Multi-Family Zoning Requirements for MBTA Communities

Smuttynose said:
Marblehead reversed itself and rejected MBTA zoning via a Referendum yesterday. The Town had previously voted to pass MBTA Zoning at a Special Town Meeting this Spring. Opponents held signs with slogans like "Don't Malden My Marblehead!"

BREAKING NEWS: Marblehead voters overturn multifamily housing zoning
marbleheadcurrent.org

BREAKING NEWS: Marblehead voters overturn multifamily housing zoning - Marblehead Current

Marblehead’s voters Tuesday overturned state-mandated multifamily housing overlay districts approved at May’s Town Meeting, with 6,939 of 16,732 registered voters turning out to reject the measure 3,642 to 3,297 (52.5% to 47.5%), surpassing the 3,347 votes needed for repeal and winning by a...
marbleheadcurrent.org marbleheadcurrent.org
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The referendum marked the first successful use of Marblehead’s 1954 Special Act allowing citizen petitions to challenge select Town Meeting decisions.
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In 70 years nothing has been as important as making sure some more apartments could potentially be built near where other apartments already are.
 
Yesterday was the deadline for MBTA Communities compliance set by the State for most communities. The Town of Hamilton, in Essex County, voted to pass MBTA Communities-compliant zoning on the deadline day at a Special Town Meeting by a vote of 334-269.

With that, this is how the map looks today:
Compliance Deadline has passed for 142 Municipalities:
127 or 89% of Municipalities are Compliant (Zoning has passed and has been approved by state or is pending review)
15 or 11% of Municipalities are Non-Compliant (Zoning has failed)

NON-COMPLIANT MUNICIPALITIES:

Suffolk County
Winthrop

Essex County
Marblehead
Middleton

Middlesex County
Dracut
Tewksbury
Weston
Wilmington

Norfolk County
Wrentham

Plymouth County
East Bridgewater
Halifax
Hanover
Hanson
Marshfield

Bristol County
Freetown

Worcester County
Holden

Additionally, there are 35 'Adjacent Small Towns' which do not face a deadline until December 31. Of those, 11 have passed 3A-compliant zoning, and 24 have not.
 
Some of these are a lot more forgivable than others. Middletown, Wrentham, East Bridgewater, Hanover, and Holden have no transit, not even RTA buses. Right now, you don't get much benefit from multi-family housing in these towns versus single-family housing; the only real benefits are less land clearing and walkability within the small village centers.

Marshfield has an hourly RTA bus with a handful of stops at Kingston station that provides an extremely slow route (2+ hours) to Boston. Tewskbury has an hourly RTA bus, but it's a slow ride to Wilmington and no timed connections to the Lowell Line. Freetown has a station, but it's an 80-minute ride to Boston and there's nothing around the station.

Hanson and Halifax are within reasonable commuter range, but the town centers aren't near the rail line, and there's not much around the stations. You can build housing there with service to Boston, but any local trips will still be entirely by car. That's acceptable, but far from ideal either for the towns or the state.

Weston is... Weston. Unfortunately, what passes for a village center is along the traffic cesspool of Boston Post Road, far from the Fitchburg Line. The Weston side of a potential 128 station is mostly wetlands. The Recreation Road area isn't great for an infill station. I have no idea what should be done. The problems with Weston are so systemic.

Dracut is an odd case. The RTA buses aren't ideal for commuting to Boston, but it's so close to Lowell. Just upzone the 113 corridor, pay for some additional RTA frequencies, and everything is fine.

Wilmington has good transit and such a lacking downtown. They need a few hundred apartments on the station parking lot, but they also need a lot of infill commercial.

Winthrop and Marblehead are simply unforgivable. Direct bus service to rapid transit. Already have areas of multifamily housing that are walkable to commercial districts.
 
The EGE said:
Some of these are a lot more forgivable than others. Middletown, Wrentham, East Bridgewater, Hanover, and Holden have no transit, not even RTA buses. Right now, you don't get much benefit from multi-family housing in these towns versus single-family housing; the only real benefits are less land clearing and walkability within the small village centers.

Marshfield has an hourly RTA bus with a handful of stops at Kingston station that provides an extremely slow route (2+ hours) to Boston. Tewskbury has an hourly RTA bus, but it's a slow ride to Wilmington and no timed connections to the Lowell Line. Freetown has a station, but it's an 80-minute ride to Boston and there's nothing around the station.

Hanson and Halifax are within reasonable commuter range, but the town centers aren't near the rail line, and there's not much around the stations. You can build housing there with service to Boston, but any local trips will still be entirely by car. That's acceptable, but far from ideal either for the towns or the state.

Weston is... Weston. Unfortunately, what passes for a village center is along the traffic cesspool of Boston Post Road, far from the Fitchburg Line. The Weston side of a potential 128 station is mostly wetlands. The Recreation Road area isn't great for an infill station. I have no idea what should be done. The problems with Weston are so systemic.

Dracut is an odd case. The RTA buses aren't ideal for commuting to Boston, but it's so close to Lowell. Just upzone the 113 corridor, pay for some additional RTA frequencies, and everything is fine.

Wilmington has good transit and such a lacking downtown. They need a few hundred apartments on the station parking lot, but they also need a lot of infill commercial.

Winthrop and Marblehead are simply unforgivable. Direct bus service to rapid transit. Already have areas of multifamily housing that are walkable to commercial districts.
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Weston.jpg


What the hell is the zoning in Weston? Like 5-acre lot zoning? It is so incredibly sprawling and scattered - without any real nodes of activity - for a town that has a prime location at the intersection of Interstate 90 and 95 with miles of real estate along both interstate corridors. I mean it makes Lexington look like Somerville. There are two commuter rail stations in Weston - there were three up until 2020. Surely they can upzone at least one of those areas - including potentially the land between Kendall Green and the busy Main Street/Bear Hill Road area of Waltham. Otherwise, I'm not sure why we continue to waste time and money associated with maintaining stations in ultra low density areas with low ridership.
 
Not to mention literally 3 golf courses within 2 miles of eachother.
 
The EGE said:
Some of these are a lot more forgivable than others. Middletown, Wrentham, East Bridgewater, Hanover, and Holden have no transit, not even RTA buses. Right now, you don't get much benefit from multi-family housing in these towns versus single-family housing; the only real benefits are less land clearing and walkability within the small village centers.

Marshfield has an hourly RTA bus with a handful of stops at Kingston station that provides an extremely slow route (2+ hours) to Boston. Tewskbury has an hourly RTA bus, but it's a slow ride to Wilmington and no timed connections to the Lowell Line. Freetown has a station, but it's an 80-minute ride to Boston and there's nothing around the station.

Hanson and Halifax are within reasonable commuter range, but the town centers aren't near the rail line, and there's not much around the stations. You can build housing there with service to Boston, but any local trips will still be entirely by car. That's acceptable, but far from ideal either for the towns or the state.

Weston is... Weston. Unfortunately, what passes for a village center is along the traffic cesspool of Boston Post Road, far from the Fitchburg Line. The Weston side of a potential 128 station is mostly wetlands. The Recreation Road area isn't great for an infill station. I have no idea what should be done. The problems with Weston are so systemic.

Dracut is an odd case. The RTA buses aren't ideal for commuting to Boston, but it's so close to Lowell. Just upzone the 113 corridor, pay for some additional RTA frequencies, and everything is fine.

Wilmington has good transit and such a lacking downtown. They need a few hundred apartments on the station parking lot, but they also need a lot of infill commercial.

Winthrop and Marblehead are simply unforgivable. Direct bus service to rapid transit. Already have areas of multifamily housing that are walkable to commercial districts.
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We offer grace to Weston as unfixable with two commuter rail stations and a density of 679 people per sq.mi. but call Marblehead with 7 times that density unforgivable because they have direct bus access to rapid, so long as you don't mind sitting on a bus that has to traverse two dense cities and 2 cramped towns. Winthrop is 14 times as dense as Weston, nearly 10,000 people per sq.mi. but you slide a pass to Halifax with 478 people per sq. mi. and dedicated commuter rail station? I voted "for" in a non compliant town but I see my neighbors ire with MassDOT for providing no solution to the gridlock, I see how my neighbors could vote, not against more people but, against their cars, since any new folks will probably not want to sit on a bus that has to traverse 4 towns to get to Wonderland and instead will just contribute to more time wasted on the road due to MassDOT's not providing solutions to the existing problems before trying to make them worse. Calling them unforgivable, especially when giving a pass to people who live in a forest with train stations is probably a bad way to open up dialog.
 
Tsquare2001 said:
We offer grace to Weston as unfixable with two commuter rail stations and a density of 679 people per sq.mi. but call Marblehead with 7 times that density unforgivable because they have direct bus access to rapid, so long as you don't mind sitting on a bus that has to traverse two dense cities and 2 cramped towns. Winthrop is 14 times as dense as Weston, nearly 10,000 people per sq.mi. but you slide a pass to Halifax with 478 people per sq. mi. and dedicated commuter rail station? I voted "for" in a non compliant town but I see my neighbors ire with MassDOT for providing no solution to the gridlock, I see how my neighbors could vote, not against more people but, against their cars, since any new folks will probably not want to sit on a bus that has to traverse 4 towns to get to Wonderland and instead will just contribute to more time wasted on the road due to MassDOT's not providing solutions to the existing problems before trying to make them worse. Calling them unforgivable, especially when giving a pass to people who live in a forest with train stations is probably a bad way to open up dialog.
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I definitely don’t think Weston or Halifax deserve any more grace than say Winthrop or Marblehead, but none of these communities deserve any sympathy. Marblehead and Winthrop are denser, yes, but it’s not because of any great planning wisdom. Marblehead peaked in the late 1700s, when it was a thriving Seaport and one of the 10 largest ‘cities’ in the United States. More recently, it’s been populated by folks who effectively want to make it a gated community for rich people.

Winthrop peaked later, but before zoning took hold, in the early 1900s as Boston’s urbanism swept into abutting communities. Weston and Halifax did not grow until later, post highway development, unfortunately when zoning requirements were firmly entrenched.

The law requires Winthrop to set aside a grand total of 12 acres for multi-family housing, for Marblehead, it’s 27 acres. Marblehead’s draft MBTA zoning, so controversial that it was overturned by the citizenry, prohibited any development in the proposed zones from exceeding 3 stories and mandated housing density approximately 75% less dense than what already exists in the historic areas.

Winthrop’s opposition is even more head scratching, because it was written in such a way to almost guarantee no new housing would be developed. It simply rezoned large existing condo/apartment developments to allow density that is - wait for it - actually less than what is existing there now!

MBTA is not an effective mechanism to develop more housing because it is full of loopholes and it is unnecessarily complicated. However, it has been useful in showcasing the most extreme of the NIMBY towns who continue to fight it.
 
Smuttynose said:
I definitely don’t think Weston or Halifax deserve any more grace than say Winthrop or Marblehead, but none of these communities deserve any sympathy. Marblehead and Winthrop are denser, yes, but it’s not because of any great planning wisdom. Marblehead peaked in the late 1700s, when it was a thriving Seaport and one of the 10 largest ‘cities’ in the United States. More recently, it’s been populated by folks who effectively want to make it a gated community for rich people.

Winthrop peaked later, but before zoning took hold, in the early 1900s as Boston’s urbanism swept into abutting communities. Weston and Halifax did not grow until later, post highway development, unfortunately when zoning requirements were firmly entrenched.

The law requires Winthrop to set aside a grand total of 12 acres for multi-family housing, for Marblehead, it’s 27 acres. Marblehead’s draft MBTA zoning, so controversial that it was overturned by the citizenry, prohibited any development in the proposed zones from exceeding 3 stories and mandated housing density approximately 75% less dense than what already exists in the historic areas.

Winthrop’s opposition is even more head scratching, because it was written in such a way to almost guarantee no new housing would be developed. It simply rezoned large existing condo/apartment developments to allow density that is - wait for it - actually less than what is existing there now!

MBTA is not an effective mechanism to develop more housing because it is full of loopholes and it is unnecessarily complicated. However, it has been useful in showcasing the most extreme of the NIMBY towns who continue to fight it.
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I was addressing the earlier comment that these towns with actual regional stations are simply too difficult to bring into compliance while other towns with larger, denser populations are referenced as unforgivable. Winthrop is 2 square miles of land, likely fewer acres for the entire town than Weston has committed to golf courses. The only way out of Winthrop is through Eastie or Revere. If we must hold Winthrop and Weston as equivalent failures while we work to resolve the housing crisis I don't think the dialog has much hope.

I do agree that the MBTA act is probably not the best way to go about dealing with this. If we don't proactively invest in Winthrop's climate change mitigation activity now, the state will be burdened the cost of being reactive in the next generation. But I guess that's the way of the politician.
 
My (extremely subjective) classification was based on how much the municipalities could reasonably add housing now for transit-only or transit-primary lifestyles - and not just based on commuting to Boston, but also locally. Merely dropping an apartment building next to an isolated commuter rail stop really isn't ideal, especially at current frequencies. Residents still need a car to go to the grocery, drop the kids off at school, or commute to any job not in downtown Boston.

The calculations are very different than if you were designing everything from scratch. For the low-density suburbs, especially those where there's not even a village center around the station (or no station at all), there would need to be much more systemic reforms to make them actually useful for addressing the housing crisis. You'd need coordinated regional efforts to densify mixed-use village centers - and create them around stations - and substantially increase local bus services into a robust bus network stringing villages centers together with regional rail. If you're willing to do that, then some of the currently-low-density suburbs can contribute a lot more to regional housing. I believe that is necessary and desirable, but it's not something that individual municipalities can be expected to do in a vacuum.

(I acknowledge that's probably not why upper-middle-class, primarily white, suburban residents are voting against rezoning.)

Weston in particular is difficult because the Fitchburg Line follows the Stony Brook valley, meaning that the line is flanked by wetlands. Even if you were able to eminent domain the existing single-family housing, some of which is on the NRHP I'm not sure you could ever create a meaningful transit village around any of the stations. Replacing the existing stations with a 128 station is the best bet, but due to where town lines and wetlands are, most of the meaningful density would be within Waltham. That doesn't absolve Weston for its exclusionary actions, but it does mean that I don't consider it a priority for transit-supportive zoning.*

Municipalities like Winthrop and Marblehead, with existing multifamily housing and density that can support non/low-car lifestyles - but also a lot of opportunity to densify along existing transit+commercial corridors - are where you can build housing now and have it be useful. It's a lot bigger issue today if you can't build a multifamily building on Main Street in Winthrop - with an 8-minute ride to Orient Heights every 15 minutes on weekdays - than if you can't build one at Halifax station two miles from the nearest grocery.

* Unserious take: Abolish Weston. Densify the Route 20 corridor (and maybe 30 and 117) to support bus service, turn them over to Waltham, and return the low-density residential areas to nature.
 
The EGE said:
My (extremely subjective) classification was based on how much the municipalities could reasonably add housing now for transit-only or transit-primary lifestyles - and not just based on commuting to Boston, but also locally. Merely dropping an apartment building next to an isolated commuter rail stop really isn't ideal, especially at current frequencies. Residents still need a car to go to the grocery, drop the kids off at school, or commute to any job not in downtown Boston.

The calculations are very different than if you were designing everything from scratch. For the low-density suburbs, especially those where there's not even a village center around the station (or no station at all), there would need to be much more systemic reforms to make them actually useful for addressing the housing crisis. You'd need coordinated regional efforts to densify mixed-use village centers - and create them around stations - and substantially increase local bus services into a robust bus network stringing villages centers together with regional rail. If you're willing to do that, then some of the currently-low-density suburbs can contribute a lot more to regional housing. I believe that is necessary and desirable, but it's not something that individual municipalities can be expected to do in a vacuum.

(I acknowledge that's probably not why upper-middle-class, primarily white, suburban residents are voting against rezoning.)

Weston in particular is difficult because the Fitchburg Line follows the Stony Brook valley, meaning that the line is flanked by wetlands. Even if you were able to eminent domain the existing single-family housing, some of which is on the NRHP I'm not sure you could ever create a meaningful transit village around any of the stations. Replacing the existing stations with a 128 station is the best bet, but due to where town lines and wetlands are, most of the meaningful density would be within Waltham. That doesn't absolve Weston for its exclusionary actions, but it does mean that I don't consider it a priority for transit-supportive zoning.*

Municipalities like Winthrop and Marblehead, with existing multifamily housing and density that can support non/low-car lifestyles - but also a lot of opportunity to densify along existing transit+commercial corridors - are where you can build housing now and have it be useful. It's a lot bigger issue today if you can't build a multifamily building on Main Street in Winthrop - with an 8-minute ride to Orient Heights every 15 minutes on weekdays - than if you can't build one at Halifax station two miles from the nearest grocery.

* Unserious take: Abolish Weston. Densify the Route 20 corridor (and maybe 30 and 117) to support bus service, turn them over to Waltham, and return the low-density residential areas to nature.
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There is an absolutely obnoxious amount of land that is wasted in weston around the i90-i95 interchange that is wedged in between rt 30 and the commuter rail line, with that little office park right next to the commuter rail line. This would have (imo) been the perfect spot to add an infill station on the worcester line, consolidate all of the pike ramps and roads into a much smaller package, and use the extra dozens of acres around the station/pike/rt 30 to build a new transit oriented downtown area.

Unfortunately the rebuild project of the pike ramps/bridges is u/c now and they are essentially using up the same amount of land and footprints.

It feels like a huge missed opportunity to just rebuild it as it was, but something like this would have taken decades to plan and the bridges were failing now, so I get it. Plus on top of that you would have had to fight the deep pocketed nimbys of weston who definitely wouldnt have wanted anything like this happening. Ah well… maybe in 50 years when this new bridge needs to be replaced.

Anyways looking at the map you can see how much god damn land is wasted here. The on/off ramps take up their own entire long stretch of highway to the left of the pike itself, and then in between that and the pike is a large amount of just unused no mans land 10 miles as the crow flies from downtown. The amount of different ways weston finds ways to waste acres upon acres of prime real estate so close to a major city is bananas.

IMG_3220.jpeg


-So I was bored and said F it and sketched up something to show what I’m saying a little easier.

So just by moving the pike over to the on/off ramp right of way you open up a huge amount of land just from that alone and make land that used to be essentially between two highways, usable.
IMG_3224.jpeg


And then by giving it a normal interchange vs the former toll booth version we have now with all of the extra roads and infrastructure, you end up with tons of extra land.

IMG_3226.jpeg


So you have rt.30 right there going into newton, park rd is the road at the bottom left coming from rt. 30 which goes into lower falls to the right of the image, the commuter rail line with an existing office park, and the pike all right here. Plenty of space to construct a transit oriented neighborhood on land taken back from excessive highway infrastructure which is no longer needed. Oh yea and this is weston so on top of all of that you obviously have a golf course directly next to the commuter rail line too. If this first phase had happened then at some point in the future maybe it could have extended across the tracks to the other side where the course is (they have 2 more courses nearby anyways).

Obviously none of this can or will happen now, but this is more just a thought experiment about how much land is being wasted around transit lines and so close to the city and how with some imagination (and actual professional planning vs my crayoning) there are more possibilities out there hidden in plain sight.
 
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Smuttynose said:
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What the hell is the zoning in Weston? Like 5-acre lot zoning? It is so incredibly sprawling and scattered - without any real nodes of activity - for a town that has a prime location at the intersection of Interstate 90 and 95 with miles of real estate along both interstate corridors. I mean it makes Lexington look like Somerville. There are two commuter rail stations in Weston - there were three up until 2020. Surely they can upzone at least one of those areas - including potentially the land between Kendall Green and the busy Main Street/Bear Hill Road area of Waltham. Otherwise, I'm not sure why we continue to waste time and money associated with maintaining stations in ultra low density areas with low ridership.
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I believe Weston has the highest household income of any community in the Commonwealth, except maybe Dover (which has a "built" form a lot like Weston). Pretty much explains it--it is designed to be exclusionary.
 
themissinglink said:
marbleheadcurrent.org

Town loses $50K earmarked for 250th celebration due to 3A noncompliance - Marblehead Current

Last week, the state rescinded a $50,000 grant for Marblehead’s months-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Revolution. The money, awarded in July, was yanked on Aug. 5 due to Marblehead’s noncompliance with the MBTA Communities Act. “This is a devastating blow,” said Marblehead...
marbleheadcurrent.org marbleheadcurrent.org
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I'm sure that events will go on regardless. It's a shame that there's no public transport connection to Salem station and that no one wants wait in downtown Lynn for 45 minutes for the half hour bus ride to town for these events. I guess they'll just have to drive their giant SUV's, block travel lanes because they can't judge the size of their vehicle on narrow old roads and park a mile from the nearest event tent.
 
marbleheadcurrent.org

BREAKING NEWS: State says ‘no’ 3A exemption for Marblehead - Marblehead Current

Select Board Chair Dan Fox tells the Current he has received a letter from Massachusetts Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Edward Augustus, denying Marblehead an exemption from the MBTA Communities Act. The letter is dated Sept. 11 and reads, “The MBTA Communities Law is a critical tool...
marbleheadcurrent.org marbleheadcurrent.org
In a special referendum in July, Marblehead voters rejected the town’s proposal to comply with 3A. The plan identified three areas for multifamily zoning, including Tioga Way, a part of Pleasant Street and Broughton Road. It would have added the possibility of 600 units in these areas.
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Milton is trying to change the definition of what a rapid transit community is to avoid the zoning requirements.

Bill H.3813

malegislature.gov malegislature.gov


“Rapid transit community” means an MBTA community that has within its borders at least 100 acres of developable station area associated with one or more subway stations, or MBTA Silver Line bus rapid transit stations.

“Subway station” means a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority station with uninterrupted service running inbound-to or outbound-from either Park Street Station, Government Center Station, Downtown Crossing Station, or State Street Station as part of the Red, Blue, Orange, or Green Lines.

“Trolley Station” means an MBTA station providing connecting service to a subway station but does not provide direct service either inbound-to or outbound-from Park Street Station, Government Center Station, Downtown Crossing Station, or State Street Station.
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BOS2BON said:
Milton is trying to change the definition of what a rapid transit community is to avoid the zoning requirements.

Bill H.3813

malegislature.gov malegislature.gov
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Hahaha. Gotta make sure the definition of a "trolley station" is based on 4 arbitrary stops forever and not if the line actually has trolley cars or not, because soon enough the Mattapan line will have the same cars currently in service on the Green Line subway.
 
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