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Commonwealth Avenue (Comm. Ave.) Phases 3, 3B, and 4 will receive no funding in the city’s fiscal year 2027 budget (July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027), which fell under the Public Works Engineering division. The project had sat in the city’s budget for several years and was designed to improve transit safety on the stretch of Comm. Ave. between Packard’s Corner and Warren/Kelton streets.

Comm. Ave. at Warren/Kelton Streets was the site of the driver of a car fatally hitting Marly Pineda, who was riding her bicycle, in 2010. 

51% of people in the neighborhood do not own a car, according to Allston’s 2025 neighborhood profile released in late April by the city planning department’s research division, noted Jerry Zhou, a recent graduate of Boston University (BU) and former president of BU’s Urbanism Club. 

“We don’t get around by driving, like us students get around by biking, we walk, we take a train. But, at the same time, the infrastructure around here is, like, built so much for cars,” said Zhou. “The Packard’s Corner intersection is, like, crazy. I think everyone can acknowledge that it’s so hard to cross, right?”

After over a decade in the city’s budget, the project is no longer being allocated any funding. However, in a presentation this past month, Public Works representatives claimed that the Comm. Ave. Phase 3/3B/4 will be merged with the project conducting a transit project coordination study with the Green Line on Comm. Ave, which will be receiving $5 million in FY27 funding. 

The Green Line is slated to be realigned to run in the middle of Comm. Ave. — instead of the northern side of Comm. Ave. — in 2030, and the Allston-Brighton Community Plan, which is expected to be released in summer 2026, is expected to have a long-term vision for the design of Comm. Ave. 

Two community meetings were held for the project over a decade ago in November 2014 and 2015. In the first meeting, members of the project team — including Zach Wassmouth of Boston Public Works, Jerry Friedman of consulting firm HDR and Deneen Crosby of architecture firm CSS — explained to neighbors that Phase 3 and 4 would make the site more:

1. Livable: Carriage roads could be used for community events, parklets, etc.
2. Walkable: Increase opportunities where pedestrians could cross
3. Multimodal: Improve connectivity for bicycle users, as there are no connected bicycle paths throughout the whole site
4. Green: Preserve and plant trees along Comm. Ave.
5. Sustainable: Reduce impervious areas, which could improve stormwater quality

In the same meeting, the project team also stated that design plans would be finalized in January 2017. Following the finalization, the project would be out for construction companies to bid and redesign.

Over a million dollars has been spent on initial designs for Comm. Ave. between Packard’s Corner and Warren/Kelton Streets. 

The proposed schedule never came to fruition. In March 2017, the project team released what would be its final presentation available for public comment. The project was still being listed last year in the Public Works Department Capital Budget, with $1.04 million having been spent on conducting studies. 

Allston residents like Sam Finston, who received over 140 signatures in a petition and collected people’s perspectives on crossing Comm. Ave., including at Warren Street and Packard’s Corner, find that with the merging of the projects, “we’re getting progress, but not enough and not soon enough.”

“If the city has a plan for the street, the T has a plan for the stations, and the T has a plan further down the line to redesign the whole street, right? Would that undo the plazas and the accessible stations? Would they rebuild it again?” asked Finston. “And that’s something that even they say they don’t know. There’s no solid timeline, because a lot is going to change in the process of this.”

“I feel like a lot of people kind of view it as almost tribalistic that this is for cyclists, this is for pedestrians, but safe streets benefit all of us,” said Levi Chen, current president of BU’s Urbanism Club. He received 185 signatures in a petition for protected bicycle lanes on another portion of Comm. Ave. “It’s not just about us as individuals, but people are going to be here in the future, whether that’s students or kids that grow up in Allston.” ■

Allstonia has been following how changes in budget proposals will affect the Allston-Brighton neighborhood.  What funding is being proposed to be allocated to Allston-Brighton? The city government is allocating $44.8 million to Allston-Brighton in its FY27 budget proposal, including funding for two different programming studies for the Jackson Mann Community Center, Brighton High School, parks, and more. Find out how much will be allocated to these projects. Read here. What funding is being proposed to be allocated to Allston-Brighton’s public schools? Several schools in Allston-Brighton will face cuts in staffing and funding after the Boston Schools Committee unanimously passed a $1.7 billion budget for Boston Public Schools in late March. Read here.