Cummins Highway

From summer 2020 to fall 2021, we tested a design concept on Cummins Highway between Wood Avenue and River Street.

The temporary redesign of Cummins Highway helped us understand what worked and what didn't.  After a full year of trying it out, we were able to evaluate the impacts of a two-lane design on traffic capacity and travel times. Traffic volumes remained consistent with pre-pandemic levels. However, drivers travelled at much safer speeds than they had before the temporary design was installed. 

We began this project in spring 2019. Over the series of meetings we hosted in 2019 and 2020, residents of Mattapan and nearby neighborhoods shared a clear priority with us: a reconstruction project must address safety along the corridor. The clear community-based goal to improve safety corresponds with the data we have collected about Cummins Highway. 

Cummins Highway was identified as a high-crash corridor based on the volume of injury-causing crashes that occurred in 2015, 2016, and 2017. It is among the most crash-prone corridors Citywide.

The Environment Department helps Boston become more sustainable, resilient, and healthier city now and for future generations. Our colleagues helped us understand how transportation impacts air quality in Boston. 

Suffolk County, where we are, has the highest concentration of pollution from on-road vehicles. It is 88% above the state average. Air pollution disproportionately burdens:

• people of color
• individuals with lower educational attainment, and
• households with an annual income of less than $20,000.

Traffic on “arterial” streets, like Cummins Highway, can cause similar levels of noise and air pollution to major freeways — or even greater levels depending on traffic conditions. Our reconstruction project is an important opportunity to improve air quality for Mattapan residents and others who use the corridor. We can improve air quality through vegetation and expanding access to active transportation. We can take advantage of technology improvements to buy lower-cost sensors to measure air quality.

PLAN: Mattapan has goals for housing, culture, environment, businesses, and mobility. Drawing from community members' comments and from Go Boston 2030, the planning team is working to increase access to high-quality travel options for Mattapan residents. The goals is for residents to safely and reliably connect to destinations within Mattapan and the rest of the City.

They worked with the community to identify "nodes," or places where commercial, retail, and residential uses are located. Nodes provide opportunities for people to gather and create a destination for the neighborhood. PLAN: Mattapan will identify corridors, routes, and other projects to improve access to these nodes — by bus, train, walking, biking, or driving.

The Cummins Highway Redesign is one opportunity to implement the values of PLAN: Mattapan, as communicated by residents and the goals of previous planning efforts.

We want to address health inequities caused by transportation plans and policies. To do so, we must intentionally change the way we design streets. Our streets are a building block for healthy people and healthy communities.

In Boston, we use a Complete Streets approach. This means that we considers the needs of many types of activities and users of a street. We design to make streets safer for everyone and easier to walk, to bicycle, and to take the bus. Complete Streets is one tool to address long-term health inequities.

We plan to reconstruct Cummins Highway. You can shape the final design!

We are hosting a series of conversations about different design topics. We hear about your ideas, preferences, and questions. Each conversation informs how we shape the final design plans for Cummins Highway. 

Street lighting

You've told us that street lighting on Cummins Highway needs to be better. The street is too dark at night, especially on the sidewalks. Also, the overhead wires are unattractive.

The street lights you see today were first installed by Eversource. When they built these lights, they used standards written 50 years earlier. Overhead wires power these lights, so they are not as reliable or attractive as they could be.

The City took over the care and ownership of these street lights in 2002. We can upgrade the street lights on Cummins Highway as part of the reconstruction project. We will add more street lights to eliminate dangerous dark spots. New lights will be LEDs and focused downward, toward the road, rather than into the sky.

We propose using pendant lights, which is our standard for major corridors in the City of Boston. We can add smaller pendant lights to better illuminate the sidewalk. You can see pendant lights in Upham's Corner and along Commonwealth Avenue in Allston. We are currently installing them on Neponset Avenue and in Nubian Square.

Want to learn more about street lighting? We hosted a meeting on September 21, 2021.

Watch the meeting (English)

Download the presentation (English)

Download the presentation (Spanish)

stormwater and green Infrastructure

On Boston's streets and parking lots, rainwater and melting snow cannot soak into the soil. Instead, it drains into the city's stormwater system. As it runs through parking lots and along wide streets, the rainwater picks up pollutants and carries them into the system.

We anticipate more severe weather events in the future, due to climate change. Along Cummins Highway, we may see increased risk of flooding from heavier rain and snow storms. This extra water will put even more pressure on our stormwater system.

We can better manage this stormwater—and reduce pollution—by changing how we design streets. We can build "green infrastructure" absorbs, stores, and manages stormwater in a way that mimics nature. We can use gardens and planted landscaping to do this. We can also use tools like permeable pavers.

As we plan the final design for Cummins Highway, we want to hear your thoughts and ideas. 

You can talk with someone on the project team, one-on-one. We have virtual office hours every other Wednesday from 3 - 7 p.m. You can call or use video chat.

Sign up for an appointment

If you would like to submit comments via mail, you can download the survey in English, Haitian Creole, or Spanish.