While the vision is large, we also want to think small.Therefore, if some items in any particular area cannot happen, we can still use items from the rest of the list in order to fulfill the overall vision.

Our transportation plan is based on a three-legged approach to game events:

-Boylston Street

-Northern Tier:Kenmore Square, turnpike highway crater, mass transit issues, etc. 

-Southern ‘Necklace’ Tier:The Fens, The Fenway, and the resources on the periphery of the necklace of institutions.

All of these are to be considered with one definitive policy goal:zero parking growth.

Boylston Street:

-If you take the 1,200 parking spaces that now feed onto Boylston Street and consolidate them, you can then create structured parking.This should not be large enough to cause problems, because the structured parking is small.There will be a limit of 600 cars per structure.

-Parking will seed additional development.We propose a nucleus of small parking structures with a “U” of five stories (wrapped around them on three sides) containing housing and ground floor retail space.

-The village will include housing, retail, and other usages which will be similar to existing homes and businesses in the neighborhood today.

-We are in no way stating that all the current businesses on Boylston Street should “go away”.The object is that most of these businesses will “fit into” into these types, and thereby profit from being there.For example, a car wash could easily continue to exist in the Boylston Street urban village.Its owners could even work as the ‘designated detailer’ for the Boston Red Sox, and support the players who park their cars in the garage.This would be good for the overall business of Boylston Street, and it would also support the businesses that exist there now.

-We have no plans to “exile” existing businesses; rather, we wish to develop a master plan that would allow them to grow, change or someday be replaced by other structures which might better meet the changing village flavor of Boylston Street.

-Street crossing and pedestrian improvements:Allow for safe sidewalk walking and safe pedestrian crossing. 

-The physical properties of Boylston Street allow for different possibilities on the North and South sides of the street.We want to take one of the street’s six lanes and use the space for a wide North side sidewalk on Boylston Street.

The Northern Tier section:

-The Green line saturation needs to be ameliorated and solved.One of the reasons that the Green Line is currently saturated is because everybody leaves Kenmore Station from one hole in the ground.But, 200 feet to the east, on the east end of the platform, we could build another stairway and elevator that would place Green Line riders at the end of the Commonwealth Avenue park, nearby the bus station area.

-At the current time, pedestrian patterns are in two streams (Brookline and Bowker overpass).We are going to suggest that a new pedestrian stream heads over the Turnpike (on a ramp connection by way of an alleyway), and thereby “ends up” directly opposite Gate C of Fenway Park.This will provide for new pedestrian access across the Turnpike to the bleacher entrance (Gate C).This (along with the new pathway behind right field) will allow better access to and from the Fenway and Kenmore neighborhoods as well.

-Equipment changes and schedule changes could help to ease congestion on game days.For example, train cars with no seats in them could be used – these add 50% to car capacity with limited cost.

-We should also look into the use of three car trains.

-We need to find out what can be done with existing rail lines . . . like the Yawkey Station.Adding a train-waiting track by Ipswich (by taking some parking on this row for a new third track) will allow for new Yawkey Station trains to wait outside the mainline track.These trains would run as a shuttle from Yawkey Station to Back Bay and South Station.

-We also need bike lanes and racks and secure bike parking.

The Southern ‘Necklace’ Tier:

-Use the parking bank with existing institutions, like the Prudential, MFA and Longwood, to serve vehicles approaching from the South and East, and thereby drop them into parking before they approach Fenway.People will then be shuttled by use of an electric powered jitney in the Fenway area in order to get to the ballpark.We don’t want to add asphalt, but we do want to maximize the use of the existing parking bank in the area.

-Not everybody will be shuttled.Some will walk.Parking from, say, the MFA site, is a short walk if people know where they are going.Mostly, we hope that people would walk from their cars across the park and into the stadium.These are not large numbers of people, but approximately 7,500 pedestrians from separate parking areas who would walk into the neighborhood from their cars.

-What do pedestrians need?They need:

-To know that this is a short walk (through the use of signs)

-To know which way to go

-To have well lit walkways

-To have police call boxes on the walkways

-To have visible presence of good management, including police presence

-To have the use of public bathrooms

We are reviewing the possibility of closing Boylston Street on game days.This would close the street to all except neighborhood residents, for two hours prior to and an hour after the game (but probably not during the game).This would address the balance between pedestrians and cars.

Questions / Comments:

How many parking spaces are available in the outer ring?

-Far more than we need to do this.3,200 cars from the south.2,400 would be into this area.This is a management program.There are places (such as the MFA) that have peak times that don’t match those of the Red Sox, either in time of year or in time of day.A combination of “carrots” and “sticks” will be used to encourage people to change parking behavior.

Muddy River will be daylighted in the conduit area by the Sears circle.

Have you seen the Kenmore redesign plan?

-We’d love to; we could use it!

The Fenway Muddy River plan could co-exist with the walking plan . . . we can use the existing plan for new walkways, etc.

We need to address the neighborhood’s needs for a community center, school and other buildings in addition to housing.Have locations for these buildings been reviewed?

-(Arturo)The important thing is to put all the pieces into the formula.We need to let the master plan grow through the basis of economics.Our diagram can outline a strategy (such as a place for the school, etc.), but these plans cannot be definite (or “set in concrete”) at this time.It would be dangerous to presume that we could make a plan for a specific site.We can design to the character of sites that may be available, and we need to be aware of the program requirements, but we cannot choose a site owned by others for these buildings.

People would be walking 20 minutes.Few people seem to do the walk from the Prudential.But the "Pru" walk is unpleasant.Hopefully other walks could be more pleasant (and therefore more popular!).

-It is tough to choose the “Pru” parking on the first trip into the park.For two generations, engineers have given us counterintuitive things – like going right on an interstate to get to the left.We are not starting with the assumption that everybody is equally trained . . . but we want to provide more pleasant walks and more variety of parking in order for people to get to the ballpark.

-(Arturo)People are parking in many other areas now, including areas of Beacon Street, that are a long walk . . . and they are reinvigorating the street.

The best view of the H. H. Richardson Bridge is from the trains going by the Yawkey area.

-The bridge could be a tourist location, if done right.It is a lost community asset.

Comments on satellite parking:It needs to be situated so people can “get there” from the routes they use in order to travel to the ballpark.The route from the parking to Fenway Park needs to be well marked and pleasant, and money spent on doing this would be very well spent.