Commonwealth Avenue Improvement Project

Kenmore will be a disaster of heaved stones, missing bricks and sunken asphalt in 7 months. All that money and inconvenience.....
 
The inconvenience was absolutely worth the wait. It is a much safer square for both pedestrians and vehicles, it is asthetically pleasing, it can finally handle the large volumes of Fenway crowds with expanded sidewalks, worth the wait...
 
Inlaid rubber crosswalks, along the lines of rail crossings, featuring some industrial strength embedded Scotchlite would probably work best. Of course that would require some thinking on the designers part.
 
I don't get the use of red brick here. It's annoying enough as an omnipresent remnant of some late-70s attempt to approximate the "colonial" feel (was it ever even historically used for Boston sidewalks?) in the center of the city or in places like Harvard Square. In Kenmore, where the architecture trends early 20th century, it looks and feels totally out of place.

Robert Campbell used to spew all kinds of invective against all the tame redbrick architecture going up in Boston. Does no one feel the same way about it all over the sidewalks?

Not to mention how awful it is to walk on when tree roots start to grow underneath...
 
czsz said:
I don't get the use of red brick here. It's annoying enough as an omnipresent remnant of some late-70s attempt to approximate the "colonial" feel (was it ever even historically used for Boston sidewalks?) in the center of the city or in places like Harvard Square. In Kenmore, where the architecture trends early 20th century, it looks and feels totally out of place.

Robert Campbell used to spew all kinds of invective against all the tame redbrick architecture going up in Boston. Does no one feel the same way about it all over the sidewalks?
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It looks nice.

I really don't think a brick walk is tied to the colonial period or any other.
 
bdurden said:
The inconvenience was absolutely worth the wait. It is a much safer square for both pedestrians and vehicles, it is asthetically pleasing, it can finally handle the large volumes of Fenway crowds with expanded sidewalks, worth the wait...
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Just to be clear, my issue is with material, not flow.

And my experience tells me this brick-asphalt-granite calliope will be a mess next spring. After several years of promises to be installed with appropriate materials, we'll see a fix in 2019. Just about the time the MBTA decides to haul away the carcas of the dead whale in the center of Kenmore Sq., forcing a complete recurrance of what we've experienced for the last 6 years.

:-/
 
The net is full of complaints about brick sidewalks:

From http://goodspeedupdate.com/2009/2389 (good local urban planning blog!)

Sidewalk slips are commonplace, yet illustrates the complex ethics of contemporary urban planning. The material that contributed to these falls, brick, has many well-known flaws including a low friction coefficient when wet. However in the convoluted calculus of sidewalk materials, the grip of material surface inevitably falls behind a host of other factors.

From the point of view of pedestrians, there?s not much to like about brick sidewalks. When wet they?re often slippery. Bricks easily become uneven or loose due to tree roots or uneven soil, complicating shoveling and leading to tripping. The uneven surface can be treacherous for bikers, strollers, or the impaired. Some even point out they can easily become projectiles in the hands of miscreants.
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There was even a whole Boston Globe magazine story devoted to the dangers of brick sidewalks:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/04/10/terra_infirma/

According to Hart, Boston's love affair with the brick is fl awed. "Given the city's historic character, there is a tendency to opt for sidewalk surfaces that appear historic, even when the material used, frequently rough brick, has no historical validity," he says. "Rough bricks cause falls, are unpleasant for many people, and cause extreme vibrations when rolled across."
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After some brief research: Brick sidewalks definitely weren't used in the colonial period, but there was evidence they were around by the late 19th century. They were abandoned when a better material (concrete) came along, but re-installed for "charm" in the 80s.
 
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bbfen said:
...forcing a complete recurrance of what we've experienced for the last 6 years.
:-/
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Thereby creating job security for all companies involved with the never ending construction in Kenmore. The construction industry in Boston lives to feed itself, not to construct anything of lasting value or quality.

Sweeping generalization: done.
 
Well we could use interlocking engineered stone slabs on stainless steel clips for sidewalks. Thus allowing for repairs to utilities without cutting anything up and adjusting soil or other underlayment for trees when needed. But that would require a significant up front investment and kill all the politically connected business in the current pothole shuffle.
 
Brick sidewalks were used in the South End 19th/20th Century.

I would have preferred granite sidewalks, but the brick is nice all the same.
 
6pm Friday rush hour.
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This is why itll be reduced to one lane and given a bike lane.
 
Is there a reason they need to keep the underpass at all?
 
dshoost88 said:
Perfect--so when I screw up my gears or crank riding back uphill, I'll be right next to Back Bay Bicycles to give my bike a tune-up. :)
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This is why you should be carrying a decent set of tools in a saddlebag.
 
czsz said:
Is there a reason they need to keep the underpass at all?
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Filling it in would be a lot more expensive than striping in a bike lane. But I do wonder, if it gets so little use, why was it built at all?
 
I think it was built at the same time as the Grant Gately Square (Mass Ave @ Huntington Ave) underpass as part of a larger WPA make work program.
 
That one was built at the same time as the Huntington Ave subway, I think, and it gets a lot more traffic.
 
Wouldnt this one have also been built when the subway was extended to kenmore?
 
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