Orange Line Analysis​
Ruggles-Forest Hills
​
The orange line is an integral part of the transit network of the Greater Boston area and one of the busiest lines in the system. It has 20 stations divided into three corridor segments as follows:
-
North Segment (6 Stations): Oak Grove, Malden Centre, Wellington, Assembly Square, Sullivan Square, and Community College.
-
Central Segment (8 Stations): North Station, Haymarket, State, Downtown Crossing, Chinatown, Tufts Medical Center, Back Bay, and Massachusetts Ave.
-
Southern Segment (6 Stations): Ruggles, Roxbury Crossing, Jackson Square, Stony Brook, Green Street, and Forest Hills.
The study area is the Southern segment. The two main characteristics of the land use within the 0.5-mile zone around the transit stations are:
-
Land use is predominantly 75-82% tax-exempt owned by entities like city, state, and federal government and educational or medical institutions; and
-
There is very little vacant residential land (less than 10%) in the study area.
These characteristics place competing claims on the land in the study area. There is somewhat of a limitation on the physical capacity in the zones to locate affordable housing while at the same time providing an advantage in the form of the amenity of open space. The seeming limitation of tax exempt ownership can also be seen as a creative opportunity to make better, creative use of underutilized land. Four out of the six nodes have 75-82% land that does not contribute or pays little in the way of taxes in the areas nearest to public transportation.
Once tax exempt parcels are removed from consideration, the next highest share of land use is residential and in many areas in the study area density is low to medium density.
Average equitable development score determined by framework per block group.
Physical Opportunity
The best opportunities in the zone, as represented by high positive use disparity and inefficient use, are large parcels of government-owned land. Some parcels are adjacent to each other, one is on its own, but a group of them are in a neighborhood of relatively greater social disadvantage compared to the rest of the Roxbury Crossing zone, as measured by housing cost-burden for renters and homeowners, percentage of low-income households, percentage of renters, and population density.
The 0.5-mile zone around the Roxbury Crossing station has a total of 1,000,254 square feet of opportunity space.
Opportunity around the station: Inefficient Land Use
The land use in the zone was analyzed by looking at the differences between parcel data, building data, and zoning subdistrict information. There are three ways in which land is used inefficiently around the Roxbury Crossing transit station. First, the way land is actually used does not always match the allowed use for each parcel. Usually, the actual use is equal to or less than the maximum permitted use. Second, the zoning subdistrict use is not always matched by the way the land is used. The zoning might allow higher density than actual use. The third inefficiency is tax exempt property, especially government-owned land that is vacant or underutilized. The first two instances exhibit use disparity, the third, underutilization. These cases represent possibilities within the zone.
Physical Capacity around station
