Blog - Articles tagged as Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP)

Last fall, the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) forecasted that the proposed 161-acre Suffolk Downs Redevelopment project in East Boston and Revere would generate 72,316 new average daily vehicle trips at full build-out. The BPDA-approved Master Plan (for the Boston portion of the site) shows that the project (as currently proposed) would include up to 6,760 new parking spaces to accommodate those trips. To mitigate the effects of these increased driving trips and parking availability, Suffolk Downs developers are required to enter into a “Transportation Access Plan Agreement” with the city, holding them accountable to limit the number of vehicle trips...

The Boston Region MPO (MPO) recently created a Park-and-Ride dashboard to showcase parking use and capacity data at all MBTA stations. Many MBTA stations, which include regional rail and rapid transit, have park-and-ride lots that people traveling to work use every day. Park-and-ride lots can be critical in helping people who do not live within walking distance of a station to access public transit. Since 2000, the MPO has periodically collected parking data, both of personal vehicle and bike, at every parking lot near MBTA stations. This includes those owned by the MBTA, owned privately, and owned by the municipality the station is located in. The data not only helps inform the public about parking information at MBTA stations, but also provides planners and engineers insight on where to invest in transportation infrastructure to support people taking transit.

Increased demand on limited curbside space by a range of users, from ride-hailing vehicles to delivery trucks, micromobility services, and more, has exacerbated congestion and made it difficult for officials to balance multimodal needs for safe and efficient curbside access. 

A recent study conducted by the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) found that a substantial number of Boston region workers reverse commute, but serving these trips by transit remains challenging because of entrenched land use patterns and the structure of transit, walking, and biking networks.Reverse commuters are residents of the core of a major urban area, such as Boston, who travel to and from work in the suburbs. In recent years, this phenomenon has become a major point of interest in media and public policy circles. The MPO study sought to better understand how many reverse-commute trips occur in the region so planners can develop strategies for improving these trips.

Large US cities are notorious for traffic congestion, and Boston is no exception. But not all congestion is the same. A bottleneck (or choke point) is different from a traffic jam, for example. Unlike congestion caused simply by heavy traffic volumes, a bottleneck is a recurring disruption of traffic at the same location in a roadway, which is usually caused by a specific physical condition—such as, the road design, abrupt changes in alignment, lane drops, merges and diverges, badly timed traffic lights, sharp curves; or other physical constraints that can make a roadway unable to handle the volume of traffic it receives...

In September, the MPO received federal approval of its federal fiscal year (FFY) 2017 Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP), which it had endorsed in July.