How To Improve Your Street?

How can the Town of Wellesley improve its streets for all users?
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Recently, the Town received a $35,000 grant to participate in the Massachusetts
Department of Transportation (Mass DOT) Complete Streets Funding Program, which is intended to help communities provide safe and accessible options for all travel modes – walking, biking, transit and vehicles – for people of all ages and abilities.

Complete Streets also contribute to the quality of life in our community by providing important links between home, school, work, play and retail areas through improved, more accessible walking, biking, and driving routes. These improvements may be large-scale or more focused on specific transportation modes.

Money from the Complete Streets program provides technical assistance and construction funding to eligible cities and towns, such as Wellesley. In May 2019, the Board of Selectmen approved a town-wide Complete Streets policy that will guide the Town in incorporating and implementing Complete Streets principles in future plans for and decisions about transportation projects in our community.

In tandem with this policy, the Town is currently working to identify and develop a list of priority Complete Streets projects with help from the community. All users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, motorists, commercial and emergency vehicle operators, and individuals of all ages and abilities are encouraged to provide comments. Specific issues of interest to the Town include: key areas to focus on, barriers to mobility, using transportation modes other than driving, and any other potential ideas.

To provide input and submit comments, visit Wellesley’s Complete Streets portal and use the interactive map. The portal is open now and will remain open until late January. There is no limit to the number of times users may submit comments. The information that is received will be shared at a Town-wide public hearing to be scheduled later this winter, and will help further shape Wellesley’s Complete Streets planning.