Only hours after a University task force released a report recommending that Harvard’s future campus in Allston be centered around two science complexes, Harvard planners told a group of residents on Thursday that the University might add a new Charles River crossing to connect the new science facilities in Allston with those already in the Yard.

“The question for Harvard is, if current Harvard scientists work in the North Yard and if there [is] going to be science here, how do you get people back and forth?” said David McGregor, the managing partner of Cooper, Robertson & Partners, the firm hired to develop an institutional master plan for the new campus. McGregor added that the Longwood Medical Area was a third area that would need to be integrated.

“Scientists want to communicate with each other,” he said to the 40 residents gathered at the Honan Allston Branch Library for the Harvard-sponsored meeting on transportation. “Can we take a place—Allston—[that is] cut off by the River and tie it into the medical community?”

McGregor vetted a number of proposals to improve access to the Allston campus from Harvard Yard.

He said that it takes approximately 20 minutes to walk from the Yard to Barry’s Corner—the intersection of North Harvard Street and Western Avenue that will be at the heart of the new campus.

“Is that a distance people are willing to travel? How about in December? This isn’t a lot of fun,” McGregor said.

McGregor said that there might be a “need for another crossing” on the Charles River.

He said that already 1,000 people cross the Larz Anderson Bridge on JFK Street during its peak hour of the day.

“As you serve more people...there’s going to come a time when putting a shuttle between two points won’t work,” he said.

He said that Harvard could build a tunnel from Harvard Square to the Harvard football stadium under the River since tunnel infrastructure already exists as a result of the subway line.

A new bridge on the Charles River between the Larz Anderson Bridge and the Weeks Memorial Foot Bridge is also a possibility.

McGregor said that, although a tunnel would be more expensive to build, it would also be less visible than a bridge, so it might be easier to get the city’s approval for it.

He said that a third option was to transform the Weeks Memorial Foot Bridge—which he said was in need of repair—into a transit bridge. He said that the bridge could be changed so that it was open not only to pedestrians but also to the Harvard shuttle.

Harris S. Band, Harvard’s director of physical planning, said at the meeting that there was a possibility that public rapid transit would be able to connect Allston and the Longwood Medical Area.

There are a number of proposals that Harvard could take advantage of, including the Urban Ring Project, which would extend a rapid-transit bus system around Boston so that riders would not have to go to the center of the city and then travel out on the subway to reach their destinations.