Roslindale Square Transportation Action Plan
Building on visioning from Squares + Streets, we're advancing mobility ideas to improve safety, connectivity, and placemaking in Roslindale Square. We're focusing on supporting small businesses, improving the public realm, and making it easier and safer to walk, bike, and take transit in the square.
The City of Boston's Transportation Department (BTD) will lead this transportation action plan to get into the details on concepts emerging from Squares + Streets. Over the next year, we will work with the community to build on transportation ideas from the community to:
- Maintain and uplift the vibrancy that makes Roslindale Square a great place
- Increase the comfort, safety, attractiveness, and accessibility of walking, biking, taking transit, and lingering in Roslindale Square
- Advance proposals in deep collaborative partnership with local residents, community leaders, stakeholders, and businesses
Beginning in early 2025, we'll begin reaching out to the community for feedback as we start gathering existing conditions data. We'll use this feedback to create potential options for the way the square could be designed to better serve all its uses and users.
Roslindale Square Storymap
Use our online tool to read about what we've learned in our initial analysis, what the community's been saying, and what’s next for the project.
UPLIFT THE VIBRANCY OF ROSLINDALE SQUARE
Roslindale Square is home to the first Main Streets district in Boston. It's one of the most vibrant commercial squares in the City. This project will use transportation planning to support placemaking and community development.
MAKE IT EASIER TO WALK, BIKE, AND TAKE TRANSIT
This project will increase safety for all users, first and foremost. We'll work with you to identify opportunities to make it easier and more comfortable to walk, bike, and take transit.
CLOSELY COLLABORATE WITH RESIDENTS AND BUSINESSES
We will ensure that community input is incorporated at every stage of the project. We'll only be successful if we work together to develop visions to improve and invest in the transportation networks and public realm of Roslindale Square.
TIMELINE
Squares + Streets, a initiative led by the Planning Department, has evaluated some transportation ideas for Roslindale Square. The Boston Transportation Department is responsible for designing and building City streets. Through this project, we'll evaluate and develop these mobility visions for Roslindale Square. This will include:
- Background research: For the first few months of 2025, we reviewed existing plans and conditions on the ground in Roslindale Square. We wanted to make sure we understood all that we needed to before proposing changes to how the streets work.
- Initial community engagement: Beginning in March, we hosting in-depth conversations with individual and small groups of residents from specific, harder-to-reach populations to understand their current experiences and perceptions of Roslindale Square. Our partner, Openbox, a community-centered design and planning group, has been helping us with targeted outreach to these communities.
- Project updates: In May, we published an interactive website where community members can review information and provide input on our work. On May 13, we held a public meeting to introduce the project more broadly to residents, share learnings from our review of the existing conditions, and discuss next steps.
- Testing early ideas: In June, we'll gather iterative feedback from residents and passersby through early sketches, simulations, and interactive activities to ensure our ideas are headed in the right direction.
- Public meeting 2: Later in the summer, we'll present the first draft of our concept designs to gather community feedback.
GET INVOLVED
We're interested in hearing from you! You can provide your email using the link below to receive project updates as we have them:
PROJECT MATERIALS
Project MaterialsThanks so much to everyone who joined and contributed.
The boards we presented and discussed can be found here.
We loved how much input everyone gave on our interactive map exercise! Find the full map, comments and all, here.
Thanks so much to everyone who joined and contributed. Find a brief summary of what we discussed here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked QuestionsThe recently adopted Roslindale Squares + Streets plan puts forward a set of recommendations for neighborhood investment (e.g., transportation infrastructure, public space, street and sidewalk improvements). Our Roslindale Square Transportation Action Plan will build on those transportation recommendations, including changes to street alignment, new crosswalks, and new public spaces. We’ll perform the next level of analysis to further develop the ideas into tangible plans for implementation.
This 9-month-long project will result in a “25% concept design plan,” a set of early proposals for the main interventions we hope to build. Any potential changes will go through further testing and refinement in the future before they’re constructed.
We’ve made no proposals to remove or change parking at this time. Changes proposed in this project will be made in partnership with the community. There are many ways we can improve car traffic, make it safer to walk around, more comfortable to linger, and park and do business. For this project, we will explore ways that make sense in Roslindale Square.
Nope. There is no proposal or plan to close Poplar Street to vehicular traffic.
The next steps for the Roslindale Square Parking and Access Plan that was completed in 2023 are to be determined. We will update this response when more information is available.
The City works with many partners to accomplish our goals. In this case, we have hired a team of community engagement experts who offer a different approach to community engagement. Openbox’s approach to engagement will allow us to learn from the perspectives of community members who have not been represented in past planning projects. The Transportation Department is still overseeing the entirety of the project, including the engagement and will be deeply involved at all stages.
Please see our timeline above.
Sign up to our email list and come to our public meetings!
RELATED INITIATIVES
In Roslindale, Squares + Streets focused on housing, public space, arts and culture, small businesses, and transportation.
We are working toward prioritizing transit on Washington Street, between Roslindale Village and Forest Hills Station.
We are making changes to parking and curb access in Roslindale Square.
The Birch Street Plaza has transformed Birch Street, in Boston’s Roslindale Village, from a street for cars into a plaza for...
We're installing electric vehicle (EV) charging ports at curbside locations throughout the city.
The proposed path would create a direct, off-road connection between Forest Hills Station and Roslindale Village.
We're focused on street designs that self-enforce slower speeds and safer behaviors.
We added a contraflow bike lane and speed humps between Washington Street and Sycamore Street.
We're building an accessible, safer, and greener Cummins Highway in Mattapan.
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