At a virtual White Stadium workshop for Dorchester residents on April 10, city officials and consultants summarized plans in progress for transportation of spectators to professional women’s soccer games—and what these could mean for other Franklin Park visitors and residents in surrounding neighborhoods.
The proposals include multiple shuttles coming from Fields Corner and its T station and other sites. The plans also call for new resident parking restrictions to keep spectators from driving and parking on nearby residential streets.
Using satellite parking and shuttles, transportation experts said during the highly anticipated meeting that they believe they can minimize game-day traffic significantly.
Project consultant Brian Beisel, associate principal and manager of Transportation Permitting at Howard Stein Hudson, explained: “A big part of this for people that are new to the process is that there is no on-site parking, so anyone who wants to drive will be parking at off-site facilities, and then we will shuttle them into the area.”
Under a plan backed by Mayor Wu, Boston Unity Soccer Partners (BUSP) would contribute $50 million to modernize the facility, originally built for Boston Public Schools (BPS) athletic programs in 1945. The redeveloped facility would still be used by local students, but the stadium, with its capacity expanded to 11,000 seats, would also be used by the new Boston franchise in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), with an expected 20 games a year from the spring through mid-fall.
Beisel identified possible pick-up locations for shuttles south and west of Boston, as well near Route I-93 to the north and east arriving at Franklin Park along Columbia Road. “But there are facilities in this area,” he added, “that will make it efficient for people that are driving to just use these shuttles, instead of driving into the neighborhood and seeing if they can get lucky and find a space that's not going to be intended for them to be using.”
The satellite parking would be made available with purchase of tickets for NWSL games. To provide access for 6,500 spectators, there would be 25 shuttles per hour, for two hours before a game and two hours after. There would also be shuttles from the Orange Line and from the Red Line, at Fields Corner Station. Planners expect 49 shuttle trips to the stadium from the east in Dorchester, but with more trips coming from areas west of Franklin Park.
Beisel said the Orange Line stops at Green Street and Stony Brook were within “walking distance” of White Stadium, a 0.7-mile interval he equated with going from a parked vehicle to a seat at Gillette Stadium. “So, it's certainly not as pleasant and as nice a walk as it is from Green Street to the stadium,” he acknowledged, “but this is what people do when they go to large events, and they're used to it, and it's not out of the ordinary.”
Beisel estimated that 40 percent of the soccer spectators at White Stadium would use shuttle parking, with an equal share using public transportation, and 5-10 percent making trips on bikes. There would also be a secured area for personal bikes that could be retrieved after a game, as well as a valet service for Bluebikes.
For fans using rideshare trips, plans call for a drop-off and pick-up area near Seaver Street and Humboldt Avenue. That location would also be used for navigation systems, to keep rideshare trips away from other locations.
Along with a ban on spectator parking in Franklin Park, there would be restrictions and enforcement on streets in some of the surrounding neighborhoods: from the Southwest Corridor to the west, all the way to Warren Street in Roxbury and Washington Street north of Erie Street in Dorchester.
The city’s deputy chief of streets for transportation, Nick Gove, said there would be an exemption to the game-day parking ban in those areas for vehicles with resident stickers, and that residents could also apply for game-day permits.
“Additionally,” he noted, “we're proposing a new program which will allow visitors to obtain a placard or a hang tag, regardless of vehicle ownership. So long as they live on a street in the White Stadium walk area, we're proposing one visitor permit per household issued annually.”
Because resident stickers are available only for vehicles registered in the city, the president of the Hancock Street Civic Association, Marti Glynn, told the project team that the neighborhood parking restrictions would be a “huge problem” for students from other states or other residents.

“They register their cars outside of the city to avoid insurance costs and excise tax,” she said. “How are you going to deal with them in terms of resident parking?”
Gove said there could be more relief for neighborhood residents with vehicles from the expected end of the moratorium on expansion of the city’s resident parking program. “Our intent with this proposal is not to be punitive to residents and their visitors,” he said. “We're really trying to make an accommodation there.”
Dorchester resident Barry Lawton said he expects some spectators to look to park vehicles along American Legion Highway, which leads from Blue Hill Avenue into Roslindale.
Gove said parking enforcement within Franklin Park would be handled by the Boston Police and Park Rangers, with additional help from “traffic ambassadors.” But Glynn questioned the ability to distinguish soccer spectators from drivers who would still be allowed to use spaces within the park for visiting the Franklin Park Zoo or playing golf.
“The zoo is open from July 1 through the end of October, from 9 a.m. till 10:30 at night because of their bright lights exhibit,” Glynn said. “It's extremely popular when that exhibit's going on. There are cars in every parking lot in the zoo, and there are cars all up and down Circuit Drive, I would say, to the end of the golf course, for sure.”
In its January 31 comments filed for the project’s Article 80 review by the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA), the Franklin Park Coalition raised concerns about the possible effect of spectators on access for other visitors. “We are concerned that the soccer games will have a negative impact on the many other community uses of the park during weekends when park use is highest,” the group wrote. “Indeed, we fear that park festivals will have to move elsewhere (a major loss for surrounding communities) and that general usership of the park will decline substantially on game days.”

According to the BPDA, the city’s lease with BUSP will place a priority on use of Franklin Park for city and community events, including the Caribbean Kiddie Carnival, BAMS Fest, Puerto Rican Festival, the BAA Half Marathon, and Boston Public Schools (BPS) graduations. The next highest priority would be for BPS athletics and NWSL games.

The coalition also raised concerns about arrangements for transportation and parking. “We hope no approvals are given,” the group urged in its comment, “until a comprehensive traffic circulation plan and neighborhood parking restrictions program are developed and vetted.”

In a comment letter on the project from earlier this year, Zoo New England’s president & CEO, John Linehan, called for BUSP to do a study of peak traffic conditions on Saturdays in the summer, when Franklin Park is also used for special events. He said that studies of traffic impact should extend to roadways surrounding Franklin Park. Linehan did not oppose the project, but he concluded that, “because of the potential for “significant negative impacts in the area,” approval by the BPDA would be premature without further study.

During the April 10 workshop, Beisel said the current plan would continue to undergo changes, even after the project is completed and soccer games are underway. “We're going to look at this on a game-to-game basis, especially in the very beginning,” he said, “to make sure we're getting this to work as well as possible and finding any issues and rectifying it as quickly as we can.”

Upcoming Meetings on White Stadium: