Boston Transportation Planning Review (BTPR), published in 1972, was a transportation planning program for metropolitan

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, which was responsible for analyzing and redesigning the entire area-wide transit and highway system in the 1970s. The major contractors involved were Alan M. Voorhees Company (

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

), project manager;

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill SOM, an initialism of its original name Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, is a Chicago-based architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings. In 1939, they were joined by enginee ...

(

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

), architect; ESL Incorporated (

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

air quality Air pollution is the presence of substances in the Atmosphere of Earth, air that are harmful to humans, other living beings or the environment. Pollutants can be Gas, gases like Ground-level ozone, ozone or nitrogen oxides or small particles li ...

and

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician ...

. The program had close guidance from the national

Transportation Research Board The Transportation Research Board (TRB) is a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. TRB's mission is to mobilize expertise, experience, and knowledge to anticipate and solve complex transportation-related challe ...

(TRB), a division of the US

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

. The first director of the program reporting to the Governor was

Alan Altshuler Alan Anthony Altshuler (born March 9, 1936, in Brooklyn, New York City) is an American educator and government official. Altshuler is the Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor in Urban Policy and Planning, Emeritus, at Harvard University's Graduate ...

; the project manager was Walter Hansen. Comprehensive re-evaluation of areawide transportation plans was a major theme in the last quarter of the twentieth century for large US cities. The

US Department of Transportation The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the president of the United States a ...

has said "the prototype for these reevaluations was the Boston Transportation Planning Revie

Scope of the BTPR studies included evaluation and upgrading of all four

MBTA The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (abbreviated MBTA and known colloquially as "the T") is the public agency responsible for operating most public transportation services in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. The MBTA transit network in ...

mass transit Public transport (also known as public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) are forms of transport available to the general public. It typically uses a fixed schedule, route and charges a fixed fare. There is no rigid definition of whi ...

rail Rail or rails may refer to: Rail transport *Rail transport and related matters *Railway track or railway lines, the running surface of a railway Arts and media Film * ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini * ''Rail'' (1967 fil ...

lines and examination of every major highway and arterial project in the region.

Major elements

The following exemplify some of the principal study elements of the Boston Transportation Planning Review: * Conceptual design of the rerouted Orange Line

rail service to the southwest of Boston. * Expansion plans for the Red Line mass transit Braintree and Northwest Corridor extensions. * Moratorium on expressway construction inside of

Route 128 The following highways are numbered 128: Canada * New Brunswick Route 128 * Ontario Highway 128 (former) * Prince Edward Island Route 128 Costa Rica * National Route 128 (Costa Rica), National Route 128 India * National Highway 128 (India) Ja ...

for the decade. * First concept of depressing the Central Artery, leading to the

Big Dig The Big Dig was a megaproject in Boston that rerouted the then elevated Central Artery of Interstate 93 that cut across Boston into the O'Neill Tunnel and built the Ted Williams Tunnel to extend Massachusetts Turnpike, Interstate 90 to Logan I ...

. * Upgrading of Route 1A from

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

to Salem.

Technologies applied

The following major technologies were utilized in the BTPR: * Critical path work element diagrams to assist project management (Voorhees) *Citywide

traffic Traffic is the movement of vehicles and pedestrians along land routes. Traffic laws govern and regulate traffic, while rules of the road include traffic laws and informal rules that may have developed over time to facilitate the orderly an ...

flow analysis including intersection level of service (Voorhees) *

Urban design Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes based on geographical location. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, city, ...

of all physical structures and

highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It includes not just major roads, but also other public roads and rights of way. In the United States, it is also used as an equivalent term to controlled-access highway, or ...

geometrics including neighborhood visual impacts (Skidmore, Owings and Merrill) *

Hydrology Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and drainage basin sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is called a hydro ...

Impact Analysis to surface waters and

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and Pore space in soil, soil pore spaces and in the fractures of stratum, rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available fresh water in the world is groundwater. A unit ...

affected by transit and

roadway A carriageway (British English) or roadway (North American English) is a width of road on which a vehicle is not restricted by any physical barriers or separation to move laterally. A carriageway generally consists of a number of traffic lane ...

construction. *

Air quality Air pollution is the presence of substances in the Atmosphere of Earth, air that are harmful to humans, other living beings or the environment. Pollutants can be Gas, gases like Ground-level ozone, ozone or nitrogen oxides or small particles li ...

and

noise Noise is sound, chiefly unwanted, unintentional, or harmful sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to mental or hearing faculties. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrat ...

contour map A contour line (also isoline, isopleth, isoquant or isarithm) of a function of two variables is a curve along which the function has a constant value, so that the curve joins points of equal value. It is a plane section of the three-dimensi ...

s for all transportation alternatives (ESL) *

Wildlife Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animals and uncultivated plant species which can exist in their natural habitat, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introdu ...

and

vegetation Vegetation is an assemblage of plants and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular Taxon, taxa, life forms, structure, Spatial ecology, spatial extent, or any other specific Botany, botanic ...

impact analysis for all alternatives. *

Public consultation Public consultation, public comment, or simply consultation, is a process by which members of the public are asked for input on public issues. This can occur in public meetings open to all (such as town hall meetings) in written form (such as in ...

Massachusetts Governor Francis W. Sargent involved concerned citizens in the development of transportation alternativesAllan K. Sloan, ''Citizen Participation in Transportation Planning: The Boston Experience'', Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Company (1974)

References

External links

BTPR Mission Statement
Government of Boston Public transportation in Massachusetts Transportation in Boston

Major elements

Technologies applied

See also

References

Further reading

External links