Metropolitan Area Planning Council's (MAPC) Get It Rolling Report and Implementation

By Amanda Alzaim

On February 16th, WTS-Boston hosted a panel from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council's (MAPC) Get It Rolling report and implementation. The panel included Marah Holland, MAPC Transportation Planner; Jennifer Raitt, Director, Department of Planning and Community Development, Town of Arlington; Julia Wallerce, Boston Program Manager, Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, and Matthew Moran, Transit Team Director, Boston Transportation Department. The panel moderator was Aditya (Adi) Nochur, Senior Transpiration Planner at MAPC.

Adi led the program with a brief overview of MAPC. MAPC serves as the regional planning agency for those that live and work in 101 cities and towns of the Greater Boston Area. Their mission is to promote smart growth and regional collaboration with an increasing focus on climate and equity issues.

Over the last five years, MAPC has seen an increase in bus priority projects from municipalities in the Greater Boston Area. These initiatives have helped to advance climate and equity transit goals and improve quality of life for thousands of people in the region. The MAPC Get It Rolling report emphasizes the strategies these municipalities are using to tackle these issues.

Marah Holland of MAPC provided the audience with an overview of the Get It Rolling report, which was released in June of 2021. Marah states “the subject of the report focuses on how early adopters of bus priority accomplish their projects, often with strategies new and different from traditional transportation projects”. The report studied six bus priority projects that were the first to include quick, temporary, and easy to change elements in order to influence permanent design. The six projects included these municipalities: Everett, Boston, Arlington, Cambridge, Watertown, Boston, and Somerville.

Adi then facilitated a round robin discussion among the panelists about their experiences with these projects and lessons learned. Topics included initial motivation for the project, stakeholder engagement, and the nuts and bolts of implementation.  The lively discussion produced interested Q&A from the audience. The consensus of committee and leadership was it was an outstanding panel. 

If you are interested in reading the Get It Rolling report it can be found here: https://www.mapc.org/resource-library/get-it-rolling/. For a copy of the entire program, including the round robin discussion and Q&A from the audience, reach out to Amanda Alzaim at [email protected].