Cities and towns, through their home rule powers, hold the key to protecting the long-term quality of their drinking water supplies.  The federal Safe Drinking Water Act establishes the maximum levels of contaminants allowed in public water supplies to meet public health needs, but achieving those quality standards is largely a local responsibility.

Rail rights of way are a valuable and increasingly rare resource that should be preserved and utilized.  Rights of way constantly face encroachment from development and other competing uses.  Once rights of way are fragmented, it is nearly impossible to return to viable track use.

Greater local planning capacity is necessary to support the creation of sustainable land use plans, the development of efficient transportation projects, and comprehensive review and mitigation of development proposals and their transportation impacts.  The land use decisions that drive transportation are, for the most part, made locally, and municipalities are the proponents of many transportation projects, especially roadway projects.  Municipal officials and staff must have a better understanding of issues such as cumulative impacts, secondary land use impacts, and transportation

To be effective, Metro Boston’s regional transportation planning and land use planning should be fully integrated activities, conducted independent of state agency control.  Such integration would help ensure ensure that sustainable land use plans support efficient transportation investments, and vice versa.  

The region needs a robust analytical infrastructure to support informed and coordinated transportation decision-making.  The MPO should invest in comprehensive data and analysis tools that reflect the relationships among transportation, land use, and travel behavior.  Better performance evaluation is also needed to assess whether projects achieved their mobility, safety, environmental, or other objectives, creating a “feedback loop” that will inform future investment decisions.

The Boston MPO should adopt project evaluation criteria that explicitly address the alignment between proposed projects and local zoning, land use plans, and the regional plan.  The highest ranking should go to those projects that support a land use plan that will efficiently utilize new capacity to support sustainable growth.  Projects that promote unsustainable growth patterns inconsistent with MetroFuture should be given a very low priority, and the MPO should work with those proponents to revise the project design and land use plans to support sustainable growth.  

Corridor planning is a process to formally coordinate land use plans, transportation investments, and transportation demand management strategies along key roadway or transit lines.  With support from the Commonwealth, the Boston MPO should commit to a full corridor planning process whenever:

Micro-businesses and sole proprietorships generally have little need for conventional office and industrial spaces.  Many work out of their own home or studios; others share office space with other small businesses.  A new generation of “virtual” business incubators (such as the Enterprise Center at Salem State College) serve as resource facilities where member businesses access services, meeting space, and training, without necessarily having their desk at that location.  

Marketing and information are critical to ensuring that the development community invests in areas consistent with MetroFuture.  Various public agencies, quasi-public organizations, and public/private partnerships provide statewide and national marketing to priority development sites and other designated locations.  Examples include the Massachusetts Office of Business Development, the Massachusetts Alliance for Economic Development, MassDevelopment, and municipal economic development departments.  

Productive relationships between municipalities and the development community attract economic investment and the opportunity for meaningful growth to Metro Boston.  These relationships should be encouraged. Long-term prosperity depends on it.  Where the permitting process brings satisfactory results, the applicants, the public, and the economy stand to benefit.  MetroFuture recommends that municipalities adopt a set of best practices that can make permitting more predictable, equitable, cost effective, and efficient.