Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images)
Mayor proposes ways to improve notoriously gridlocked city
BOSTON (AP) — Boston's mayor is proposing ways to improve traffic in the notoriously gridlocked city.
Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh announced Thursday that he wants to create designated pickup and drop-off sites for ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, create more dedicated bus lanes in busy neighborhoods, issue thousands more free bus passes to students, and lower neighborhood speed limits to 20 miles per hour.
Walsh says the ride-hail pickup locations will be piloted this month in the Fenway neighborhood, among many areas where double parking is causing congestion.
The city's neighborhood speed limits were last reduced in 2017, when they went from 30 mph to 25 mph. Boston had seven pedestrian and three bicyclist fatalities last year.
The mayor announced the initiatives at his annual speech before the Boston Municipal Research Bureau.