Driving down transportation-related emissions with smarter travel and smarter places.
Although cleaner fuels and more efficient vehicles have kept transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions relatively flat, we need to shift the curve downward.
Massachusetts can still meet its ambitious climate goals, but not without transforming how we move around and how we build our communities—the two areas of focus for Barr’s Mobility portfolio. We see these two as mutually reinforcing. We can’t provide enough low-carbon travel without good transportation options, and we can’t provide enough good transportation options without well-designed communities.
Mobility Strategies
While cleaner fuels and more efficient vehicles have limited growth in transportation-related emissions, to achieve the dramatic reductions required, we must transform how we move around and build communities. That is why Barr’s Mobility portfolio focuses on:
Learn more about Mobility StrategiesSmarter travel. Smarter places.
Mary Skelton Roberts on Mobility and Quality of Life
"How can we begin to create the kinds of environments where people are happier and we're not degrading our climate?"
Go Boston 2030
Go Boston 2030 envisions a city in a region where all residents have better and more equitable travel choices, where efficient transportation networks foster economic opportunity, and where the City has taken steps to prepare for climate change. This initiative is a result of suggestions from thousands of residents, setting a new norm for public engagement in long-term planning processes.
Go Boston 2030
Here are a few of the questions we’re working to tackle:
Among the mobility options Barr is exploring for Greater Boston is BRT, which has proven an efficient and cost-effective mode of transit in cities across the globe.
To better understand whether and how BRT could work here and what benefits it might bring, in 2013, Barr convened a study group with deep roots across Greater Boston and expertise in transportation, development, and climate. In its final report, the group identified five corridors that show high potential for BRT.
We are now in the community outreach phase of this exploration, inviting residents to engage, react, and improve the ideas—to ensure that any resulting plans to advance BRT in any of these five (or other) corridors reflect and are responsive to community input and concerns.
In 2015, Barr funded research by George Washington University to identify the Greater Boston neighborhoods with the highest potential to become walkable urban places (a.k.a. “WalkUPs”). This new development pattern has promise of making neighborhoods more attractive to live in and full of good choices about how to get around—while also increasing their resiliency to climate change and reducing transportation-related emissions.
