Mayor Walsh opens Go Boston 2030 Visioning Lab

Mayor Martin J. Walsh today kicked off a free, two-day interactive Visioning Lab as part of Go Boston 2030, the City of Boston’s initiative to create a bold new transportation plan for Boston’s future.  Boston residents, commuters and others with an interest in transportation are encouraged to visit the Visioning Lab at the China Trade Center, 2 Boylston Street until 7:30 PM on Friday, May 8, and on Saturday, May 9 from 10 AM to 4:30 PM.  The Visioning Lab welcomes children of all ages to participate as family friendly creative activities are planned.

“The City of Boston is taking unprecedented steps to include the public in policy decisions that affect their lives. The Visioning Lab is a fun and interactive way to be part of the City’s process in building its transportation plan,” said Mayor Walsh. “I encourage people to use the Lab as an opportunity to share their ideas about Boston’s transportation future and learn what mobility issues are important to their neighbors, friends, and colleagues.”

The Visioning Lab is set up as a unique exploratory experience, inviting visitors to actively participate in building their transportation future.  Visitors will interact with multimedia exhibits designed to solicit input, and will be provided with an assortment of creative and artistic possibilities for communicating their ideas about transportation in the future.

The interactive exhibits are built on public input collected during the first phase of Go Boston 2030, known as the Question Campaign.  During the Question Campaign, local residents and commuters donated questions about the future of Boston transportation. Questions were collected in-person at the “What’s Your Question” truck that visited neighborhoods throughout the city, online at GoBoston2030.org, by tweet using the #GoBoston2030 hashtag, and by text message. The Visioning Lab displays the information gathered from the questions that were collected and participants will be able to continue to track their question throughout the process to see how their input fits into the larger Vision.

“As a result of this campaign, we have received 5,000 questions that are providing us with important data to provides a framework for what Boston residents and commuters envision for the future of transportation in our city,” said Boston Transportation Commissioner Gina Fiandaca. “Our goal for this process is to create a bold transportation plan with specific short and long term projects included, and it is critical that we continue to get feedback from the public every step of the way.”

At the conclusion of the Visioning Lab, the data and feedback received will serve as the foundation for a Vision Report, a new set of shared goals, and early action steps that will be released this summer. This will be followed by a comprehensive, long-term Action Plan to be developed through extensive community engagement and released in spring of 2016. The plan will contain resulting transformative policies and projects designed to increase equity in mobility, improve the economy, better connect people to jobs and education, and protect the environment. The plan will inform Imagine Boston 2030, the first citywide plan in 50 years.

Go Boston 2030 takes an innovative approach to community engagement that combines cutting edge technology with grassroots, in-person interaction to gather input from as many residents, commuters, and visitors as possible on what their needs and hopes are for transportation. The Question Campaign was built on the premise that asking questions can inspire vision, make concerns visible, and lead to great ideas.  The final transportation plan will include immediate action steps and projects that will improve transportation for residents, commuters, and visitors for the next 5, 10, and 15 years.

The Go Boston 2030 initiative is led by the Boston Transportation Department and is a collaboration of many City agencies, MassDOT, and the MBTA.  The initiative is steered by the Mayor’s Mobility Plan Advisory Committee, which is co-chaired by Representative Russell Holmes, who represents the Sixth Suffolk district in Boston and Richard Dimino, President and CEO of A Better City, a business group advancing the economic competitiveness and quality of life in Boston.