Peter Bruce recently raised a very important point about the need to carefully assess the success of city policies on transit-oriented development (TOD) in Newton, but he ultimately came up short in his primary analysis of Newtonville.
Bruce noted that $300K of transit subsidies for the TRIO development has been vastly underutilized as originally organized two years ago. He concluded that transit-oriented development in Newtonville was thus a failure with no solution in sight given current levels of nearby MBTA commuter rail and bus service. There are, however, good solutions at hand.
A closer inspection of the cited Land Use Committee Meeting Minutes for June 14th, 2022, shows that the city Planning Department and some city councilors were supportive of a novel repurposing of some of those transit subsidies. Part of the subsidy fund could be used to reimburse both TRIO residents and employees for use of the very successful NewMo rideshare and BlueBikes bikeshare programs to connect them to Green Line trolley service. Another part of the fund could support these two important transit systems citywide.
In addition, because of the recently approved MBTA bus network redesign project, Newtonville will eventually be served by the #56, #58, and #59 routes, creating stronger transit connections to Waltham, Watertown, West Newton, Newton Corner, Newton Highlands, and beyond.
The lesson here from Newtonville for optimizing transit-oriented development policy is that it will take creativity, patience, and persistence to build transit-centered living across Newton for those who want it and need it.
Damien Croteau-Chonka
...Other News...
OP-ED: The failure of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) in Newtonville
Recap of Area Councils’ candidate debates for Preliminary Election, Wards 2 & 6
Croteau-Chonka: Minneapolis shows that building more units decreases housing costs
Pillsbury: People who live near transit in Newton really do use it more often