Home > Articles by: Sindhu Bharadwaj

Sindhu Bharadwaj Graduate Fellow, MassINC

Sindhu is a Graduate Fellow working with MassINC’s Gateway Cities Initiative research team. Her role focuses on strategic communications around transit-oriented development in urban areas across the Boston metro region.

Sindhu is currently an MS student in Environmental Planning and Justice at the University of Michigan. She is a Rackham Masters Award recipient and part of the Environmental Fellows Program’s 2017 cohort. Prior to graduate school, Sindhu worked in digital media at Spitfire Strategies, a communications agency based in Washington, DC. She also worked as a digital organizer with the Power Shift Network, a grassroots climate justice organization.

Originally from the Chicago area, Sindhu is a graduate of New York University with a BA in Politics and Cultural Studies.

ARTICLES By Sindhu Bharadwaj

Connecting rail riders from the station to jobs in the suburbs

Can shuttle services give Gateway City residents access to more jobs?

As we described in a previous post, job growth outside of the Boston core has overwhelmingly occurred at highway interchanges with limited access to public transportation. This phenomenon is partially attributable to the MBTA commuter rail’s hub-and-spoke model. By design, the system operates with one-directional aim—funneling suburban residents to jobs in Boston and Cambridge. Increasingly,

Increasing access to economic opportunity with affordable transit

A growing number of transit agencies discount fares for low-income riders

Rising rents are pushing low-income transit-dependent households awy from strong public transit and out to Gateway Cities, where service is less frequent. These residents have just two costly options to get to back to better paying jobs in Boston: driving or taking the commuter rail. Compared to the subway, with its flat fare of $2.25

Four things we learned about Gateway City travel this summer

Understanding mobility patterns

The Googles of this world have loads of travel data to understand mobility patterns at minute detail. While most researchers and planners never get a good look at these real-time data, we do have two interesting sources of information that can help us learn more about how people travel across the state. One resource is

Juicing regional economic development by improving labor mobility

A look at Gateway City residents earning the Boston wage premium

A startling percentage of households migrating from Boston to the Gateway Cities are low-income and transit-dependent. For these residents, finding living wage work may now hinge on whether they can make the commute back to Boston. Data from the American Community Survey show that Gateway City residents who are able to find and get to

The push and pull of transit in Boston and the Gateway Cities

A look at gentrification forces on transit-dependent households

The trend of low- and middle-income households being priced out of urban centers with robust public transit networks is a reality in major cities all over the country. Despite its ills, the MBTA system is exceptional, which means Boston is no exception. Migration data from the American Community Survey show that more than one-quarter of

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