www.mass.gov/southcoastrail
Governor Patrick Releases South Coast Rail Corridor Plan
On August 5, Governor Deval Patrick, Lt. Governor
Tim Murray, Secretary of Transportation James Aloisi
and Secretary of Housing and Economic Development
Gregory Bialecki released the South Coast Rail Economic
Development and Land Use Corridor Plan in New Bedford.
The Corridor Plan integrates economic development,
transportation, housing and environmental planning for the
region. It presents concept plans for 11 stations, the regional
Corridor Map and new state policy commitments to help
make these changes real. Congressmen Barney Frank and
Jim McGovern joined Administration officials, mayors and
elected officials from South Coast communities at the New
Bedford Whaling Museum for the release of the report.
The Corridor Plan contains good news: it predicts that
commuter rail service to the South Coast will create between
3,500 and 3,800 new jobs by 2030, with two-thirds of them
in the region. Investing in new transit improves access
to jobs. New and more efficient transportation will link
workers and firms within the region and to Boston. These
opportunities will generate nearly half a billion dollars in
new business sales annually and up to $160 million in new
household income by the year 2030. Rail construction will
also bring immediate growth to the region, generating
between $1.4 and $1.8 billion in business and between 7,000
and 8,000 jobs.
Creating great new neighborhoods at stations will enhance
the region’s competiveness. The Corridor Plan envisions
a mix of station types. Some will encourage walking and
biking through downtowns and village centers, bringing new
housing, stores and offices that will revitalize communities.
Others will be regional stations, offering convenient highway
access and longer term development potential. All of the
stations have the potential to attract new investment,
increasing local revenues and offering more variety in
housing and lifestyle choices.
Connecting Resources
Transportation
Secretary Jim
Aloisi and Lt.
Gov. Tim Murray
(top); Gov. Deval
Patrick and South
Coast legislators;
Congressman
Barney Frank (left).
The Corridor Plan is the product of intensive communitybased planning over the past 18 months. It developed from
a collaborative working process and partnership between
the Commonwealth, 31 corridor communities, three regional
planning agencies, advocacy groups and the Southeastern
Massachusetts Commuter Rail Task Force. The process
included more than 100 public meetings and events that
drew on the knowledge and insights of regional residents,
businesses, planners and other organizations. The Corridor
Continued on page 2.
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Map is a blueprint for places to protect and places to
redevelop. It will be used to guide investments and local
actions that will implement the recommendations from the
Corridor Plan. How did the Corridor Map come together?
Regional Planning Agencies (RPAs) first met with committees
of citizens, business owners and elected and municipal
officials in 31 communities to designate local priority
protection areas and priority development areas (see the
October 2008 SCR Fact Sheet for an example of the process).
These local priorities were then screened for regional
significance through meetings with regional stakeholders.
The stakeholders identified the most critical lands for habitat
and conservation for protection and designated the largest
economic development opportunities.
Housing and Economic
Development Secretary
Greg Bialecki partnered with
Secretary Aloisi to develop
the Corridor Plan.
Next, state agencies that invest in infrastructure and land
preservation reviewed the local and regional priorities,
including sites that are most aligned with the state’s
Sustainable Development Principles and state agency goals.
The result is a Corridor Map with more than 30 Priority
Development Areas and more than 70 Priority Protection
areas. These distinctions will encourage development in
downtowns and around train station areas while preserving
environmental resources.
Station Sites:
New Places
Planning for
transit-oriented
development,
known as TOD, is
already underway
locally. Throughout
the Corridor Plan
process, EOT
Freetown Selectman Jean Fox talked
held workshops in
about implementing the plan.
communities that
will host a station to gather comments and ideas on how
these places should look and feel.
Based on people’s suggestions, EOT created station
concepts and station area development maps reflecting
both local input and operating plans for the alternatives.
Station area plans in the Corridor Plan recommend vehicle,
pedestrian and bicycle access routes to the station and
future development. The plans also assess the potential
amount and types of future development within one mile
and one-quarter mile (about a five minute walk) of each
station area. The team chose station sites to serve potential
riders, enhance local community master plans and benefit
from trends that favor development near public transit.
There are village stations, downtowns and sites that offer
regional access and more parking.
Implementing the Plan
The benefits of the South Coast Rail project and the Corridor
Plan can only be realized with a coordinated effort to
prepare the region for redevelopment and preservation —
at the local, regional and state levels. The Commonwealth
recognizes its part in this process. The state has committed
Continued on page 4.
Greening Corridor Stations
The Corridor Plan recommends greening the project’s station areas and parking. EOT plans
to design environmentally friendly and energy efficient facilities. The project has a number of
strategies for greening the stations in the corridor, such as:
• Employing alternative energy in station areas and along the rail right-of-way. These include
solar PV on platform canopies and over parking lots and structures and wind turbines
where feasible.
• Using low impact development (LID) techniques to minimize stormwater runoff in
parking lots and finding ways to improve groundwater recharge.
• Using recycled, reused and local materials for construction.
• Encouraging municipalities to set green building standards in station areas and to seek
Green Communities status throughout the community.
The plan also outlines strategies for managing parking and encouraging people to walk and
bike to stations or use local transit service. (See pages 65 to 71 of the plan for more details.)
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Environmental Methodology
The South Coast region is home to vast stretches of valuable
natural resources. Lakes, ponds, wetlands and swamps dot
the area. Cities and historic sites, cranberry bogs, farms and
forests – all are important to the economy and the quality of
life. EOT is committed to delivering public transit to the South
Coast while preserving this historic and natural beauty.
The project team has devoted more than 18 months to
identifying the potential environmental impacts of each
rail and bus alternative and proposed station location. The
Secretary of Environmental Affairs provided a scope of work
for the state environmental documents, and the team has
been working with the lead federal agency, the US Army
Corps of Engineers, to meet federal standards.
To comply with federal and state regulations, the team is
analyzing each alternative’s impacts on 18 resources: noise
and vibration levels; biodiversity; farmland soils; threatened
and endangered species; water and air quality; wetlands;
environmental justice communities; land use; traffic; open
space; social and economic environment; and visual and
aesthetic resources.
The team first discussed the methodologies for analyzing
these impacts with members of the Interagency Coordinating
Group. The members represent state and federal agencies
with a role in reviewing the project. The state’s scope of work
requires some new analyses, such as estimating the effect of
the project on global warming (by looking at greenhouse gas
production). Because supporting smart growth is part of the
project’s purpose, the group is also looking at how it factors
into the environmental analysis.
The analysis uses several types of information, depending
on the type of resource. Impacts are identified by comparing
the conditions without the proposed project (the NoBuild Alternative) in 2030 to conditions with the proposed
project (in 2030) for each of the alternatives. The no-build
conditions are based on the existing conditions mapping
using Geography Information System (GIS) technology.
The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs
provides a GIS technology service known as MassGIS.
MassGIS is a complex database of geographic data for
Massachusetts. Using MassGIS, the project team has access
to detailed maps with various layers of natural resources.
With these maps, supplemented by aerial photographs and
on-the-ground field investigations, the project team has
developed maps of natural resources and developed areas.
For other resources, such as air quality, noise, vibration,
and traffic, the No-Build condition is based on computer
models of the future conditions without any of the South
Coast Rail alternatives. These models have been developed
by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Transit
Administration and the Federal Highway Administration for
evaluating the impacts of transportation projects.
The project team has also developed conceptual design plans
for each of the alternatives, which include: the conceptual
grading plans for track; highway lanes and interchanges;
stations and layover facilities; and electric power substations.
These preliminary limits of work were overlain on the existing
conditions mapping to determine the amount of wetland
impacts, loss of natural habitats, impacts to properties,
impacts to farmland soils, as well as impacts to historical
and archaeological resources. The analysis also looks at the
indirect impacts to these resources, such as loss of wetland
function or loss of habitat connectivity.
The conceptual operating plan for each alternative includes
train or bus schedules, frequencies, speeds and ridership.
These variables were used in the computer models to
estimate the changes in future air quality, noise, vibration,
and traffic associated with each alternative when compared
to the No-Build condition in 2030.
Once the impacts to natural and human resources are
identified, the project team will examine ways that these
impacts could be avoided or minimized and develop a range
of measures that could be implemented to mitigate for
unavoidable impacts.
Next Steps
EOT will provide all of the environmental technical memos
to the Army Corps of Engineers and its consultant, who will
prepare the draft environmental reports. The environmental
analysis and impacts will be reported in the combined state
and federal document to be released later this fall (the Draft
Environmental Impact Report/Draft Environmental Impact
Statement or DEIR/DEIS). Technical memos will also be
made available on the South Coast Rail website, later this
summer or in early fall.
South Coast Rail August 2009 | Page 3
• Affordable Housing. Provide
technical assistance to
expand affordable housing
opportunities and use the
Corridor Plan to guide new
housing development.
• Transfer of Development
Rights. Create a regional
Congressman McGovern
Transfer of Development
addressing the gathering.
Rights (TDR) program
to steer growth away from sensitive sites in rural and
suburban areas at risk for low-density residential sprawl
and into areas appropriate for development, like village
centers and downtowns.
• Capture Value. Consider retaining a portion of the value
created by the transportation investment to help fund the
project by capturing new tax revenue from growth around
the train stations.
A Living Plan
The Corridor Plan provides the
framework for everyone to work
together to promote regional
growth that is sustainable and
protects the natural beauty of
the South Coast. The next 12 months will be important as
the communities and the Commonwealth take first steps to
implement this long-term vision. EOT will continue its civic
engagement and public dialogue on station area plans and
zoning, working with the communities, MBTA, developers
and property owners to deliver on the promise of the
Corridor Plan.
Crowd gathers at the New Bedford Whaling Museum for the release
of the South Coast Corridor Plan.
to a series of policy changes to foster transit oriented
development and preserve natural resources. State policies
that will implement this
vision include:
• Stations and Station Areas. Create great places at the
station areas by maximizing transit-oriented development
(TOD) that builds new green neighborhoods with jobs
and housing.
• Strategic Investments. Use discretionary state funding
flowing to municipalities to encourage zoning and land use
changes that support sustainable development and the
Corridor Plan. Pilot a “South Coast Investment Program”
that links state investments to state goals and local
performance in advancing those goals. Build on existing
efforts to coordinate investments across agencies.
• Lead by Example. Steer the state’s own direct investments
in state infrastructure, buildings, and office leases to
station areas and priority development areas, such as
downtowns.
For a copy of the South Coast Rail Corridor Plan, Executive
Summary or Corridor Map, please visit the reference section of
our project website, www.mass.gov/southcoastrail. Print copies
are in each community Library.
Contact Information
If you would like more information about the project or to
be added to the project distribution list for email and U.S.
Mail notifications of meetings and other updates, please
contact Kristina Egan, South Coast Rail Manager at EOT,
by email at Kristina.Egan@eot.state.ma.us or phone at
617-973-7314. Project information and updates, including a
schedule of upcoming meetings, are posted on the project
website at www.mass.gov/southcoastrail.
The Executive Office of Transportation and Public Works
Ten Park Plaza, Room 4150
Boston, MA 02116
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