Casey Overpass

It's a very frustrating situation for many locals concerned about ongoing safety issues in the Jamaica Pond-to-Forest Hills corridor, Centre street from the VFW Parkway back to the Murray Circle Rotary and the Parkman Drive/Perkins intersection where a seemingly simple crosswalk has been long sought.

DCR held well-attended public meetings on all three topics in October 2015, promising updates by Spring of 2016. A year later the meeting reported above is all we have despite calls for more from residents, state reps and various stakeholder groups. Roy and the DCR certainly don't seem to be treating the matter with the same urgency as the locals.

I probably posted this upstream here (or maybe in the Bike Infra area) but here's the write-up I did about the October 2015 meeting:
Improving Multi-modal Safety and Access in the Emerald necklace Parkways

And just yesterday Peter Furth did an on camera walkthrough of some of the Worst Intersectiions in Boston on NBC Boston touching on the Jamaicaway at 3:20.
Furth on TV, Jamaicaway discussed at 3:20
 
clayville said:
And just yesterday Peter Furth did an on camera walkthrough of some of the Worst Intersectiions in Boston on NBC Boston touching on the Jamaicaway at 3:20.
Furth on TV, Jamaicaway discussed at 3:20
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But he didn't mention the most glaring issue there! There are no pedestrian signals across Bynner and Willow Pond (the path). There are only signals for crossing the Jway. Why?!
 
That intersection is bizarre/dangerous in several ways. Southbound vehicles have a longer green light (with no warning signage), so when northbound cars turning left get hung up in the intersection at the light change and assume oncoming cars are going to stop on the same sequence... and then turn left anyway.... BOOM!
 
clayville said:
That intersection is bizarre/dangerous in several ways. Southbound vehicles have a longer green light (with no warning signage), so when northbound cars turning left get hung up in the intersection at the light change and assume oncoming cars are going to stop on the same sequence... and then turn left anyway.... BOOM!
Click to expand...

Theres an MUTCD sign for that
 
jass said:
Theres an MUTCD sign for that
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w25-1.jpg
 
This project is finally entering its last few months of major construction. There is still work to be done on the new northern plaza and head house, the new upper busway is not yet operational (though the roof has been raised), and the station-side plaza has not *quite* been returned to the public. But the expectation is that those parts of the central project area will be done by the end of 2018. The eastern and western ends have been done for a while. There will also be some spillover landscape plantings in the spring of 2019, mainly in the northern plaza I believe.

Anyone who isn't local or who hasn't lived with all this daily for years now may be interested in my photos of the project progress, offered here in reverse-chronological order (I walk through the project area two or three times a week trying to spot the changes, an obsession drawing to a close).

Casey Arborway construction on Flickr
 
clayville said:
This project is finally entering its last few months of major construction. There is still work to be done on the new northern plaza and head house, the new upper busway is not yet operational (though the roof has been raised), and the station-side plaza has not *quite* been returned to the public. But the expectation is that those parts of the central project area will be done by the end of 2018. The eastern and western ends have been done for a while. There will also be some spillover landscape plantings in the spring of 2019, mainly in the northern plaza I believe.

Anyone who isn't local or who hasn't lived with all this daily for years now may be interested in my photos of the project progress, offered here in reverse-chronological order (I walk through the project area two or three times a week trying to spot the changes, an obsession drawing to a close).

Casey Arborway construction on Flickr
Click to expand...

Great pics. Wow, you haven't been on in a while...

I made the move from JP to Roslindale a few months ago. It's been cool to see this project happen, and I feel like it's really started to look finished in the last several weeks...
 
Time marches on... the Upper Busway is now fully functional and complete, the bike paths from Ukraine Way to the Arborway on the western side have their final paving, historic and way finding signage has been installed in both plazas and in Shea Square, the funky Stony Brook landscape history feature from the former LAZ lot to the bus yard (with its etched granite monoliths, stone riverbed and river birches) is now complete. Things not quite done include the new northern plaza head house (which may be just a few weeks away from becoming operational) and the sidewalk and landscaping near the shops opposite the Lower Busway. Dunno what I'm gonna do with myself now that there's little to monitor in the project area, but I've updated the images at the link above to include all this stuff through this week if anyone wants to have a look.
Clay
 
clayville said:
Time marches on... the Upper Busway is now fully functional and complete, the bike paths from Ukraine Way to the Arborway on the western side have their final paving, historic and way finding signage has been installed in both plazas and in Shea Square, the funky Stony Brook landscape history feature from the former LAZ lot to the bus yard (with its etched granite monoliths, stone riverbed and river birches) is now complete. Things not quite done include the new northern plaza head house (which may be just a few weeks away from becoming operational) and the sidewalk and landscaping near the shops opposite the Lower Busway. Dunno what I'm gonna do with myself now that there's little to monitor in the project area, but I've updated the images at the link above to include all this stuff through this week if anyone wants to have a look.
Clay
Click to expand...

Again, really nice updates. I walked through this area twice on Friday evening, with someone from out of town… Pedestrian experience is infinitely better to what it was. The one complaint I have is the amount of cement in the east/north plaza… I know there are some trees planted, but there aren’t that many — and that area is never going to have all that many people traversing it. Forest Hills, especially that area, really would feel a lot more defined and pleasant with as much green space as possible. Given that half of those trees will probably die over the next five years and another quarter of them will be stunted, they should’ve gone for more of a forest feel there.
 
[Thanks] I too wish the northern plaza felt a bit more green. Hard to predict the future, but a lot of the currently stark-looking plaza is permeable pavers or otherwise channelled to give the trees more chance to benefit from rain. Could just be wishful thinking, but hopefully these trees will grow in height and canopy in the coming years, and the groundcover beds will fill-in some. Importantly, there's a two-year warranty on all the plants beginning once Barletta finally turns over the keys later this year. Though the tunnel box below prevented large or deep-rooted trees from being spec'd in some parts of both plazas, the grassy knoll behind the bike repair station does seem pretty empty...
 
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