I do agree it's a complicated intersection. I looked at some of Harvard's blueprints of that intersection held-over from the construction of Wasserstein Hall building and a move of several houses Harvard moved by flatbed. That configuration of the Red Line tunnel/Bus ramp made that junction at the convergence of Mass. Ave & Cambridge/Peabody Streets pretty bad.
On the Garden St. side, the metered parking could be converted to ramp. The Boston Common configuration gives up one traffic lane as the ramp.
I can't even list the number of ways this is a bad, bad idea. Boston Common garage is set up for easy ramp access by a continuous street grid. Charles St. Ext. is a logical straight shot out of the South End that flows pretty smooth, has highway access, and is on a well-spaced block that does a pretty decent job spreading out traffic going around the block. You can't simply template that idea and apply it everywhere. Just because there's a city green with air rights space that happens to be encircled on 4 sides by streets doesn't mean the traffic flows in any way conducive to parking. Cambridge Common has that center-of-the-universe intersection and a fucked-up array of one-ways. Who cares if you take a parking lane on Garden for a ramp...you still have to cross FOUR lanes of traffic and a busway to get there from Broadway/Cambridge or Mass Ave. NB (with all the weaving problems around the underpass to boot). And if pedestrians are crossing the crosswalk at that unsignaled intersection, the traffic on those Garden turn lanes backs up past the center-of-universe light, leaving a clusterfuck of cars dangerously spread through the middle of the road...at times with the queue un-emptied when the Mass Ave. SB light goes green. I used to live up Garden past Walden; there's many times where that queue backup from the center-of-universe forced me to bail on the turn and go through the Square. Well...go through the Square and you have to do do Brattle to Mason to get back to Garden. And then how are you going to make the would-be ramp into this garage...Mason and Waterhouse are so close you introduce another severe weaving problem onto your would-be garage ramp right by an extremely busy Sheraton Commander crosswalk and the bus turnout.
Second convoluted bail-out: Take the wrong turn lane from the center-of-universe light--which happens frequently because the weaving is so compressed at the Mass Ave. NB + Broadway/Cambridge merge--and there is no place on Mass Ave. NB to turn around until quiet residential Shepard St. Lefts onto Waterhouse are prohibited. Linnean, the next halfway-thoroughfare across, is a half-mile away and has no left-turn lane from Mass Ave. You can't reverse at Porter at all.
How is anyone not immediately familiar with the streets in Harvard Sq. going to navigate this garage if they have to go around the block even once? Boston Common garage...just take 4 rights around the Common and you're back. Either way around the horn at Cambridge Common is a convoluted, zero margin-for-error weaving nightmare that takes you way out of the way in nothing at all resembling a natural geometrically-shaped street grid. I'm not sure there's any amount of signage you could post that'll make that logical for an out-of-towner to follow. And you want to install a giant car sink in the middle of that for primary purpose of bringing significantly more out-of-towners into the Square with their cars???
Boston Common ≠ Cambridge Common. Not even close.
And this is before you even get to asking the citizens of Cambridge whether they would tolerate this. Or Harvard...they have their limits too as to how unnavigable they want their campus to get. They don't exactly benefit by having the Square utterly, totally paralyzed and made twice as dangerous around the largely unimprovable weaving.
lol. Alewife fills up daily. Even turning cars away. I see some patch work being done on the garage at Alewife now too. Looks like corrosion repairs?
Although residents could get a bone out of it. Some underground parking at night.
Then expand Alewife. Or build that badly-needed 128 park-and-ride on the Fitchburg Line to take some load off Alewife. Or build a parking sink at Route 16 GLX station to take some load off Alewife. ANYTHING with direct public transit access out by the state highways is better than nuking Harvard Square to bring that carmageddon inbound.
Harvard charges their employees over $1200 a year to park on the Stadium side and I believe someone told me there's a waiting list for there and further down the road at junction of N. Harvard / Western Ave. When that parking lot is taken off line in July to level those buildings parking is going to be even worse in the square as those cars will be forced to look elsewhere.
Then put the onus on Harvard to do better on the Allston side. You make this sound like it's an either/or: make the Square, which in no way shape or form can handle it, suffer for Harvard's intransigence at offering up enough on its open land where the street grid and Storrow access
can handle it. That is not Cambridge's problem.
