BHA TAP Engagement Report (2023)

In summer 2023, Grayscale Collaborative organized the Blue Hill Ave Transportation Action Plan (BHA TAP) engagement report, which organized and cataloged the robust community engagement process for the Plan since the start of the pandemic. The BHA TAP seeks to redesign Boston’s Blue Hill Ave from Grove Hall to Mattapan Square, a major civic, commercial and residential corridor that has received little citywide investment over the past sixty years. Through engagement for the BHA TAP, the team sought out young people, bus operators and bus riders, all of which are typically underrepresented in transportation planning processes. Blue Hill Ave carries some of the highest ridership and most frequent buses in the entire MBTA system (including the busiest bus, the 28), but is plagued by constant traffic, double parking, unreliable service, unwelcoming bus shelters and unsafe pedestrian conditions. At the same time, Blue Hill Ave acts as a transportation lifeline for residents of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, neighborhoods that are low-income compared to the rest of the city and largely excluded from the MBTA rapid transit system. Thus, the BHA TAP aims to redesign Blue Hill Ave holistically, providing small business investment, enacting anti-displacement residential policies, creating more welcoming and safe public realm conditions, implementing green infrastructure and bus priority to support the thousands of residents along the corridor that depend on the bus system. Please click here to read the full report and click through the slides below to review some of the report spreads.

I worked on the BHA TAP at the Boston Transportation Department and later at Grayscale Collaborative, serving as a planner and designer on both teams. I co-developed the graphic language for the report and for all project communications (including mailers, flyers and interactive engagement materials), led many engagement events and public-facing communication, co-led a robust bus operator and bus rider surveying process, facilitated engagement consultant/public-sector communications and served as the project’s lead cartographer.

This report would not have been possible without the full Grayscale team, including Anne Lin, Caroline Filice Smith, Emma Yudelevitch, Stephen Gray and Whitney Thomas.