Longfellow Bridge update

Correct. The outbound bike lane and sidewalk are both wider than on the inbound side because of MassDOT's willingness to provide one rather than two outbound travel lanes. Advocates preferred and advocated for a similar configuration on the inbound side as well, but MassDOT was concerned about queuing during peak hour. (Which is too bad, because that extra inbound travel lane isn't really needed at all for about 22 hours out of the day.)
 
My recollection is that it wasn't just about queueing, that it was also about letting Mem Drive traffic onto the bridge without having to yield to traffic from Main St, except of course that somehow the Mem Drive cars need to not collide with the bikes...

At Charles Circle, we do get more throughput for a given limited amount of green time by having the multiple lanes, and the bridge was widened during the reconstruction, in spite of historic accuracy concerns, to make space for three lanes. However, that three lane segment only needs to be long enough to store the number of cars that can get through the light during a single green phase, and if the road narrows to one lane west of that, that shouldn't reduce throughput at Charles Circle at all.

https://twitter.com/Felicity_Lingle/status/991766274773569538 indicates that slightly more than 1/3 of the inbound traffic on the bridge was cyclists at one point, and I think that probably argues that allocating one of the three lanes to bicycles would be appropriate.

Do we have any photographic documentation of how far back the stopped car queue on the two lane segment of the bridge goes at its peak? Can we estimate how much farther it would go if it were narrowed to a one lane queue?

For traffic from Storrow Drive to the Longfellow bridge, building a new off ramp north of the Red Line that would loop through the parking lot to get that traffic to go through less of the signalized intersection might also help.
 
Joel N. Weber II said:
https://twitter.com/Felicity_Lingle/status/991766274773569538 indicates that slightly more than 1/3 of the inbound traffic on the bridge was cyclists at one point, and I think that probably argues that allocating one of the three lanes to bicycles would be appropriate.
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There is a bike counter on Broadway in front of the Marriott. This is anecdotal, but I travel through here almost daily and the daily totals shot up from around 1500 cyclists per day to 2000 cyclists per day right after the bridge fully reopened. Pretty impressive.

https://goo.gl/maps/xGf9JA92BSF2
 
sm89 said:
There is a bike counter on Broadway in front of the Marriott. This is anecdotal, but I travel through here almost daily and the daily totals shot up from around 1500 cyclists per day to 2000 cyclists per day right after the bridge fully reopened. Pretty impressive.

https://goo.gl/maps/xGf9JA92BSF2
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Nice! Though totals for the bridge will be slightly different—some of those bikes may be going to 3rd Street, while others that cross the bridge may be coming from Main St or Mem Drive. But I have no doubt the finished product is encouraging even more people to ride bikes across the bridge.

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Quasi-relatedly, they put a speed sign (25 mph limit) on the bridge. Anecdotally, almost every vehicle driver starts in the high 30s, drops down to 30, then speeds up again after they're out of range.

I think this will be very useful information supporting the claim that current road design encourages speeding, hopefully encouraging MassDOT to actually follow through with their expanded bike lane pilot that they've said they'll do. (Reduce the uphill portion to one motor vehicle lane, with a corresponding doubling of the bike lane through that portion which also doubles as an emergency responder lane.)
 
I certainly think that traffic regularly exceeding the posted speed limit justifies making traffic calming changes, and I certainly think that proposing solutions that also improve biking is great, and while I certainly prefer to end up with a fix that gives more space to bikes, in theory if we were focused just on traffic calming it might be possible to find a solution that wouldn't improve biking.

Do we have data on how speeds compare for the single automobile lane heading towards Cambridge vs the two lanes heading towards Boston? I'm under the impression that they were planning to have 11' lanes, and if that's the case it would be good to know whether the 11' lane to Cambridge has lead to appropriate speeds or whether narrowing to 10' would be better.

https://twitter.com/MattyCiii/status/1006504769933008896 claims 53 MPH has been observed.
 
I don't see a separate thread for the pedestrian bridge but it looks pretty close to done:

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Does anyone on the forum know why there is still a northbound speed restriction for the Red Line, just as it leaves Charles Street? It lasts almost until the crest of the bridge, but it isn't matched by one on the southbound side. Are they still doing work underneath?
 
Odd to me that after spending so much money, the bike lane looks like a temp retrofit.
 
Well ... in a sense a lot of boston bike lanes are seasonal, and do snow-storage duty in the winter. So in that sense yeah, its temporary...
 
jass said:
Odd to me that after spending so much money, the bike lane looks like a temp retrofit.
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That was exactly my thought -- how hard would it have been to put in a separation barrier that fit the architecture of the bridge?
 
Ive rode my bike on it, seems fine to me. Its not as aggressive a bike lane as say the Commercial st cycle track but it doesnt bother me
 
Suffolk 83 said:
Ive rode my bike on it, seems fine to me. Its not as aggressive a bike lane as say the Commercial st cycle track but it doesnt bother me
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Referring to all the talk about refurbishing the metal work, using the original stone, including the historic light structures and the fence and yada yada

And here are some $10 plastic poles from the Home Depot.
 
It is a retrofit. The original plans for the Longfellow simply had a striped bike lane with no physical separation. Only in the last year or so did MassDOT rethink those plans (after many years of advocates pressing them to.)
 
jass said:
Referring to all the talk about refurbishing the metal work, using the original stone, including the historic light structures and the fence and yada yada

And here are some $10 plastic poles from the Home Depot.
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Relatively inexpensive, and removable, replaceable for winter snow plowing, AKA practical.
 
True, but they were practical about literally nothing else on this project, so it sort of sticks out.
 
cden4 said:
It is a retrofit. The original plans for the Longfellow simply had a striped bike lane with no physical separation. Only in the last year or so did MassDOT rethink those plans (after many years of advocates pressing them to.)
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More robust facilities are a "new" thing here. They are finally catching on, but unfortunately we'll need to wait a little for the longer term projects that were designed years ago to finish before we start seeing quality designs from the get-go.
 
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