MBTA lays out Lynnway multimodal plan, presents four design alternatives and fields resident concerns

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority presented draft designs for the Lynnway Multimodal Corridor on a virtual public meeting, outlining a roughly 1.6‑mile project to add transit priority lanes, safer crossings and new pedestrian and bicycle facilities while preserving vehicle access.

Philip Cherry of the MBTA said the project’s primary goals are safety, improved transit reliability and a more welcoming public realm. "The bulk of this evening will be spent going over our draft concept design," he said, noting the MBTA coordinated closely with MassDOT and the city of Lynn and that the General Edwards Bridge replacement is a separate project being coordinated with this work.

Why it matters: the Lynnway now serves about 3,000 daily bus boardings and roughly 40,000 vehicles a day, and MBTA and city planners expect significant new housing and commercial development nearby. Aaron Clausen, Lynn’s principal planner, said planning documents anticipate about 2,000 new housing units and more than one million square feet of commercial, office and industrial space between 2025 and 2035, increasing demand for reliable transit and safer crossings.

Project elements and trade-offs The draft concept includes a mix of side-running and center-running bus lanes, enhanced shelters with real-time arrival signage, ADA-accessible center platforms at several stops, upgraded traffic signals, pavement and ramp repairs, and street‑tree plantings. Cherry said the team shifted away from the original bidirectional center‑running bus-lane idea after additional engineering and driveway analyses and offered a compromise that provides nearly a mile of center-running lane while retaining many existing left-turn lanes.

On the shared-use path, the MBTA proposed two options: a shorter path to Harding Street (about one-third of a mile) or a longer path to Commercial Street (about two‑thirds of a mile). "The longer option connects more destinations but increases right-of-way and construction impacts," Cherry said.

Alternatives and localized trade-offs The presentation included four alternatives that attendees polled on: the shared-use path extent and three stop-location trade-offs (around Harding Street, Commercial Street, and the northern Kingman/Blossom area). At Commercial Street the team presented two options: one that preserves a high-volume right-turn lane but removes additional median (affecting several trees) and a second that retains the median but reduces traffic throughput. MBTA traffic modeling estimated added travel time of roughly one minute or less in most peak directions for the proposed designs, with somewhat larger impacts under some future‑volume scenarios.

Safety and tree planting Speakers stressed pedestrian and bicycle safety: many intersections lack compliant ramps or crosswalk refuges, and the corridor has gaps in shade trees—three southbound gaps exceed 800 feet and one gap is nearly 2,000 feet. The team said the project could add opportunities for about 200 new trees through public right-of-way work and coordinated plantings.

Public questions and responses During Q&A, residents raised recurring concerns about traffic delays, EMS response, construction impacts and how new crossings would affect vehicle flow. On traffic, Cherry said updated traffic counts collected in March showed volumes comparable to previous years and that signal‑timing and infrastructure upgrades should mitigate many delays. "We found traffic impacts on the Lynnway to be approximately 1 minute or less at most times of day and directions," he said. On transit benefits, MBTA staff noted buses currently experience 3–5 minute delays during peak periods and said the new lanes and higher frequencies being planned in a separate bus-network redesign aim to compress those delays and improve reliability.

Construction and next steps MBTA said the project is in concept‑development (roughly 15% design) and that detailed engineering will follow; they do not expect groundbreaking until roughly 2028. The agency said construction sequencing and coordination with the bridge project and nearby private builds remain to be worked out and that phasing will be developed to minimize regional disruption.

How to weigh in The MBTA encouraged attendees to complete the online survey and emailed comments to betterbusproject@mbta.com. Two more in‑person open houses are scheduled next week in Nahant and Marblehead, and the survey remains open for roughly two more weeks.

What to watch next: the MBTA will refine the four alternatives based on public feedback and produce more detailed traffic and right-of-way analyses ahead of the engineering phase.