Elevated Massachusetts Turnpike between BU and Charles River with Soldiers Field Road at grade. The bend in the Turnpike at the top of the picture would be straightened if the broader project I-90 Allston interchange project is pursued. Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, Massachusetts won a $335 million federal grant from the Reconnecting Communities fund established in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill. The grant was submitted on behalf of the so-called Allston Landing/I-90 project, a project that is meant to replace an elevated portion of the Massachusetts Turnpike with a safer at-grade highway while making significant improvements to rail transport along the east-west rail corridor. 

The project’s benefits have been designed to include better regional connectivity and access to key destinations like Kendall Square, and also provide transit and urban quality of life improvements to repair significant damage done to communities as a result of the original siting of the turnpike in this area in the early 1960s. These improvements and benefits are crucial to the entire rationale for the project.

It was therefore disappointing when Secretary of Transportation Monica Tibbits-Nutt announced shortly before Thanksgiving that the Massachusetts Department of Transportation was embarking on a path forward for Allston Landing that backtracked on prior commitments to the impacted communities and may jeopardize (and in some ways reverse) the project’s commitment to providing important environmental, economic, and social justice outcomes. In particular, the secretary’s announcement that the state would move forward with including a midday layover facility for MBTA diesel trains in Allston is a mistake of notable proportions. 

This decision on layover tracks is strongly opposed by nearly every key stakeholder involved in the project, and has damaged already precarious relationships with community stakeholders. By insisting on using Allston’s Beacon Yards for layover space, the MBTA will continue harming a community that was victimized decades ago by the insensitive siting of the Turnpike Extension.

Parking dirty diesel trains in the community, as the T proposes to do, not only exposes residents to dangerous black carbon emissions, it takes up precious space for better, more sustainable uses. Operationally, it forces the MBTA to run deadheaded trains from South Station all the way back to Allston, a highly inefficient use of stretched resources. 

What is more vexing is the fact that the MBTA does not need this layover space. Early in 2023, the MBTA spent $255 million to purchase 24 acres of land at Widett Circle, expressly for building a layover facility. Nearly two years later the MBTA has provided no plan for Widett Circle or for increasing commuter rail service so dramatically that it would require two new layover facilities in the City of Boston.

The MBTA’s general manager, Phil Eng, has claimed that Allston offers room to accommodate layover space for Amtrak, without offering any evidence that Widett Circle could not accommodate the needs of both Amtrak and the T. MassDOT and the MBTA also intend to add two express rail tracks through the area. The end result is a 1950s-era approach that parks polluting trains in an environmental justice community and moves other trains through a transit desert without stopping. 

Beyond the direct negative impacts of the current MassDOT approach, this move also limits the potential of the larger project to fulfill the intent and spirit of the Reconnecting Communities Act. It will make the future West Station less functional and hinder the potential for frequent rail service to Kendall Square.

It also eliminates the opportunity to build hundreds of units of transit-oriented housing in Allston, a priority for the City of Boston, which is facing one of the most critical housing shortages in the country. Transit-oriented and affordable housing is not incidental to a comprehensive multimodal transportation initiative; it is essential because it anchors the project in the density that enables systems to move more people in fewer vehicles.

It is deeply frustrating that we find ourselves in this position with regard to a project that is critical to the economic and environmental health of the region. Planning has stretched on for more than a decade, through three administrations, and four transportation secretaries.

A cadre of knowledgeable, committed local community and transit-specific advocates have labored over the years to help guide MassDOT and the MBTA toward a plan for Lower Allston that achieves important regional goals of multimodal connectivity, environmental justice, and improved access for people living in the Metro West and Worcester corridor to jobs and resources in inner core communities, including Kendall Square Cambridge and the Boston Seaport District. To see all this work undermined by this action is disappointing, to say the least. 

When the federal grant was announced in March, the governor and the transportation secretary were publicly bullish on advancing it on an aggressive timetable, with Tibbits-Nutt offering up the possibility that environmental permitting could be completed within a year. That is not on offer given the recent announcement, which will extend the process at least through the end of 2025. If you are triggering a process for public comment that, at the start, has most of the key stakeholders against your plan, you can be sure that you are setting the project up for troubled and turbulent waters.

The Allston multimodal project is a project that can bring significant benefits to residents of the Commonwealth from Boston to Worcester and everywhere in between. Everyone with the power to make decisions regarding the design, scope, and future of the project has a generational responsibility to get it right. The current path, as announced by the secretary, is not the right one. The governor still has time to course correct and avoid making a mistake that will not be easy to repair. We sincerely hope she takes the opportunity to do that.

Stacey Thompson is a member of the Allston multimodal project Task Force and the former executive director of LivableStreets. James Aloisi is a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation.