Sample Letter in Support of Bus Lanes for the Gateway East Project

Please see below a sample letter in support of Bus Lanes in Brookline generally and specifically as part of the Gateway East project on Washington Street / Rt 9.

Feel free to reuse paragraphs, structure, facts, or just as inspiration.  

You should send your comments to tkirrane@brooklinema.gov and ask that they be shared with the Transportation Board.

___________________________________

Dear Brookline Town Staff and Transportation Board,

I cannot express how excited I am to hear the Town is considering the addition of Bus Lanes to the Gateway East project.

The use of Bus lanes generally helps support so many of the goals of the Town and improve the livability of it for all of us who live, work, shop, and play here. Recognizing that each bus contains dozens of people in comparison to each single-occupancy vehicle can fundamentally restructure the way we think about transportation and our land-use. 

By providing dedicated space and priority for users of buses and transit, we reduce person-level congestion, creating time savings for the thousands of bus riders each day. Furthermore, by improving the reliability of bus service through consistent travel times, riders receive further gains through not needing to allocate an extra 5, 10, or 30 minutes to trips to account for the sometimes substantial delays.

Bus lanes are also an extremely inexpensive way to improve the quality of transit service for all users. By shaving 1, 2, or 10 minutes off of each bus run, each bus can make more runs a day. This is an effective capacity increase without the expense of new buses, new garages, or more operators! In today's COVID times, it also means less crowding on vehicles.

Improved transit service and improved travel times/reliability serve as further incentives residents and visitors to utilize transit, to build transit-oriented housing and businesses, and to rededicate our commitment to the land uses that make Brookline special. As a Town we have made a commitment to fighting climate change and reducing fossil fuel infrastructure. Each investment in Transit is a reduction in fossil fuel use (yes, even when the transit vehicles themselves are powered by fossil fuels) through a reduction in the need to purchase, fuel, and store more cars and through fighting sprawl. Investment in transit is an investment in our local shops and restaurants as buses bring thousands of new customers and potential employees a day to the front doors of our business districts. Investments in transit and transit use improve the health and safety of the Town through fewer car crash-caused injuries and deaths and reductions in the emissions that follow all vehicles (including all-electric vehicles through the use of their brakes).

While bus lanes will be a truly wonderful addition to all of our bus routes in Town, the area of particular focus for the Gateway East project is a major bottleneck for the 60, 65, and 66 buses that get stuck behind many single-occupant cars, adding significant delay to all riders of the bus in Brookline, Boston, and Cambridge. This is particularly acute for those looking to board at the stops near this project as none of them have bus shelters so, even with good real-time tracking programs, people waiting for the bus are forced to stand in the cold, rain/snow, and wind as the wait for a bus to take 1, 10, or 20 minutes to get from Riverway to Brookline Village. It also frequently leads to bunching, which further cascades into poor service on the rest of the line. 

Personally, I felt this every day for years when picking up children at a daycare near School Street where I often would wait for 2 to 4 buses all stuck in the project area for 5-15 minutes to then all arrive at once.

I look forward to seeing more details of the proposed alignment and to sharing ideas for how to best improve the lives of our residents, visitors, and employees as the project details are refined, but in any case, this step toward bus lanes and transit priority is an absolute victory for the people of Brookline.

Thank you,


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