Updated November 6 2008 - Click here to download a PDF of Strategy #4

A healthy, competitive region with a high quality of life demands an efficient and affordable transportation network – one with the flexibility to meet ever-changing needs. Here in Metro Boston, we pride ourselves on “transportation firsts” like the creation in the late 1800’s of what eventually became the MBTA subway system. We are also justly proud of the dramatic improvements in subway service and the restoration of commuter rail toward
the end of the 1900’s.

Yet, over the past several years, we have focused transportation resources disproportionately on a single, major project: the Big Dig. The Big Dig brought tremendous benefits to travel throughout New England, and it re-knit Boston’s financial and government center to the waterfront and North End. Nonetheless, dozens of other worthwhile projects – both local
and regional in scope – were put on hold during its execution, and the paucity of current resources leaves these projects in limbo.

We must find a way to re-evaluate these projects and fund the prompt execution of those that are critical to our mobility and economic advantage. This will require money, generated
by reform of the current project delivery system and the raising of new revenues. We must find a way to deliver projects more quickly – from concept to design to execution. We must be mindful of the operating costs of every new roadway and transit line we build, and we must plan for those operating before we build.

Most importantly, we must make our land use and mobility goals the master of our transportation improvements, and not the other way around. New lines, nodes, lanes, and trails should be built only if they advance the goals of MetroFuture. We must be particularly mindful that some transportation improvements, in the long term, can generate the very traffic and congestion they are intended to overcome. They can spur patterns of sprawl
which the region has rejected in this plan. Avoiding such outcomes requires that we coordinate our transportation, land use, and environmental protection efforts far better than
we do today.