I'm pretty sure this was already in the works. They just didn't get there fast enough, but it's not a case of the decision being made because somebody was killed by a reckless driver.
I would assume the buffered bike lane would be removed and space allocated for the shared use path.
After the death last week I was reading all these articles saying that DCR or just the state in general dropped this reconstruction bomb on Cambridge and had never bothered to reach out to the city government in anyway whatsoever. Pretty abysmal. It’s definitely true that DCR does not get anywhere near enough funding, But I feel like Massachusetts, everybody is polarized between just hating the bureaucracy, and being a bureaucracy apologist arguing that [insert bureaucratic entity here] is underfunded. It’s pretty clear that for situations like DCR and the MBTA, there’s not enough money but there is also an astounding lack of accountability and good functioning that is not entirely excused by the lack of money. It would be nice if we had more critical executives and legislators.
This overpass should come down and Memorial Blvd should be boulevard-ized a la Casey Overpass and the Arborway in Forest Hills.
I think I agree. My hesitation is I kind of expect DCR to do a crap job without some public oversight. There are so many instances of them favoring car traffic above the safety of anyone else. Now it looks like they're building a bike lane in an really reactive way. There seems like a risk they are about to build something stupid and call it progress.
Yes this. This is a great opportunity to push back against the narrative of "we need someone to die in order for change to happen" and accelerate a full review of all the different chokepoints on the bike path, not just this one. The entire stretch past the BU bridge to River St is uncomfortably narrow and basically a sidewalk.
The intersection at JFK Street appears to be a disaster every time I've been there, so using that as a positive example doesn't....seem like one to me.
At the very least most of that section has wider paths either some more distance from the road or with guard rails or trees between the road and path. Should still have a separate protected bike path from the pedestrian path though just saying it's in a mildly better place than south of BU Bridge
www.cambridgema.gov
I've been going to most of the redesign meetings and this is the drum I beat everytime. As a regular pedestrian and cyclist on the SW Corridor, there are sections with high compliance to the separation and sections with low compliance and it is clear what features work where it does that should be duplicated elsewhere on the path on the sections where it doesn't work:
Honest question to the serious bikers: how effective are the "Peds keep right" signs (with visuals) that some mixed use corridors have posted every hundred meters or so? My limited experience is that these are a simple intervention, while not perfect, that can work wonders.
