City needs traffic plan amid new construction

After nearly 14 years, construction on a 51-story skyscraper over South Station can finally move forward.

As the Boston Herald’s Erin Tiernan reported, developer Hines cleared the last hurdle in the way of building the 678-foot tower that will eventually hold 2.5 million square feet of office space, condos and a hotel.

The project looks sleek in renderings, a gleaming spire rising above South Station, marking a visual entree to the burgeoning Seaport District just over the Summer Street Bridge.

David Perry, senior managing director at Hines, said construction will start in January. That construction, by the way, will affect South Station commuters — more details on that soon, apparently.

Our question is this: With the tower comprising 641,000 square feet of office space, 166 residential condominium units, 6,000 square feet of retail and parking for approximately 895 cars (according to the Hines website), what plans did the city make to deal with increased traffic when it gave the green light to this enterprise?

Because while air rights provide the opportunity to build lofty towers, they don’t imbue cars with the ability to fly.

Which is what they’d have to do in order to keep the already mobbed streets around South Station and the Seaport District from becoming impassable due to gridlock.

What is the initiative to deal with the addition of the 895 cars in that garage, and ride-share business spurred by the hotel and condos? Yes, the tower is right smack next to South Station, so there’s access to buses, the Red Line and Commuter Rail. But for tooling around the city, or heading out to a place not served by the T, ride-shares and cars are the choice of many — just look at the streets.

The Legislature is considering congestion pricing — which would adjust road tolls at different times of day in a bid to reduce traffic, but that has its own set of problems. For one, many commuters can’t adjust their schedules to get in on the lower-priced drive times, and it doesn’t do much to thin out jams on Hub city streets, which are ride-share hotspots.

But even if congestion pricing were enacted, how could it keep up with Boston’s continued growth?

According to city data, 25,000 new residences were built or permitted in Boston between 2011 and 2018.

The Greater Boston Visitors & Convention Bureau reports that nine new hotels opened in 2018, nine this year, with at least nine more projected to open in 2020-21.

Growth is great, until you try to drive in it.

And congestion pricing isn’t going to do much to ease the increasing crush of visitors grabbing a Lyft or Uber or cab for a quick jaunt across town, or to a new restaurant in the Seaport.

We have to think that the issue arose when considering the new South Station project — or any of the new condo/hotel projects recently OK’d. How could it not?

This would, of course, be a great opportunity for the MBTA to boost ridership by increasing the number of routes and buses. Unfortunately, the agency has to spend money to fix massive problems and get the subway, buses and Commuter Rail in shape to safely and efficiently handle the passengers it now has (and is promptly losing), rather than invest for intra-city expansion to match the pace of Boston’s building boom.

It’s a good thing the South Station tower looks so cool. We’ll have plenty of chances to look up at it while we’re idling on Atlantic Avenue.

 

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2F6xyHV