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Comments
This is great news. This is
This is great news. This is in the middle of several of Bostons neighborhoods, acres of parking lots just served as a moat between JP and Roslindale. Parking lots for commuters should be located in the burbs, so the city gets less pollution and becomes more walkable.
Next up should be a reduction in the 8 lanes of the arborhighway back to 4 so the Arboretum and Jamaica Pond are again linked by parks, not pavement. I know Menino will have to be gone for this wish.
Maybe ...
If they extended the Orange Line down Washington Street, but that won't ever happen, so in the meantime, the parking lot is useful for those of us who a) need to be somewhere in the middle of the day and don't want to wait an hour for a 50 bus to Forest Hills or b) have business at the courthouse.
Perhaps a compromise is to do what they're talking about for the MBTA lot - basically keep a parking lot, but put a building on top of it.
What we need is three more
What we need is three more years of "community input."
Build a garage, not a parking lot
Surface parking lots do nothing good for neighborhoods. A garage would hold more cars and allow stores or restaurants on the first floor to serve pedestrians.
Great news for JP! Death to
Great news for JP! Death to many more park lots in the very near future.
Whit
You're right
I was too imprecise - the plan for the T lot is a garage with a building (along with buildings on the land across from Ukraine Way and Washington Street).
This is the parking lot on
This is the parking lot on Washington and Morton Street, not the one to the left of the lower busway.
Right
The T has its own plans for that lot; see the comments above.
When that lot goes...
... it will officially become faster for me to drive to the financial district rather than wait around for the #32 to take me 2 miles to Forest Hills and then take the orange line to Chinatown. Actually, it's not the morning commute that's the problem. The #32 runs a LOT in the a.m. I can be to work in almost exactly 25 min. door-to-door in the morning. But if I leave work after 6 p.m. and get to Forest Hills past 6:30, there's usually a loooong wait for a bus. The ride home in evening takes 45-50 minutes after a long day at work.
Not having that lot there also makes it more difficult to just hop in the car and get to a community meeting in time after work.
All in all, when that lot goes, I'll probably get a monthly pass to a garage downtown. Which is just stupid. A transit system that goes practically door to door from work/to/home should just *work*.
Development Coming?
I hope this is transformed into a mixed-use development in the next 10 years!!!!
Not if the "community" has
Not if the "community" has any say in the matter. The sum total of what community meetings have contributed so far is more meetings.
Theory
I've long had the theory that the "community meetings" were a blocking strategy by the MBTA.
MBTA Boss: "Why can't we just keep parking our buses there?"
MBTA Lackey: "The community really doesn't want that."
Boss: "What does the community want?"
Lackey: "I don't know."
Boss: "Does the community know? How about we get them having meetings about it until they agree?"
Lackey: "So we can just keep parking our buses there for the next two decades?"
Boss: "That's why I make the big bucks."
All you need to block progress indefinitely is a requirement that three people from JP agree about anything.
So true. Everyone thinks
So true. Everyone thinks they want "open space" and "a park". But that is the worst thing--a windswept, under-utilized park is not what you need right next to the T--especially with tons of parks already nearby. I say dense housing and retail with the promise that it will be for various kinds of people--not just rich people and not just poor people. But who knows if there is enough demand for that kind of housing and retail?
Whit
Great plan
Let's just have one more meeting where you and the people who want a park reach a complete agreement, and then we'll get right on that, okay?
I defintly understand parking
I defintly understand parking can be very expensive and people do have big headaches dealing with that. Unless you have a handicap sticker it gets pretty hard.
http://www.abworkoutblueprint.com