Focus on Somerville: Investing in Transit to Spur Economic Growth
September 4, 2012
With Labor Day behind us, ABC is launching into a busy schedule of meetings and public events for the rest of the year. For our first Transportation Finance & Policy Committee meeting of the fall, we’re excited to host Mayor Joe Curtatone of Somerville to discuss the importance of investing in transportation to spur economic development.
Somerville is already a success story in this respect; witness the amazing transformation of Davis Square in the decades since the Red Line was extended there. Today, Somerville is poised for further economic revitalization as several new transportation projects come online:
Assembly Row: Many years in the making, the Assembly Row project will revitalize the blighted Assembly Square area of Somerville near Route 93. A new Assembly Square Orange Line station will anchor the $1.3 billion development, which will feature over 2000 residential units, outlet shopping, a cinema, a hotel, office space and a 6-acre park along the Mystic River waterfront. The project has benefited from an innovative mix of state and federal funding, including $50 million from the state’s Infrastructure Investment Initiative (I-Cubed) program, $15 million in federal stimulus funds and a federal earmark to help build the T station. Somerville is contributing through District Improvement Financing, committing a percentage of future property taxes towards completion of the project.
Green Line Extension: If the Orange Line will be bringing life to a whole new part of the city, the long-planned (and oft-delayed) extension of the Green Line past Lechmere will revitalize dense existing neighborhoods currently not well served by transit. Originally committed to as a transit mitigation associated with the Big Dig, the $1.3 billion project would bring two branches of the Green Line into Somerville and Medford. One branch would reach Union Square, while another would run along the existing commuter rail up to Tufts University. In June of this year the state received federal environmental approval for the project, and the state has applied to the federal New Starts grant program for more half of the total project cost.
Urban Ring: As we wrote about last week, there are also opportunities to enhance bus service in the Urban Ring corridor, including in Somerville. One short-term measure would be to improve bus connections between the Red Line station at Kendall Square and the Orange Line station at Sullivan Square. Not only would this move provide a vital link between two transit lines, it would also enable the life sciences and tech boom currently underway in Kendall to spread toward Sullivan. In the future, a dedicated viaduct could be built to help make the connection while avoiding roadway traffic.
