Draft email for the initial meeting of the Carfree Tufts and Red/Green College Ave. Streetcar Project

Subject: Carfree Tufts and College Ave, a signature project for UEP

Greetings carfree, spacial and social justice, livability, environment, and transit enthusiasts, a.k.a. UEP. I would like to invite you to attend the initial meeting of the Carfree Tufts and Red/Green Line College Ave. Streetcar Project. The goal of this meeting is to discuss the opportunity of making the entire Tufts campus permanently carfree, excluding authorized deliveries, maintenance, and handicap access. Our goal will be specifically to remove all private vehicle travel and parking along the north/south and east/west roads within campus in order to create beautiful corridors and public spaces worthy of the rest of the Tufts campus. Furthermore we wish to eventually replace the inadequate Joey bus service with public streetcar service down Professor's Row, Talbot Ave., or both, which also serves as the primary connector between the anticipated College Ave. Green Line station and the Davis Square Red Line station.

In the meeting we will discuss these plans and initiate some smaller more tangible projects to prepare the campus to be carfree. I propose to first host a Park(ing) Day in the spring, where we take over parking spaces on Professor's Row in a prominent place and convert the spaces into public space, creating an outdoor café. Park(ing) Day is practiced across the globe each year on a day in September to show the many superior uses for street space normally taken up by cars. I also propose that we prepare for a campus-wide Carfree Day to take place on World Carfree Day on Septemeber 22, 2010. We will coordinate with the university this day to close the campus to private vehicle traffic to demonstrate the type of campus environment that we should enjoy every day.

View Carfree Tufts in a larger map

The longer term goals are to remove car traffic both from the university and the stretch of College Ave. between the Green and Red Line stations. Ideally College Ave. and campus will enjoy frequent transit service using modern streetcar service, bike lanes, and a wide pedestrian corridor. Buses along College Ave. will continue to run and share the streetcar right-of-way. The project also gives the potential for finally redesigning Powderhouse Square to be an intersection that favors pedestrians and transit by limiting cars to low speed and low priority passage across College Ave on Broadway, Powderhouse Blvd., and Warner St.

For all students, staff, and faculty interested in lending your skills to this grand undertaking, I invite you to attend the initial meeting at Brown House on ? at 12pm for a brown bag lunch and introduction of the concepts. Although the project is ambitious, I believe the initial steps, planning a Park(ing) Day and Carfree Day are very reasonable.

Thank you for your interest,
Andy