Commonwealth Avenue Improvement Project

LOL @ that bike lane. More proof of just how fucked things are in Boston. Everyone just watches their own back.
 
That is great to hear that they actually listened. Pretty funny stuff.
And wow I can't believe that "Bike lane" if that's what we can actually call it.
 
Nothing like mid December to lay down some new grass
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The crossing is so much easier now
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I have no clue what this is
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Wait, huh? What? I like what it looks like...but does it all work?
 
Safe, grassy...why even leave the suburbs?
 
Oh, come on now CZ! Just because it's urban doesn't mean it can't be safe. I'd say it has a lot more to do with the buildings on the side of the street and the street patterns, than what the median looks like, for urbanism to occur. Believe it or not, cities can have grass and not be urban.
 
kennedy said:
Wait, huh? What? I like what it looks like...but does it all work?
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The timing on some of the lights isn't perfect, as the pedestrian signals fall victim to the stupid Boston problem of saying dont walk when walking is safe, but besides that, its a huge improvement.

Its easier to get to the buses, its much, much safer to cross in the wide portion, it looks better, and the cars have a better idea of where to be.

The real test of course, will be when the idiot red sox drivers pull in and decide the its ok to block the intersection at all times.
 
Having walked and driven through a few times recently, hrm. Very happy when lines went down on the pavement.

Reserving judgement on all else until first wet snow or heavy downpour. Curb cuts for ADA access rather than the humps. Not every location should get a hump (on some streets it would be a prohibitive retardation of traffic flow) but at this spot, it would have complimented the other traffic calming measures.

All those little pits are going to fill up with mess and then pedestrians will walk illegally and disabled people will not be able to cross easily.

Very happy this years long mess is coming to a close.
 
The Comm Ave mall is grassy--does that make it any less urban?
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The mall is designed like a formal urban park. There's an allee of trees and pedestrian path, plus monuments. Here we just have strips of grass and some plantlings (without much room to grow much larger) in between traffic lanes, far more median than mall. Not to mention the soil beds, which reek of suburban landscaping. Boston never seems to tire of importing Medfield's tackiest landscape architecture.
 
Hmm...I guess I've never seen a suburban area have such a small median (or really, any median at all-Marblehead never had them), with 4+ story buildings on the side and thousands of cars coming through each day.

Really, aren't medians a very urban construction? The increased amount of pedestrians need a spot to stop when crossing the street, since it can be very dangerous due to the multitudes of cars. And Paris' tree lined boulevards, SF has them, Boston has them...it is definitely urban.

While we debate on urbanism-where has ablarc gone?
 
Tree lined boulevards Paris has, grassy knolls and soil banks in their midst not so much. And yes, medians are a great place for pedestrians to stop - when they're built of asphalt and concrete. Traffic engineers generally include these lawns where they want to discourage crossers.

And yes, of course Kenmore Square is "urban" in the sense that it has nondiscontinuous facades and heavy traffic. I'm criticizing the attempt to appeal to suburban aesthetics by importing a bit of pasture - it looks like parking lot landscaping. It hasn't and can't make Kendall suburban, but it's attempted to make it more suburban than it was before.

I'm not even a fan of the safety improvements, to be honest. There's always been something peculiarly "Boston" about traffic chaos, and I think it incentivizes drivers to slow down and look around. In fact, cities are beginning to experiment with removing lane markers as a traffic calming measure just as Boston adds them in earnest.
 
czsz said:
I'm not even a fan of the safety improvements, to be honest. There's always been something peculiarly "Boston" about traffic chaos, and I think it incentivizes drivers to slow down and look around. In fact, cities are beginning to experiment with removing lane markers as a traffic calming measure just as Boston adds them in earnest.
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Yup.
 
czsz said:
...nondiscontinuous facades...
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couldnt you have just said...continuous, and saved my trying to sort out your prefii?

the grass is interrupted with a pedestrian walkway, which i assume traffic engineers use to encourage pedestrians, but then again it could be a false cognate.

you say here you like bostons chaotic drivers...just wait for the sox to start up again. a median isnt going to stop drivers from being crazy, itll only add a few years to pedestrians lives. and a place to hop on the bus-which is good, remember, we like mass transit.
 
The plural is "prefices", but yeah, point taken.

The problem with the median - even if interrupted by walkway - is that it channels pedestrians rather than catering to their needs. The grassy parts say "stay away, you can't cross here, cars have exclusive dominion over this stretch of road". Contrast this to Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Porter, where there is a concrete sidewalk median that actually does help pedestrians and facilitates their crossing at every point. The Mass. Ave. configuration says "pedestrians rule, they can go anywhere they want, provided they're cautious". The Kenmore layout takes a paternalist approach and assumes pedestrians in a city need to be funnelled as stringently as cars.

As for the drivers, I don't like the fact that they're crazy. I like the fact that the traffic layout of the square was so fear-inducing that they stopped being crazy and slowed the hell down. And don't let's get started on the bus station design, which literally turns its back to half the square.
 
czsz said:
The mall is designed like a formal urban park. There's an allee of trees and pedestrian path, plus monuments. Here we just have strips of grass and some plantings (without much room to grow much larger) in between traffic lanes, far more median than mall. Not to mention the soil beds, which reek of suburban landscaping. Boston never seems to tire of importing Medfield's tackiest landscape architecture.
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The landscaping could be better--point proven. Otherwise, the sidewalks have been widened at the expense of the streets to enhance the pedestrian environment; the crosswalks are widened and labeled to handle the large amounts of foot traffic through the square; the new bus terminal has an underground connection to the subway, three clearly labeled crosswalks and pedestrian path; the aesthetic improvements (streetlights, brick sidewalks, trees, etc) make the square a more visually pleasing atmosphere to inhabit.

The swaths of grass in medians could have been, and still can be, stone or brick. Are they so horrible they make the improvements to the square otherwise overwhelmingly surburban?

Not by a long shot.
 
czsz said:
The plural is "prefices", but yeah, point taken.

The problem with the median - even if interrupted by walkway - is that it channels pedestrians rather than catering to their needs. The grassy parts say "stay away, you can't cross here, cars have exclusive dominion over this stretch of road". Contrast this to Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Porter, where there is a concrete sidewalk median that actually does help pedestrians and facilitates their crossing at every point. The Mass. Ave. configuration says "pedestrians rule, they can go anywhere they want, provided they're cautious". The Kenmore layout takes a paternalist approach and assumes pedestrians in a city need to be funnelled as stringently as cars.

As for the drivers, I don't like the fact that they're crazy. I like the fact that the traffic layout of the square was so fear-inducing that they stopped being crazy and slowed the hell down. And don't let's get started on the bus station design, which literally turns its back to half the square.
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Does mass ave have 7 distinct traffic patterns? Look at what pedestrians crossing the width had to deal with

Outbound:
Straight to comm ave
Leftish to beacon
Left to brookline ave
Left to u turn

Inbound:
Comme ave into square
beacon st into square
brookline ave into square

+ bus movements.
 
Walked through Kenmore Sq today (no pics) and was very impressed. The expanded sidewalks really make a difference and the bus shelter which I've criticized really isn't as bad as I thought, though the weather was nice today so I'm not sure how it holds up in a storm.

I didn't check the station so I have no comments on that.

One thing I have a problem with is the bike lanes seem to be an afterthought since the parking spaces are not big enough to park a car unless it is snug up against the curb (and there are no piles of snow everywhere). The bike lanes on Comm Ave seem to work well enough but they really feel squeezed in in the Sq.

Also I moved this thread into Transit since it really belongs here.
 
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