Copley Connect

For ten days in June 2022, Copley Connect reimagined one block of Dartmouth Street. Back Bay's network affords a unique opportunity in Boston to route motor vehicles over a true redundant street grid. For the first time in its history, Copley Square was unified as a grand civic space, bookended by Boston Public Library's McKim Building and H.H. Richardson's Trinity Church.

Copley Connect served as the test, and the vehicle for neighborhood input on the future of this block of Dartmouth Street. How do we create engaging new public open space in the center of an eminently walkable neighborhood? Would motor vehicles or emergency services be significantly impacted? What do stakeholders think of the concept?

Please read on to learn about the process itself, feedback we heard from over one thousand people, and a technical analysis of road network conditions during the pilot.

While Dartmouth street is regularly used as a staging space for special events, this process explored its potential as a public open space for the first time. Building off adjacent capital projects, Copley Connect tested Dartmouth Street's potential to unify the public realm of Copley Square, while improving its connections to other civic spaces and open space networks.

Over the course of the 10-day pilot, the block was activated with numerous activities throughout the day.

• The Boston Public Library extended its indoor programs onto the street and set up craft workshops, story times, and yoga classes during the pilot
• Mobile Makers had pop-up workshops for design and skill-building, and created a space for young people to practice the basics of architecture, design, and planning
• Dancing activities, including Latin dance, Zumba, as well as music & movement
• Food trucks set up within the space, and people enjoyed their food on benches and tables set up on the street

Throughout the 10 days, daily visitorship during the week was the highest post school and post work (3pm -6pm). During the weekend, the daily visitorship was highest between 12pm and 5pm.

How was this data collected?

During the pilot, Goode Landscape Studio set up three outdoor cameras on light posts along Dartmouth Street to record the number of people visiting the space between 6am and 10pm over the course of the 9 days. The footage detected objects such as people, bicycles, motorcycles, and cars that went through the site, and allowed the analysis to cross-reference detection of visitors with the scheduled events, vendors, and programs.

Despite the use of articifial intelligence, there were still some limitations that resulted from this form of data collection. For example differences in contrasting light conditions, visual obstructions, or distance to the cameras may have resulted in missed or incorrect detections in number of visitors. This led to an undercounting of the true number of visitors, and therefore the total daily counts obtained lean on the conservative side.

Survey Results

To give everyone an opportunity to provide input, stakeholders who could not attend the Chat With A Planner meeting had the opportunity to fill out surveys in person and online. Over 1,000 surveys were collected, which gave further insights into how the community felt about the pilot, and their vision for the future of Copley Square.

Social Media

Many people took to social media to highlight the activities happening at Copley Connect, as well as expressing their opinions about the pilot program.

"Cities for people, not cars" - Tiktok user

"The first day I was a little annoyed driving home out of Back Bay…. But then I visited and had a blast. Worth the bit of renavigation on my drive back" - Tiktok user

"[The] city survives in the vehicle traffic coming through it. I know people like the idea of biking and walking, but not everyone can" - Tiktok user

"As someone who lives on Dartmouth 😅 they’d need to make another street two way" - Tiktok user

To understand traffic impacts during Copley Connect, we collected two types of data.

Intersection Counts

We conducted video counts at 13 intersections before and during Copley Connect. From the videos, we counted cars and people walking and biking.

Vehicle Travel Times

We used Google Maps to collect 24-hour drive time data for seven routes through Back Bay before, during, and after Copley Connect.

We collected data before, during, and after Copley Connect to understand which streets had changes in car traffic and drive times.

We scheduled data collection to best represent typical travel conditions. For intersection counts, standard practice is to collect traffic data on at least one weekday and one weekend day. We chose dates to limit influences from sporting and other large events, while trying to capture the highest typical volumes. For this reason, we collected intersection counts on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

For vehicle travel times, standard practice is to collect data continuously (every 15 minutes throughout the day), since these data come from cell phones that can be detected moving along our streets at any time.

During Copley Connect, car traffic decreased substantially north of the pilot block on Dartmouth Street. Dartmouth remained open to emergency vehicles. During the event, the data reflects that some drivers rerouted to Berkeley Street, Stuart Street, and Ring Road. Increases in car traffic on these streets were smaller than the decrease on Dartmouth Street. Some drivers may have selected routes outside the study area instead of driving through the Back Bay. (Thicker lines mean more cars counted.)

Copley Connect showed Dartmouth Street’s potential for stitching together two important civic spaces in way that supported walking, biking, rolling, and gathering. The Orange Line shutdown in August/September 2022 showed Dartmouth Street’s role in Copley Square serving as a transit hub during a time of critical need.

During Copley Connect, we made minimal changes to the surrounding transportation network. Additional measures that could mitigate impacts on driving times and improve travel for all modes:

• Provide more northbound travel options
• Retime signals
• Improve the existing bike lane
• Redesign Dartmouth Street south of Copley Square

A pdf version of Appendix 1 and 2 can be found  here .

MEDIAN WEEKDAY (MONDAY-FRIDAY) HOURLY TRAVEL TIME (MM:SS)

WEEKEND AVERAGE HOURLY TRAVEL TIME, SATURDAY & SUNDAY (MM:SS)

A pdf version of the survey responses can be found here:

•  Paper Survey Responses 
•  Online Survey Responses