension light rail project. Discuss the challenges of reconciling design guidance with unique site conditions and extreme value engineering. Put yourself in the shoes of operations managers assigned to maintain this complex facility.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Bus & Walking, Easy
• Please wear closed-toe shoes. You will not be allowed on the trail without closed toe shoes since you are entering a rail facility. 

Leader

• Viola Augustin, City of Somerville

Speakers

• Terry McCarthy, MBTA
• Derek Anderson, MBTA/Arup
• Lynn Weissman
• Karen Molloy

Take a walk through Central Square, Cambridge’s only Cultural District and Business Improvement District. Central Square is a neighborhood in flux, known locally as a cultural destination and bookended by world-class institutions of higher learning. It’s a crossroads of the city, home to residents living at the extremes of the wealth gap, where life sciences, arts, culture and community connect and collide. This historic neighborhood underwent incredible change during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to close and near-constant collaboration with the City of Cambridge.

The tour will highlight three three public realm initiatives that transformed parking for cars into places for people: Starlight Square, Popportunity, and Central’s new, marquee dining blocks. We’ll also introduce you to some of our beloved small business owners, share the stories behind our 30+ pieces of public art, and take in the spirit of the Square at one of the 15 new outdoor patios created through COVID executive orders.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

MODE

• Pedestrian/Easy

Leader

• Brooke McKenna, City of Cambridge, Assistant Director Street Management

Speakers

• Michael Monestime, Central Square BID, Founding Director
• Nina Berg, Flagg Street Studio
• Matthew Boyes-Watson, Flagg Street Studio

Join a walking tour of the Highland Park neighborhood of Roxbury. We’ll talk about the area'shistory and examine new traffic-calming changes built as part of the City’s Neighborhood Slow Streets program. Highlights will include Eliot Square, home to the oldest wooden church in Boston; the historic home of Edward Everett Hale; and neighborhood schools like Paige Academy and the Timilty. We’ll snack on Roxbury Russet apples, native to the area, and pay a visit to the Roxbury Standpipe. We’ll also talk about the community today, including the challenges of traffic calming in a hilly neighborhood and–surprise, surprise–why residents don’t always agree on the solutions. If time allows, we’ll host a mini-design charrette en plein aire.

Click here to see the map and route details.

MODE

• Walking/transit ;Challenging walking conditions, including hills, narrow sidewalks, and brick sidewalks.

SPEAKERS

• Stefanie Seskin, Boston Transportation Department
• Margaret Kent, Kittelson and Associates

Tour the South Boston Seaport District and discover Boston’s newest neighborhood. Since the Big Dig project, the South Boston Seaport District has evolved from an industrial waterfront to a dense redevelopment of commercial and residential uses, including the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA).

While the initial street network consisted of wide arterials with limited accommodations for other modes, the City has been transforming the streetscape with improved sidewalks, bike accommodations and plans for bus priority interventions. On the tour, we’ll discuss the need to prioritize climate resilience in the face of rising seas and extreme weather. We’ll also discuss the South Boston Seaport buildout, including the creation of major infrastructure that preceded it, like the South Boston Interchange, Ted Williams Tunnel and the Silver Line Transitway. These projects fostered the area’s growth, but have also led to mobility challenges due to pressures of demand and changing modal priorities.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Pedestrian & Transit/Easy; There are curbs and stops do not have elevators. If there are folks who need accessible stations, they can be switched.

Leaders

• Jim Fitzgerald, BPDA
• Chris Busch, BPDA
• Pat Hoey, BTD

Speakers

• Tom Ready, FPNA
• Yanni Tsipis, WS Development 
• Jeff Cleland, Amazon

Learn how Boston buried an interstate highway and built a world-class park over it. On this tour, we’ll walk along the Greenway, stopping at key sections of the project to do a deep dive on how the streets and sidewalks were designed over the tunnel, and visit the Zakim Bridge to learn about its history. We’ll chat with some of the designers behind the Big Dig project, meet leaders from the Greenway Conservancy activating the corridor, and hear from the Artery Business Committee, whose leaders have described the project as “doing heart surgery while playing a tennis match.” We’ll also discuss how, a decade after the project was completed, the region has benefited from the expansion of transit lines, new open space, a third harbor tunnel, a dramatic bridge and an island park.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Pedestrian/easy

Leader & Speaker

• Vineet Gupta, City of Boston

It’s been over ten years since Boston first established minimum guidelines for bicycle parking.  In 2019, we revisited our guidelines by surveying users, evaluating existing bike rooms, comparing ourselves to peer cities, and asking our colleagues about working with developers. To support growth in biking, we found a compelling need for improving the design of bike racks in the public right of way and within new developments. Our 2020 Bike Parking Guidelines update provides simple design guidance for safe, convenient, and inclusive bike parking. 

Join us on a bike tour of the good, the bad, and the ugly in bike parking. We’ll visit the Allston/Brighton neighborhood and critique bike parking designed before and after the update. We’ll share our process for developing criteria for rack styles to ensure bike parking is as convenient as car parking, serves cyclists of all ages and abilities, and accommodates various bike types, such as cargo bikes, adaptive cycles, kid’s bikes, and more. Finally, we’ll have a candid discussion about the questions we’re still working out. 

Click here to see the details of the map and route

MODE

• Bicycling/Easy

LEADERS

• Jen Rowe & Hannah Fong, Active Transportation Planners, BTD

SPEAKERS

• Jen Rowe, Active Transportation Planner, BTD
• Hannah Fong, Active Transportation Planner, BTD
• Joe Blakenship, Senior Transportation Planner II, BPDA
• Nathan Hostert, Policy Analyst
• Karen E. Spilka, Office of Massachusetts Senate President 
• Alaa Mukahhal, Planner, Kittelson & Associates, Inc.  

The legacy of America’s highway-building era weighs heavily on the East Somerville community, which features dense, mixed-income neighborhoods burdened by particulate pollution, unhealthy noise levels and disproportionate frequency and severity of traffic crashes. Speak with local officials and stakeholders fighting to mitigate the harms of Interstate 93 and adjacent state highways through grassroots organizing, scientific research, physical traffic calming and road diets. We hope you’ll be inspired to try new approaches to address historic inequities in your own community’s freeway-burdened neighborhoods.

Click here to see the detailed map and route.

SPEAKERS

• Alexandera Kleyman

MODE

• Pedestrian; Long Walking and Standing

Boston and Cambridge have been peering at each other over the Charles River for three hundred years. First, horse carriages and later trains plied over the bridges connecting the two cities. Now, the bridges are evolving again, as the cities work to provide safe passage for people on bikes and connect their bike networks.

On this bike tour, we’ll ride from the conference center to the Charles River and follow the region’s most popular cycling route through the Charles River Esplanade. We’ll discuss how the cities have worked together to improve cycling conditions, even though the bridges are owned by state agencies. We’ll cross the Longfellow Bridge, and pause to learn how the cities and advocates improved the reconstruction of the centuries-old bridge for pedestrians and cyclists. The route back on the Cambridge side of the river will pass the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Bridge (Mass Ave Bridge), on which a separated bicycle lane is being planned to connect the area to Boston’s existing bike network.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Speakers:

• David Loutzenheiser, MAPC
• Adi Nochur, MAPC
• Marah Holland, MAPC
• Wendy Landman, WalkBoston
• Charlie Creagh, City of Cambridge
• Becca Wolfson, Boston Cyclists Union

MODE

• Biking; Easy, mostly on trail, little road biking, requires biking

Join us for a tour of Union Square, Somerville’s historic and future downtown, as well as a key center of civic life, international culture and the arts economy. In order to make the case for the MBTA Green Line light rail extension, the City has worked to prepare and implement an aggressive strategy for equitable, transit-oriented development. The City has also used a robust public infrastructure investment program to guide private development in a progressive direction, with affordable housing, workforce and small business development, transportation demand management, and public space investments required. Judge for yourself whether the early results are matching the community’s vision.

Click here to see the map and detailed route.

SPEAKERS

• Cortney Kirk, Sr. Planner, Public Space & Urban Forestry: Wants access to conference, ckirk@somervillema.gov
• Dan Bartman, Deputy Director, Planning, Preservation & Zoning: Wants access to conference, dbartman@somervillema.gov
• Jessica Eschelman, Director, Union Square Main Streets: Wants access to conference, jessica@unionsquaremain.org
• Greg Karczewski, President, Union Square Station Associates LLC: Do know know yet if access or compensation will be requested
• Justin Kunz, Development Manager, Union Square Station Associates LLC: Do know know yet if access or compensation will be requested

MODE

• Pedestrian/Easy; walking on sidewalk, some construction, there are ramps

Mega-projects alone can’t solve the urgent mobility challenges facing our communities. While MBTA Green Line light rail construction was underway in Somerville in 2019, the City simultaneously installed a ½-mile long, bi-directional, all-day bus lane on a major transit corridor serving 10,000 daily bus customers. This project took place during a particularly productive year for bus mobility in greater Boston, and contributed to a healthy “sibling rivalry” of municipalities working with the MBTA to change the conversation on bus service and infrastructure. Join project managers to tour the site and get the inside scoop on design trade-offs, implementation logistics and post-project evaluation.

Click here to see the detailed route and map.

SPEAKERS

• Kristiana Lachiusa, LivableStreets Alliance

MODE

• Pedestrian/Easy; Walking on Sidewalks

Massachusetts Avenue is the transportation “spine” of the Boston region. In recent years, Cambridge has redesigned two sections of “Mass Ave” to prioritize sustainable transportation. Our WalkShop will take us through these two sections, which have markedly different characteristics.

South Mass Ave, connecting Cambridge to Boston, is home to large employers and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The nearby neighborhood is racially diverse and hosts many dining establishments and cultural venues. Northern Mass Ave, which connects Cambridge with regional highways, public transit routes, and multiuse paths, is more residential and has many independent retailers.

Before recent changes, Mass Ave was a wide roadway oriented toward moving as many vehicles as possible, causing safety and operational challenges. People biking and walking faced crash hotspots, while bus and shuttle riders experienced severe delays. To make the street work for more people, Cambridge reallocated signal time, street space, and parking, which opened space to install separated bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, and pick-up and drop-off zones. Using these quick-build implementation approaches, Cambridge has transformed Mass Ave into a transit and bike-centric street.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Transit/Walking

Leader

• Andrew Reker, Assistant Transportation Planner, Cambridge Community Development Department

Speakers

• Andreas Wolfe
• Makayla Comas

Join the USDOT Volpe Center to learn about the safety impacts of large vehicles, featuring higher and lower vision city trucks! 

A driver's reaction time is 50% faster when they can see a pedestrian, bicyclist or other road user with their naked eye (also known as direct vision) rather than through a mirror. For 50 years, the Volpe Center has focused on the intersection of transportation safety, innovation, and infrastructure. They have developed the VIEW blind zone assessment tool, which measures vehicle blind zones, that we'll put to the test on real city trucks at real crosswalks. In this walkshop, you'll learn how to make safer fleet purchase decisions based on direct vision, how to incorporate direct vision into the decision-making process, and how to account for large truck blind zones in intersection design.

How can a functioning road diet be applied to a high-volume traffic circle? Join City project managers on a tour Somerville’s College Avenue corridor, which is only 40’ wide but handles 200+ bus trips per day. We’ll examine aggressive physical traffic calming treatments and one of America’s most progressive quick-build traffic circle reconfigurations. Along the way, we’ll ask you to share experiences from your own constrained corridors, and compare notes on curb management changes, including the procedural and legal dynamics at play.

Click here to see the detailed route and map.

MODE:

• Pedestrian; The route is almost entirely accessible except for the blocks closest to Davis. There is a incline walking up college Ave and decline walking back to Davis Square, no more than 4%.

SPEAKERS

• Radu Nan, Kittelson & Associates

Join us for a tour of Western Avenue, which received the “Best Bicycle Lane of the Year” award from PeopleForBikes in 2015. We’ll talk about community engagement processes, and how neighbors and city officials were brought on board to support a separated bicycle facility here, using the street space necessary to make it work. We’ll compare and contrast this design with that of River Street, which has a narrower corridor leading to a different set of possible cross-sections, including bus priority. Finally, we’ll check out the design for Carl Barron Plaza, a gateway to both corridors and a key place-making element of Central Square.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Pedestrian/ easy

Leader & Speaker

• Bill Deignan, Transportation Planner, Cambridge Community Development Department

Side-running bus lanes are great, but moving bus lanes to the center of the street removes conflicts and helps bus service reach its full potential.

This walkshop will showcase the Columbus Avenue project, a collaboration between the City of Boston and the MBTA that sets a new standard for bus facilities in Greater Boston. The project features center-running bus lanes, bus-boarding platforms with enhanced amenities, and pedestrian safety and accessibility improvements along the corridor. We’ll visit the vibrant Egleston Square neighborhood to tour the installation on foot and by bus. We’ll discuss the benefits and challenges of center-running bus facilities, lessons learned, and how the project improves transit equity on a critical corridor.

Click here to see the details of the map and route. 

Mode

• Pedestrian/Easy

Leader

• William Moose, City of Boston

Speakers

• Sarah Leung, Disabilities Commission
• Matt Moran, Boston Transportation Department

East Boston is in the midst of rapid transformation, as shipyards and vacant factory sites give way to luxury condos and revitalized greenspaces. Across the harbor from downtown, the neighborhood faces impacts from climate change and is uniquely disconnected from the rest of the city–leading to the highest transit mode share of any Boston neighborhood. Yet, the area's growing population is straining traditional travel options, and emerging job centers aren't well-served by transit. The neighborhood's evolving needs require smart policy and investment in multimodal options.

Join planners from the Boston Transportation Department and the Boston Planning and Development Agency to learn how the City is responding to these challenges and opportunities. We’ll follow the Mary Ellen Welch Greenway, with stops to highlight efforts to reconnect commercial squares, reimagine public spaces, and ensure a resilient future for one of Boston's most diverse neighborhoods.

Click here to see the map and detailed route.

Mode:

• Bike and Boat

Leaders and Speakers:

• Kim Foltz, BTD
• Nick Schmidt, BPDA
• Chantha Son, BPDA

Downtown Boston’s street grid was once much denser than it is today. Despite the centuries of change to streets and highways, historic connections can still be found and explored. Come discover the tucked away alleys, passageways, public stairs, building cut-throughs, and pedestrianized spaces that can only be found by exploring the heart of the city on foot. Peel back layers from the oldest preserved street grid to newly restored and reconnected walking areas. Experience the most fine-grained transportation system in the city and learn about similar spaces in other neighborhoods.

Click here to see the detailed map and route.

MODE

• Walking/Transit; The route is not very long and there are places to sit at some of the stops, but the route does include stairs.

SPEAKERS

• Alice Brown, Boston Harbor Now,

Join this walking tour with community transportation and climate action leaders, as well as City of Boston Environment Department staff, to discuss the intersection of climate and transportation planning in Chinatown. We'll also explore how economic revitalization efforts related to the COVID-19 pandemic recovery have facilitated place-making and summertime cooling through outdoor dining. Learn about the role that transportation infrastructure plays in shaping urban environments, and how holistic planning approaches that center equitable access can transform the public realm and improve quality of life.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Transit/ Pedestrian, Easy

Leaders

• Zoe Davis & Kat Eshel, City of Boston

Speakers

• Lydia Lowe, Chinatown Community Land Trust
• Debbie Ho, Chinatown Main Streets
• Karen Chen, Chinese Progressive Association
• Jeena Chang, Asian Community Development Corporation

As Boston cleaned up its polluted harbor in the 1980's, a team of civic rock stars leveraged colonial laws to create requirements for public paths along the waterfront. The result was Boston’s Harborwalk, a near-continuous, 43-mile linear park along the city's shoreline that enables public access to and installs pride in our harbor and rivers. Our tour will highlight the history and challenges of the project, now nearly 40 years in the making. We'll explore best practices (and not-quite-best practices) in public access, water transportation connections, and connectivity along a completed section of the Harborwalk that has been built iteratively over decades and now needs to prepare for climate change.  We'll also discuss the tools the Boston Planning & Development Agency has deployed to leverage land and resources from private development to make space for waterfront walking and placemaking.

Click here for the detailed map and route.

SPEAKERS

• Rich McGuinness, Boston Planning and Development Agency
• Pat Sullivan, Seaport Transportation Management Association

MODE

• Transit/Pedestrian; ADA Accessible, Curbs, Walking and standing

Big changes are underway to make Tremont Street better for people of all ages and abilities! Join Boston Transportation Department staff on a tour of this vibrant corridor in Boston’s walkable South End, a neighborhood that encompasses the city’s rich cultural and architectural history. We’ll see construction crews building transformative changes like raised crosswalks, lane reallocations, separated bike lanes, and more!

You’ll learn about how a community process that centered the experience of people walking succeeded in building consensus around impactful design changes. We’ll discuss these designs, how they were influenced by input from the Mayor's Commission for Persons with Disabilities, and how they will transform safety and accessibility for all people using Tremont Street. We’ll also touch on how Boston’s history of race, class, and urban renewal reverberates in the South End, creating the need for an honest reassessment of the project and the ways Transportation Department staff engage with residents.

Click here to see the details of the map and route

Mode

• Pedestrian/Easy

Leaders

• John Monacelli & Nathaniel Fink, Active Transportation, BTD

Speakers

• Patricia Mendez, Commission for Persons with Disabilities
• Andrea Burns, Age Strong

Kendall Square has been called the densest square mile of innovation on the planet. Its information technology, social media, genomic research and biomedical research companies attract thousands of employees and visitors. Many of these organizations have relationships with MIT and Harvard, and bring in staff from the region’s many research hospitals.

With people coming and going all day, Kendall Square needs a strong approach to transportation management. In 1998, Cambridge adopted the Parking and Transportation Demand Management (PTDM) Ordinance, which helped shape travel patterns to the neighborhood. PTDM is a national model for reducing drive-alone trips, and the policy was crucial in the City’s effort to shrink the share of single-occupancy vehicle commuters from 54% in 2004 to 35% in 2019.

Click here to see the details of the map and route.

Mode

• Pedestrian: easy-to-moderate. Walking/standing for about 1.5 hours. There will be spots around the route where people can take a break and sit. Wheelchair accessible, although there will be multiple construction sites that may block sidewalks.

Leader

• Stephanie Groll, PTDM Officer, Cambridge Community Development Department

Speaker

• Mike O’Hearn, Boston Properties

On this tour, we’ll show how a partnership between planners working on PTDM, infrastructure and transit shaped developments in Kendall Square. We’ll talk about effective ways to reduce driving, and examine the negotiations, equity challenges and outcomes of the program.

North Point/Cambridge Crossing, a former industrial site, is now one of Cambridge's major mixed-use districts. The City holistically guided the area’s growth as a planned development area, and providing expanded public transportation and active transportation facilities was central to its transformation. As the neighborhood has transformed, so have the area's transportation needs.

Join us on a walking tour to see the bike, pedestrian and transit connections that integrate this neighborhood into its surroundings. We’ll visit North Point Park, a new regional park with bicycle paths, pedestrian paths and bridges created with mitigation funds from the Central Artery Tunnel Project (the "Big Dig"). We’ll stop by four buildings developed by EF Education First for its headquarters and for the Hult Business School. We’ll also check out Cambridge Crossing, a multimillion-square-foot mixed-use development. Finally, we’ll see the new Lechmere station anchoring the extension of the Green Line MBTA system, as well as a multi-use path that connects the line to a network of major bikeways.

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Mode

• Transit and Walking Accessibility:
• Walking, no stairs required
• Accessibility dependent on accessibility of Green Line shuttles

Leaders

• Cara Seiderman, Transportation Program Manager, Cambridge Community Dev. Dept.
• Suzannah Bigolin, Urban Design Director, Cambridge Community Development Dept.

Speakers

• Karl Haglund, DCR
• Mark Johnson, Divco West
• Hallie Moran, EF International

What is a green job? Who gets them? Come with us on a journey to look at three programs working with the City of Boston that bring these questions to life. Take the Orange Line to Roxbury Crossing and visit Boston's Central Fleet Maintenance Team and the teachers at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School to learn about their "train the trainer" electric vehicle maintenance program, which pairs city mechanics with high school students. We'll then continue down the Southwest Corridor to visit Good2Go EV carshare, an equity-focused carshare pilot servicing Roxbury. We'll hop back on the T for our next stop at the Bikes Not Bombs Hub in Jamaica Plain, a community-based organization that uses the bicycle as a vehicle for social change and economic mobility. We’ll hear about their inspiring youth programs and their collaboration with the City on their Advanced Mechanics program.

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Mode

• Transit/Pedestrian; Shuttles will be used on the Orange line. Please use van accessibility if needed.

Leader

• Kris Carter, City of Boston

Speakers

• Speaker at Madison Park: Bill Coughlin, Director of Central Fleet, City of Boston
• Speaker at Madison Park: Kevin McCaskill, Senior Administrator of Secondary Schools, Boston Public Schools
• Speaker at Madison Park: Jim Dellot, Assistant Professor of Automotive Technology, Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology
• Speaker at Bikes Not Bombs: Elijah Evans, Executive Director

Learn about the rich history of Boston's transportation and housing activism. We’ll tour the precedent-setting Orange line corridor, and hear from one of the nation's top scholars of the “people before highways” movement, Dr. Karilyn Crockett. We’ll discuss the history of the Southwest Corridor, as well as the activism that allowed nearby communities to successfully mobilize against a massive interchange. Then, we’ll stop by Back Bay to learn about the Pullman Porters, visit Tent City to talk about housing activism and walk along the Southwest Corridor to see the lasting impact of the pioneering Boston and Cambridge activists who, in the 1960s, fought the interstates and won.

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Mode 

• Walking. Covering two miles.  

Leader & Speaker

• Dr. Karilyn Crockett

Experience the brand-new Somerville Community Path Extension, a dramatic two-mile shared-use path running alongside an active rail corridor through the heart of New England’s densest municipality. Learn how grassroots and official advocacy created a viable funding strategy for the Path via the MBTA Green Line Extension light rail project. Discuss the challenges of reconciling design guidance with unique site conditions and extreme value engineering. Put yourself in the shoes of operations managers assigned to maintain this complex facility.

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Mode

• Bus & Walking, Easy
  • Bus & Walking, Easy
  • Please wear closed-toe shoes and long pants. You will not be allowed on the trail wearing a skirt, shorts, or open toe shoes since you are entering a rail facility. 

Leader

• Viola Augustin, City of Somerville

Speakers

• Terry McCarthy, MBTA
• Derek Anderson, MBTA/Arup
• Lynn Weissman
• Karen Molloy

Take a walk through Central Square, Cambridge’s only Cultural District and Business Improvement District. Central Square is a neighborhood in flux, known locally as a cultural destination and bookended by world-class institutions of higher learning. It’s a crossroads of the city, home to residents living at the extremes of the wealth gap, where life sciences, arts, culture and community connect and collide. This historic neighborhood underwent incredible change during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to close and near-constant collaboration with the City of Cambridge.

The tour will highlight three three public realm initiatives that transformed parking for cars into places for people: Starlight Square, Popportunity, and Central’s new, marquee dining blocks. We’ll also introduce you to some of our beloved small business owners, share the stories behind our 30+ pieces of public art, and take in the spirit of the Square at one of the 15 new outdoor patios created through COVID executive orders.

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MODE

• Pedestrian/Easy

Leader

• Brooke McKenna, City of Cambridge, Assistant Director Street Management

Speakers

• Michael Monestime, Central Square BID, Founding Director
• Nina Berg, Flagg Street Studio
• Matthew Boyes-Watson, Flagg Street Studio

Tour the South Boston Seaport District and discover Boston’s newest neighborhood. Since the Big Dig project, the South Boston Seaport District has evolved from an industrial waterfront to a dense redevelopment of commercial and residential uses, including the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA).

While the initial street network consisted of wide arterials with limited accommodations for other modes, the City has been transforming the streetscape with improved sidewalks, bike accommodations and plans for bus priority interventions. On the tour, we’ll discuss the need to prioritize climate resilience in the face of rising seas and extreme weather. We’ll also discuss the South Boston Seaport buildout, including the creation of major infrastructure that preceded it, like the South Boston Interchange, Ted Williams Tunnel and the Silver Line Transitway. These projects fostered the area’s growth, but have also led to mobility challenges due to pressures of demand and changing modal priorities.

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Mode

• Pedestrian & Transit/Easy; There are curbs and stops do not have elevators. If there are folks who need accessible stations, they can be switched.

Leaders

• Jim Fitzgerald, BPDA
• Chris Busch, BPDA
• Pat Hoey, BTD

Speakers

• Tom Ready, FPNA
• Yanni Tsipis, WS Development 
• Jeff Cleland, Amazon

Learn how Boston buried an interstate highway and built a world-class park over it. On this tour, we’ll walk along the Greenway, stopping at key sections of the project to do a deep dive on how the streets and sidewalks were designed over the tunnel, and visit the Zakim Bridge to learn about its history. We’ll chat with some of the designers behind the Big Dig project, meet leaders from the Greenway Conservancy activating the corridor, and hear from the Artery Business Committee, whose leaders have described the project as “doing heart surgery while playing a tennis match.” We’ll also discuss how, a decade after the project was completed, the region has benefited from the expansion of transit lines, new open space, a third harbor tunnel, a dramatic bridge and an island park.

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Mode

• Pedestrian/easy

Leader & Speaker

• Vineet Gupta, City of Boston

It’s been over ten years since Boston first established minimum guidelines for bicycle parking.  In 2019, we revisited our guidelines by surveying users, evaluating existing bike rooms, comparing ourselves to peer cities, and asking our colleagues about working with developers. To support growth in biking, we found a compelling need for improving the design of bike racks in the public right of way and within new developments. Our 2020 Bike Parking Guidelines update provides simple design guidance for safe, convenient, and inclusive bike parking. 

Join us on a bike tour of the good, the bad, and the ugly in bike parking. We’ll visit the Allston/Brighton neighborhood and critique bike parking designed before and after the update. We’ll share our process for developing criteria for rack styles to ensure bike parking is as convenient as car parking, serves cyclists of all ages and abilities, and accommodates various bike types, such as cargo bikes, adaptive cycles, kid’s bikes, and more. Finally, we’ll have a candid discussion about the questions we’re still working out.

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MODE

• Bicycling/Easy

LEADERS

• Jen Rowe & Hannah Fong, Active Transportation Planners, BTD

SPEAKERS

• Jen Rowe, Active Transportation Planner, BTD
• Hannah Fong, Active Transportation Planner, BTD
• Joe Blakenship, Senior Transportation Planner II, BPDA
• Nathan Hostert, Policy Analyst
• Karen E. Spilka, Office of Massachusetts Senate President 
• Alaa Mukahhal, Planner, Kittelson & Associates, Inc.  

The legacy of America’s highway-building era weighs heavily on the East Somerville community, which features dense, mixed-income neighborhoods burdened by particulate pollution, unhealthy noise levels and disproportionate frequency and severity of traffic crashes. Speak with local officials and stakeholders fighting to mitigate the harms of Interstate 93 and adjacent state highways through grassroots organizing, scientific research, physical traffic calming and road diets. We hope you’ll be inspired to try new approaches to address historic inequities in your own community’s freeway-burdened neighborhoods.

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SPEAKERS

• Alexandera Kleyman

MODE

• Pedestrian; Long Walking and Standing

Boston and Cambridge have been peering at each other over the Charles River for three hundred years. First, horse carriages and later trains plied over the bridges connecting the two cities. Now, the bridges are evolving again, as the cities work to provide safe passage for people on bikes and connect their bike networks.

On this bike tour, we’ll ride from the conference center to the Charles River and follow the region’s most popular cycling route through the Charles River Esplanade. We’ll discuss how the cities have worked together to improve cycling conditions, even though the bridges are owned by state agencies. We’ll cross the Longfellow Bridge, and pause to learn how the cities and advocates improved the reconstruction of the centuries-old bridge for pedestrians and cyclists. The route back on the Cambridge side of the river will pass the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Bridge (Mass Ave Bridge), on which a separated bicycle lane is being planned to connect the area to Boston’s existing bike network.

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Speakers:

• David Loutzenheiser, MAPC
• Adi Nochur, MAPC
• Marah Holland, MAPC
• Wendy Landman, WalkBoston
• Charlie Creagh, City of Cambridge
• Becca Wolfson, Boston Cyclists Union

MODE

• Biking; Easy, mostly on trail, little road biking, requires biking

Join us for a tour of Union Square, Somerville’s historic and future downtown, as well as a key center of civic life, international culture and the arts economy. In order to make the case for the MBTA Green Line light rail extension, the City has worked to prepare and implement an aggressive strategy for equitable, transit-oriented development. The City has also used a robust public infrastructure investment program to guide private development in a progressive direction, with affordable housing, workforce and small business development, transportation demand management, and public space investments required. Judge for yourself whether the early results are matching the community’s vision.

Click here to see the map and detailed route.

SPEAKERS

• Cortney Kirk, Sr. Planner, Public Space & Urban Forestry: Wants access to conference, ckirk@somervillema.gov
• Dan Bartman, Deputy Director, Planning, Preservation & Zoning: Wants access to conference, dbartman@somervillema.gov
• Jessica Eschelman, Director, Union Square Main Streets: Wants access to conference, jessica@unionsquaremain.org
• Greg Karczewski, President, Union Square Station Associates LLC: Do know know yet if access or compensation will be requested
• Justin Kunz, Development Manager, Union Square Station Associates LLC: Do know know yet if access or compensation will be requested

MODE

• Pedestrian/Easy; walking on sidewalk, some construction, there are ramps

Mega-projects alone can’t solve the urgent mobility challenges facing our communities. While MBTA Green Line light rail construction was underway in Somerville in 2019, the City simultaneously installed a ½-mile long, bi-directional, all-day bus lane on a major transit corridor serving 10,000 daily bus customers. This project took place during a particularly productive year for bus mobility in greater Boston, and contributed to a healthy “sibling rivalry” of municipalities working with the MBTA to change the conversation on bus service and infrastructure. Join project managers to tour the site and get the inside scoop on design trade-offs, implementation logistics and post-project evaluation.

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SPEAKERS

• Kristiana Lachiusa, LivableStreets Alliance

MODE

• Pedestrian/Easy; Walking on Sidewalks

Massachusetts Avenue is the transportation “spine” of the Boston region. In recent years, Cambridge has redesigned two sections of “Mass Ave” to prioritize sustainable transportation. Our WalkShop will take us through these two sections, which have markedly different characteristics.

South Mass Ave, connecting Cambridge to Boston, is home to large employers and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The nearby neighborhood is racially diverse and hosts many dining establishments and cultural venues. Northern Mass Ave, which connects Cambridge with regional highways, public transit routes, and multiuse paths, is more residential and has many independent retailers.

Before recent changes, Mass Ave was a wide roadway oriented toward moving as many vehicles as possible, causing safety and operational challenges. People biking and walking faced crash hotspots, while bus and shuttle riders experienced severe delays. To make the street work for more people, Cambridge reallocated signal time, street space, and parking, which opened space to install separated bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, and pick-up and drop-off zones. Using these quick-build implementation approaches, Cambridge has transformed Mass Ave into a transit and bike-centric street.

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Mode

• Transit/Walk

Leader

• Andrew Reker, Assistant Transportation Planner, Cambridge Community Development Department

Speakers

• Andreas Wolfe, TBC
• Makayla Comas, TBC

How can a functioning road diet be applied to a high-volume traffic circle? Join City project managers on a tour Somerville’s College Avenue corridor, which is only 40’ wide but handles 200+ bus trips per day. We’ll examine aggressive physical traffic calming treatments and one of America’s most progressive quick-build traffic circle reconfigurations. Along the way, we’ll ask you to share experiences from your own constrained corridors, and compare notes on curb management changes, including the procedural and legal dynamics at play.

Click here to see the detailed route and map.

MODE:

• Pedestrian; The route is almost entirely accessible except for the blocks closest to Davis. There is a incline walking up college Ave and decline walking back to Davis Square, no more than 4%.

SPEAKERS

• Radu Nan, Kittelson & Associates

Explore the latest, greatest and safest bicycle infrastructure in Boston. We'll start with the Harvard Bridge, where advocates partnered with the state DOT to use traffic cones to install a 4-to-2 road diet for the busiest bicycle route in the state. Then, we'll visit the Western Avenue cycletrack, which was named People for Bikes’ "best bike lane in America" in 2015. We’ll travel there via the quick-build lanes on Mass Ave, which were constructed thanks to a groundbreaking Cambridge city ordinance. Later, we'll return on the Paul Dudley White bicycle path, a 1970s-era riverside path which offers good views and will soon be rebuilt as part of a large, multimodal project in Allston.

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Mode:

• Walking Pace will be moderate to brisk. Total distance: 5.3 miles. If you have particular accessibility needs that need to be accommodated, please contact paul.white@superpedestrian.com

Speakers:

• Jeffrey Rosenblum, Toole Design; 
• Paul White, Superpedestrian

Join us for a tour of Western Avenue, which received the “Best Bicycle Lane of the Year” award from PeopleForBikes in 2015. We’ll talk about community engagement processes, and how neighbors and city officials were brought on board to support a separated bicycle facility here, using the street space necessary to make it work. We’ll compare and contrast this design with that of River Street, which has a narrower corridor leading to a different set of possible cross-sections, including bus priority. Finally, we’ll check out the design for Carl Barron Plaza, a gateway to both corridors and a key place-making element of Central Square.

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Meeting Location & Directions

• Hynes to the Number 1 (Bus)
• Getting off Central and Prospect/Mass Ave.
• Cross the street to Carl Barron and do intro to projects
• We’re going down Western Ave.
  • Cronanin Park- Public art that is there - subject
  • Kinnaird St. Bus stop - floating bus stop/
  • Jay St - Public seating and landscaping
  • Putnam Ave. - We’ll talk about connections to Boston and bus priority
  • Going back up Western to Kinnaird
• Right to on Kinnaird to River St.
  • Tubman Sq. - Talk about River St. Design and the new plaza/ EV Charging.
  • Walking towards River and go back to Mass Ave. and taking the 1 back.

Mode

• Pedestrian/ easy

Leader & Speaker

• Bill Deignan, Transportation Planner, Cambridge Community Development Department