Warning of layoffs, Wu moves to reverse City Council cut to transportation staff in $4.9 billion budget plan
But a coalition of transit advocates — including TransitMatters, WalkMassachusetts, and the LivableStreets Alliance — slammed the decision and urged the city to pursue “all possible alternatives,” arguing layoffs could jeopardize critical street safety projects and the city’s ability to compete for state and federal transit grants.
On Wednesday, Maha Aslam, transit and streets project manager at the LivableStreets Alliance, thanked Wu for protecting “critical” transportation employees’ jobs.
“Any attempt by the council to reverse this adjustment will be an obvious attempt to hamper the transportation department’s ability to deliver safer streets,” Aslam told the Globe.
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Mayor Wu Vetoes City Council’s Proposed Transportation Department Layoffs
“We want to thank Mayor Wu for addressing this budget issue head-on and preventing layoffs of transportation staff who work to keep our streets safe and properly maintained,” said Maha Aslam, a project manager for the LivableStreets Alliance.
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Boston Press Release: Boston/MBTA extend fare free buses through Dec. 2026
"Boston's fare free bus program serves as a national model for how government can respond to the needs of its residents,” said Jeff Rosenblum, Interim Executive Director, Board Chair, Co-Founder, LivableStreets. “We have heard directly from riders on the positive impact on their lives: less stress every time they need to get somewhere and more money available for groceries. More people are choosing transit over driving, and some have started riding the bus for the first time because it's free."
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Advocates Call for Accountability From Boston’s Streets Cabinet As a Condition for Budget Approval
“We are in a financially bad year. We need to be very sure about where we spend our money,” said Maha Aslam, program manager for the LivableStreets Alliance, during the hearing’s public testimony.
The LivableStreets Alliance has called on the City of Boston to align its spending with long-standing transportation plans like GoBoston 2030 and the Vision Zero strategy, which was last updated in 2023.
“Don’t sign off on a budget that doesn’t have timelines, that doesn’t have detailed deliverables,” Aslam urged the city councilors.
Stacy Thompson, a Boston resident and volunteer for the LivableStreets Alliance (as well as a former StreetsblogMASS board member), asked the City Council “to step up” and demand better clarity on what the Streets Cabinet is spending its money on.
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OPINION: The injustice of debt-based driver’s license suspensions in Mass.
OPINION PIECE by Rachel Lea Scott & Maha Aslam
When people can get to work, our economy is better for it. We all want people to show up for work on time, when they say they are going to be there. Our workplaces function better when employees have consistent and reliable transportation to reach their places of work.
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OPINION: Now’s the time to focus on how better to clear away post-storm piles of snow
There are gaps in Boston’s snow clearance that leave vulnerable people behind. We should fix it now, says LivableStreets Alliance…
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Delayed projects, low morale: Boston’s streets department is stalling under Wu, long a transit champion
Maha Aslam, transit and streets program manager of the nonprofit LivableStreets Alliance, said she had hoped Wu would allow work to resume on the stalled projects after she overwhelmingly won reelection in November.
“Unfortunately, that didn’t happen,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Blue Hill Avenue project recently secured more than $80 million from a federal grant program. But according to LivableStreets, those funds, plus nearly $50 million in state and MBTA funds allocated for the project, are contingent on the design including a center-running bus lane, which is opposed by a vocal group of residents and some elected officials.
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‘We’ve got it backwards.’ Cameras are everywhere in Mass. So why can’t they catch speeders?
“We don’t want more policing. But do we want to support people there who are constantly facing a fear of speeding?” said Maha Aslam, LivableStreets Alliance’s transit and streets program manager.
The ultimate goal of traffic cameras, Aslam said, is to alter drivers’ behavior, and effectively “force people to think twice before they act irrationally.”
“They’re taking pictures all the time,” she said of cameras, “and they’re making sure people are on their best behavior.”
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Policy Riders In Governor’s Budget Proposal Would Legalize Speed Enforcement Cameras, End Debt-Based License Suspensions
The practice of taking away a driver’s license to enforce compliance with laws that are unrelated to their ability to drive safely has come under fire from civil liberties groups like the ACLU and from transportation advocates like the LivableStreets Alliance and Transportation for Massachusetts.
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Years ago, Boston put bus lanes in the middle of this busy street. Has it worked?
LivableStreets Alliance, a Cambridge transportation advocacy nonprofit, surveyed more than 150 Columbus Avenue bus riders in December 2021, shortly after the lanes went live. Around three-quarters of respondents reported faster and more consistent trips, according to a report summarizing the group’s findings. Just under one-quarter of respondents said they took the bus more frequently after the lanes were introduced.
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Mass. Pike redesign project jeopardized by federal funding cuts
"I think this is a once-in-a-generation kind of project," said Maha Aslam of LivableStreets Alliance.
She says the funding cut is a setback, but agrees that cuts can be made to the project and the state can bankroll it.
"There are parts of this project that we still hope we can move forward with, even despite not having all of the funding that we had hoped for," said Aslam.
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Is federal funding for the Mass. Pike redesign in Allston still coming?
"We don't think you need this layover space. It's impacting the community, think differently about it," said Stacy Thompson with the Allston Multimodal Project Task Force.
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Faster bus commutes in Boston? That’s the goal with coming traffic signal upgrades.
Makayla Comas, co-executive director of the advocacy group LivableStreets Alliance, welcomed the plan for the new signals as a “great investment,” particularly for areas where dedicated bus lanes may not be the strongest option available, or even viable. The majority of folks who take the bus, which Comas called “the unsung hero of the system,” are low-income, people of color, disabled, and older adults.
“If we are trying to think about, ‘How do we make Boston streets work?’ and ‘How do we make sure that folks who deeply rely on public transportation are able to take it and feel like they want to take it consistently?’ — I think we need to do a deep evaluation of our bus system," she said.
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Coalition drops report on dire state of mass transit in Massachusetts
"That’s one of the few positive notes in “Funding Our Future: A Roadmap for Equitable and Sustainable Transportation Action in Massachusetts,” a publication of the Transit Is Essential coalition. Thoroughly reported and backed by more than 40 organizations spanning Transit Matters, Walk Massachusetts and Livable Streets to the Conservation Law Foundation, Boston Center for Independent Living and MassBike, the overall assessment is clear: “The current state of transportation is unsustainable for our climate and public health, our economy and ultimately for the people of Massachusetts.”"
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Reversing Course Again, Sec. Tibbits-Nutt Says Allston Project Will Include Multi-Acre Train Yard After All
"In a March letter co-signed by advocates from TransitMatters, the LivableStreets Alliance, Boston Cyclists Union, and several neighborhood groups called the proposed Allston layover "unnecessary, inconsistent with the MBTA’s Regional Rail vision, (and) incompatible with economic development.""
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Groups Urge Rainy Day Fund Diversion To Balance Budget
"The MBTA is facing an operating budget deficit of over $600 million in the upcoming fiscal year. The Commonwealth has over 600 structurally deficient bridges. The Commonwealth also needs to expand our EV charging infrastructure to meet our climate goals and address rural infrastructure for communities that rely on mostly gravel roads to get around," the coalition of more than two dozen groups wrote in a letter Tuesday to House and Senate budget chiefs. "Diverting $225 million from the Education and Transportation Fund only hinders our ability to address these investments moving forward."
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Groups urge rejection of Healey budget maneuver using millionaire tax funds
“We believe that shifting funds from the Education and Transportation Fund [the account where surplus millionaire tax revenues are kept] to backfill accounts that were previously funded by the General Fund sets a bad precedent for future budgets,” the advocates said in their letter. “Using the Fair Share dollars to balance budgets rather than make new investments in transportation and education moving forward risks damaging public trust. We believe a much better approach would be to use funds from the Stabilization Fund, as historically has been done, to close out prior year’s budgets.”
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MBTA launches new reduced fare program for low-income riders
“That group of folks 18 to 64, you know, they're in the midst of life and working every day and dropping kids off at child care and, you know, working poor," said Makayla Comas of the Livable Street [sic] Alliance.
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Boston using Google AI in Green Light pilot program to improve traffic
"You want to make sure that the technology is thinking about everyone at the intersection whether they're walking, biking, using transit or taking a car. My understanding is that the city is considering all these users because that same impact happens regardless of your mode."
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Boston implements traffic flow changes recommended by artificial intelligence
"That's a lot, when you think about the amount of time that you spend in a vehicle or maybe standing on a street corner waiting to get through the intersection," said Stacey Thompson, executive director of the Liveable Streets Alliance.
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Where the T Meets the Streets w/ Stacy Thompson from LivableStreets
On this episode of Spilling the T, we speak with Stacy Thompson from LivableStreets Alliance about transit advocacy, transit oriented development, and how LivableStreets is trying to help shape the region into an affordable, connected and climate resilient community.
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Slow down: Boston is installing more than 2,000 speed humps on city streets
"Lowering the speed limit alone, unfortunately, doesn't necessarily change driver behavior," Gleason said. "Having that physical addition to the road that really forces drivers to think about how fast they're driving and slow down their speed so that they don't experience any, you know, discomfort when they're driving over it or potential damage to their vehicle."
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THE MBTA’S ‘BILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION MARK
“How much are we actually spending at the end of the day, and what are we getting out of it? This is something the T is continually unable to make clear to the public,” Thompson said. “The finance side is unnecessarily complicated, it’s hard to get answers.”
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How can new fareboxes be this expensive?
It’s work has not been without hiccups. Stacy Thompson, the executive director of LivableStreets Alliance, a transit advocacy group, said in an interview that Cubic “has a terrible track record nationally and internationally for delivering projects on time and within budget, and we’re seeing that bear out in Massachusetts and for the MBTA.”
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Boston wants food delivery services to better police their drivers
Stacy Thompson with LivableStreets Alliance says the business model for these corporations is part of the problem. “They basically don’t care if these folks have appropriate vehicles, and they have to go fast as they can to earn a buck,” she said.
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Long-promised tap-to-pay system for T finally approaching rollout
Stacy Thompson of the advocacy group Livable Streets and Chris Dempsey of the urban design firm Speck Dempsey join Radio Boston to discuss the MBTA's announcement that it will launch a long-delayed tap-to-pay fare system this summer.
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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu divides West Roxbury over Centre Street redesign
“For people who felt really strongly that bike lanes were the end of the world, it doesn’t matter what the data shows,” Thompson said. “At the end of the day, what we have to focus on is if the street is safer, and the answer is yes.”
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Dorchester residents weigh in on Columbia Road redesign
“There will be spaces like this where people can come and tell us what they want and what they like to see”
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