Connecting Boston to the Blue Hills: Community Shares Input on Parkway Designs
January 2026
Recently, nearly seventy people attended a community meeting on design alternatives for the Blue Hills Parkway corridor.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) and the Neponset River Watershed Association were joined by staff from Nitsch Engineering for an open house, presentation, and workshop to gather community input.
The meeting was part of the Boston to Blue Hills project, focused on a safe and scenic walking/biking/rolling connection from the Neponset River to the Blue Hills Reservation.
The vision is to connect Boston’s southern neighborhoods — Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Hyde Park — to the Blue Hills.
Separately, though in the same geographic area, it also includes the City of Boston Blue Hill Avenue Transportation Action Plan, a major redesign that will add center-running bus lanes and protected bike lanes from Grove Hall to Mattapan Square.
After the project team presented the history of the effort–community engagement conducted, traffic data collected, and designs — attendees shared their feedback.
This input is a crucial part of the feasibility study that will be finalized in early 2026 and help the project move toward design and construction. More engagement and advocacy at the state level will be needed to reach those phases, but once complete, Blue Hills Parkway promises a safer, more accessible corridor for all.
Complementing this project, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) is working on Neponset to the Blue Hills, which explores a walking/biking/rolling connection from Readville to the Blue Hills.
This trail extension would lengthen the Neponset River Greenway from its southern endpoint near Paul’s Bridge at Truman Parkway to the Blue Hills Reservation, creating a unified rail trail and transit network.
Additionally, the Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) of the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) recently completed a project to evaluate improved transit options from Boston to the Blue Hills.
Learn more in their final story map report: Unlocking the Blue Hills: Addressing Equity and Access in the Blue Hills Reservation.
For any questions, please email NepRWA Greenways Director, Andres Ripley, at ripley@neponset.org
