Greenway Stories

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Featured Greenway: Mystic and Malden River Greenways

The greenway network along the Mystic and Malden Rivers offers relief from bustling city life while simultaneously connecting you to it. The greenway creates connections between Medford, Malden, Everett, and Somerville, and links them all to Boston itself. Imagine if this network were fully connected with safe or protected areas for everyone to walk or bike. The good news? There have been so many recent improvements that not only move the greenway network closer to a full connection but encourage activity and appreciation of natural resources. Continue reading

Taking a Historical Park into the Next Century: Franklin Park

For this greenway story we spoke with Janna Cohen-Rosenthal, Executive Director of the Franklin Park Coalition, and Arealus Pough, Community Engagement Manager at Lena Park Community Development Corporation, to learn more about opportunities and challenges for the City of Boston's historic Franklin Park as it becomes a focus for several modern planning projects.   Continue reading

Featured Greenway: Beacon Street Bridleway

Beacon Street, from Audubon Circle to Cleveland Circle, is a pleasant, tree-lined boulevard that over the past year has been incorporated into our wider vision of the Emerald Network. Originally laid out in 1850, Beacon Street has long served as a busy connector between Brookline and Boston.  Thanks to Brookline resident Jules Milner-Brage and the Friends of Beacon Street Bridleway, an exciting vision for a safer, multimodal street is starting to take shape. Continue reading

A Greenway Makes Progress: An Interview with East Boston Greenway Coordinator Michelle Moon

From Piers Park to Wood Island Bay and Constitution Beach, the East Boston Greenway is a two-mile linear park that connects people of all ages to East Boston neighborhood amenities, Boston’s largest salt marsh, and other important public waterfront areas. One of our very first Greenway Stories explored the success and challenges of this greenway -- you can read it here. For this story we sat down with Michelle Moon, the newly hired Greenway Coordinator for Friends of the East Boston Greenway (FoEBG), to talk about her role, ongoing challenges for greenways, and how partnerships and programs are helping to activate the East Boston Greenway in 2019. Continue reading

Featured Greenway: Chelsea Greenway

If you build it, they will ride. That’s what the Baker-Polito Administration is hoping for with the addition of the Silver Line 3-Chelsea (SL3), newly opened last April. The SL3 offers an efficient one-seat connection to key destinations, including the Seaport and South Station, luring would-be car commuters and taking some of the strain off of five already overcrowded bus routes serving nearly 7,000 daily passengers in Revere and Chelsea. But while the SL3 grabbed headlines in Boston, locals celebrated an additional win in the form of the Chelsea Greenway, a new 0.65-mile shared-use path running parallel to the SL3 bus priority lane. Continue reading