Allston Crossing Planned

Only hours after a University task force released a report recommending that Harvard’s future campus in Allston be centered around two science complexes, Harvard planners told a group of residents on Thursday that the University might add a new Charles River crossing to connect the new science facilities in Allston with those already in the Yard.

“The question for Harvard is, if current Harvard scientists work in the North Yard and if there [is] going to be science here, how do you get people back and forth?” said David McGregor, the managing partner of Cooper, Robertson & Partners, the firm hired to develop an institutional master plan for the new campus. McGregor added that the Longwood Medical Area was a third area that would need to be integrated.

“Scientists want to communicate with each other,” he said to the 40 residents gathered at the Honan Allston Branch Library for the Harvard-sponsored meeting on transportation. “Can we take a place—Allston—[that is] cut off by the River and tie it into the medical community?”

McGregor vetted a number of proposals to improve access to the Allston campus from Harvard Yard.

He said that it takes approximately 20 minutes to walk from the Yard to Barry’s Corner—the intersection of North Harvard Street and Western Avenue that will be at the heart of the new campus.

“Is that a distance people are willing to travel? How about in December? This isn’t a lot of fun,” McGregor said.

McGregor said that there might be a “need for another crossing” on the Charles River.

He said that already 1,000 people cross the Larz Anderson Bridge on JFK Street during its peak hour of the day.

“As you serve more people...there’s going to come a time when putting a shuttle between two points won’t work,” he said.

He said that Harvard could build a tunnel from Harvard Square to the Harvard football stadium under the River since tunnel infrastructure already exists as a result of the subway line.

A new bridge on the Charles River between the Larz Anderson Bridge and the Weeks Memorial Foot Bridge is also a possibility.

McGregor said that, although a tunnel would be more expensive to build, it would also be less visible than a bridge, so it might be easier to get the city’s approval for it.

He said that a third option was to transform the Weeks Memorial Foot Bridge—which he said was in need of repair—into a transit bridge. He said that the bridge could be changed so that it was open not only to pedestrians but also to the Harvard shuttle.

Harris S. Band, Harvard’s director of physical planning, said at the meeting that there was a possibility that public rapid transit would be able to connect Allston and the Longwood Medical Area.

There are a number of proposals that Harvard could take advantage of, including the Urban Ring Project, which would extend a rapid-transit bus system around Boston so that riders would not have to go to the center of the city and then travel out on the subway to reach their destinations.

Band said that plans do not include an Urban Ring stop in Allston, but that Harvard had requested that the city consider extending it there.

He said that Harvard also wanted to construct a stop on the Framingham/Worcester commuter rail line in Allston. Band said that he hoped that the commuter rail, the Urban Ring, and the Harvard shuttle could all stop at the same point.

One resident at the meeting told Band that Harvard would not succeed with an extension of public transit to Allston since the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) would not be able to afford it.

But Band said that although Harvard had not agreed to fund an extension, “inventive financing” was possible. “We’re talking to them and they’re not stonewalling us yet,” he said.

One resident questioned another plan presented at the meeting to build pedestrian and bike pathways on North Harvard Street in front of the Harvard athletic complex.

McGregor said that it was an opportunity to “make the walk from Barry’s Corner to the bridge very pleasing.”

But Debby Giovanditto, a leader of the tenants at the Charlesview Apartment complex at Barry’s Corner, objected to any plan that would take away parking spaces from the street that were used by apartment tenants.

Thursday’s meeting was the third one that Harvard has held since a preliminary plan detailing the community’s priorities in Allston was released in December.

Harvard will use that plan—known as the North Allston Strategic Framework for Planning—to prepare an institutional master plan for Harvard’s future Allston campus. Last month, Kathy Spiegelman, Harvard’s top planner, said that Harvard hoped to release a draft of the master plan by the end of this academic year.

In an interview after Thursday’s meeting—which was designed to gather resident input for the master plan—Band said that he was not sure if that timetable was still on track. He said the University hoped to hold another meeting within the next month and present “more concrete options.”

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu.