Town meeting season is here — which means, yes, it’s time for residents of communities across Massachusetts and other parts of New England to bicker, trade conspiracy theories, grandstand, and then vote on such weighty matters as cemetery funds, snowplow budgets, and sewer easements.
Though town meetings can have more than a whiff of absurdity — one draft warrant article in Hanover, for instance, asks voters whether to correct the spelling of the name of a park — there are steps some Massachusetts towns are contemplating to make themselves more walkable and transit-friendly.
In my nonscientific, non-complete survey of local warrant articles, a few notables stood out:
In Arlington, the suburb that infamously thwarted the extension of the Red Line in the 1970s, one article asks for a repeal of a 1976 law “prohibiting the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for locating a mass transportation facility within a certain distance of the Arlington Catholic High School.”
The church played a central role in defeating the extension, as one history of the project recounted. Although there appears to be no appetite, at the MBTA or anywhere else, to reopen the idea of extending the Red Line north, the vote in Arlington would at least symbolically atone for the community’s short-sightedness decades ago.
In Provincetown, residents will consider a $100,000 pilot program to “provide transportation to and from Provincetown to the towns of Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham to ensure that Provincetown workers have safe, reliable, affordable transportation during the months of May, June, July, August, September, and October.”
There’s a huge affordable housing shortage in Provincetown, and if workers at restaurants, hotels, and other attractions can’t live in the town itself, they’ll need transit options to live nearby. Public transit in Massachusetts is typically provided by regional entities — in Provincetown’s case, CCRTA — and it’s interesting to see a town consider taking action on its own.
Over in Needham, the town will consider whether to pay $1,340,000 for the improvements to railroad crossings that would be needed to create a quiet zone where MBTA trains do not sound their horns. The work would include “quad-gates, two gates that lower on each side of the railroad crossing, and vehicle and pedestrian detection systems.”
That’s despite a recently filed lawsuit that seeks to bring back train horns in Massachusetts towns that have banned them, citing the danger to pedestrians.
Granted, most of the focus in transportation planning is rightly at the state level or regional agencies like the T. But what would you like to see your town consider? Let us know here.
Alan Wirzbicki is Globe deputy editor for editorials. He can be reached at alan.wirzbicki@globe.com.
