City Awarded $200K+ For Bus Lane To Malden Station

MALDEN, MA — MassDOT awarded $858,502 in the latest round of Shared Streets & Spaces funding, including more than $200,000 for Malden. The program, launched on June 10, provides technical and funding assistance to help cities and towns conceive, design and implement tactical changes to curbs, streets, on-street parking spaces and off-street parking lots.

Malden received $211,714.80 to create a bus lane to Malden Station, closing gaps between bicycle lanes and providing spaces along downtown streets to support additional outdoor dining and commerce.

This quick-build grant program provides grants as small as $5,000 and as large as $300,000 for municipalities to quickly implement projects in support of public health, safe mobility – including safe walking and biking to school – and renewed commerce. These improvements can be temporary or pilots of potentially permanent changes to streets and sidewalks.

The state has awarded a total of $8.5 million to 99 projects in 85 communities, of which 60 percent are Environmental Justice communities.

Types of projects funded by the Shared Streets & Spaces program include:

• Shared Streets and Spaces: supporting increased rates of walking and/or biking by increasing safety and enabling social distancing.
• Outdoor Dining and Commerce: calming roadways, modifying sidewalks and streets, and/or repurposing on- or off-street parking to better support curbside/sidewalk/street retail and dining.
• Better Buses: supporting safer and more reliable bus transit, including expanded bus stops and lanes dedicated for bus travel, (extra scoring credit will be granted for dedicated bus lanes).
• Safe Routes to School: creating safe routes to schools and other programs for children and youth, including safer walking and biking networks with lowered vehicle speeds.