With the MBTA finally moving forward on its long-delayed plans for the construction of a new garaging facility for 200 electric buses, the Arborway Yard Subcommittee of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council’s (JPNC) Housing and Development Committee likewise has arisen from its dormancy.
The T’s plans for a new garaging facility to replace the current fueling and maintenance garage date back to 1999, when the T and the city entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the use of the site.
In a nutshell, the MOU (which was signed on behalf of the city by then-Mayor Tom Menino) provided that the city would transfer an adjacent parcel of city-owned land (which the city used at that time as a pole yard) on the eastern side of the site to the T, which in turn would transfer an equivalent amount of acreage on the western side of the site to create an eight-acre parcel to be used by the city for community development purposes.
Community activists long envisioned that the eight acres would be used for a mix of affordable housing and commercial development.
However, the T’s 1999 plans for the new garage facility — which back then, of course, did not envision an electric bus fleet — never came to fruition, primarily because of a lack of funding.
In addition, the city began to use its pole yard as a DPW staging area for its winter rock salt operations.
After more than two decades of inaction, the proposal for a new garage came to the fore in 2022 when the legislature enacted a law that requires the T to cease operating fossil-fuel passenger buses and transition to an all-electric, zero-emission fleet by December 31, 2040.
The legislation also established an interim target requiring all new MBTA passenger bus purchases or leases to be zero-emission vehicles starting December 31, 2030.
The new law spurred the T to resurrect its plans for a new Arborway Garage to house 200 of its future electric buses. However, with the city now using its former pole yard for DPW purposes, the eight acres of community development land were in jeopardy, with the T proposing to construct a 200-car parking lot for employees on a big chunk of the eight acres that had been slated for community development in the 1999 MOU.
The reconstituted Arborway Yard Subcommittee met regularly with city and T officials in 2023, with the subcommittee members emphasizing that the eight acres of community development land should remain intact per the MOU without any employee parking. Committee members also took issue with the size of the proposed garage — which now needed to accommodate 200 buses — compared to the 120 buses in the current garage.
Residents also conducted informational picketing to voice their objections to the city retaining the former pole yard as a staging area for the DPW’s winter operations.
The long-running saga of the Greatest Garage Ever Proposed (But Never Built) took yet another twist when the legislature did not provide the funding in either the FY ‘25 or ‘26 budgets for the new garage (which by that time already was in the design phase), effectively placing the project on the shelf.
The T finally got the project back on track this past March when it appropriated funds from its own capital improvement budget. The T’s newly-revised plans for the project, based on a Request for Qualifications for a Project Manager issued by the T on June 16, drastically changed the scope of the project from what the T had envisioned in 2022.
First and foremost, the new plan re-establishes the eight acres of community development land. The community development acreage, which runs along Washington St., will be unencumbered by T employee parking (which will be located elsewhere on the site), effectively restoring the intent of the 1999 MOU, although two access roadways to Washington St. will run through the 8-acre parcel.
In addition, the city’s DPW yard on the eastern side of the site no longer exists.
The initial proposal for an enormous garage structure has been shelved. Instead, the T will have open-air parking at ground level for up to 200 buses, covered by what is described in the plans as a “canopy.” There will be an adjacent 2-story indoor maintenance facility and a 1-story building for charging & washing.
The total cost of the revised project is estimated at $205 million (compared to $440 million for the original plan) with an estimated construction period of five years.
The next meeting of the Arborway Subcommittee is scheduled for Monday, October 19, at 7:00 p.m. via Zoom.