General Infrastructure

#bancars said:
I know they aren't as expansive reconstructions as what is happening on Tremont, but the Cambridge has really impressed me with the speed at which it has reconstructed places like Hampshire and Brattle in recent years, with solid new protected cycle infra. Boston seems to either install new bike infra without fixing the underlying surface (rendering the new lanes in states ranging from uncomfortable to borderline dangerous) or take what seems like years to do the full street reconstructions (e.g. Comm, Tremont).
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Quickbuilds in Cambridge are great, and they're really well done. That being said, from a technical/design perspective, they're basically identical to what Boston has done on Cambridge St NB, South Huntington, etc--just flex posts and paint, no digging or curb reconstruction. And despite this, Cambridge has been able to build a much more substantial network in the same amount of time.

The issue is less about the technical constraints and more about political will and avoiding projects getting bogged down in meetings, review, stakeholder complaints, etc (just see Charles Street from the circle to the common--perfect candidate and yet locked up in complaints from business owners along the street.

The Cambridge process, and it's Cycling Safety Ordinance, force the city to build and take action rather than delaying over and over, because it has strict timelines and success criteria. If Boston is serious about this, they must consider a similar strategy.
 
grand_junction said:
Quickbuilds in Cambridge are great, and they're really well done. That being said, from a technical/design perspective, they're basically identical to what Boston has done on Cambridge St NB, South Huntington, etc--just flex posts and paint, no digging or curb reconstruction. And despite this, Cambridge has been able to build a much more substantial network in the same amount of time.

The issue is less about the technical constraints and more about political will and avoiding projects getting bogged down in meetings, review, stakeholder complaints, etc (just see Charles Street from the circle to the common--perfect candidate and yet locked up in complaints from business owners along the street.

The Cambridge process, and it's Cycling Safety Ordinance, force the city to build and take action rather than delaying over and over, because it has strict timelines and success criteria. If Boston is serious about this, they must consider a similar strategy.
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I will say that Cambridge isn't immune to problems in its quickbuilds. Look at Mass Ave, from Arlington to Harvard. The first segment from Alewife Brook to Dudley was "quick-built" in Fall 2021. At the time, the rest was to follow briskly in 2022 with more quick builds, with it complete by end of year. Instead, in April 2022 after much pushback they adopted a "partial construction" (eliminating the center median) approach - by now, construction is tentatively expected to start in Q3 2024 and be finished by Q4 2026.

That said, the constructed approach seems to be a much better solution maximizing the available cross section, even if it'll take longer.
 
grand_junction said:
Quickbuilds in Cambridge are great, and they're really well done. That being said, from a technical/design perspective, they're basically identical to what Boston has done on Cambridge St NB, South Huntington, etc--just flex posts and paint, no digging or curb reconstruction. And despite this, Cambridge has been able to build a much more substantial network in the same amount of time.

The issue is less about the technical constraints and more about political will and avoiding projects getting bogged down in meetings, review, stakeholder complaints, etc (just see Charles Street from the circle to the common--perfect candidate and yet locked up in complaints from business owners along the street.

The Cambridge process, and it's Cycling Safety Ordinance, force the city to build and take action rather than delaying over and over, because it has strict timelines and success criteria. If Boston is serious about this, they must consider a similar strategy.
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Good points for sure--the CSO has been super effective at speeding up the process in laying out these new protected lanes. What's great is that they come along in conjunction with repavings, so you don't get stuff like Cambridge St in Boston which feels very dangerous to ride due to the horrendous paving quality on a downhill.
 
#bancars said:
Good points for sure--the CSO has been super effective at speeding up the process in laying out these new protected lanes. What's great is that they come along in conjunction with repavings, so you don't get stuff like Cambridge St in Boston which feels very dangerous to ride due to the horrendous paving quality on a downhill.
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Oh, I fully agree on paving, that's an enormous oversight on so many of the projects in Boston
 
Stlin said:
I will say that Cambridge isn't immune to problems in its quickbuilds. Look at Mass Ave, from Arlington to Harvard. The first segment from Alewife Brook to Dudley was "quick-built" in Fall 2021. At the time, the rest was to follow briskly in 2022 with more quick builds, with it complete by end of year. Instead, in April 2022 after much pushback they adopted a "partial construction" (eliminating the center median) approach - by now, construction is tentatively expected to start in Q3 2024 and be finished by Q4 2026.

That said, the constructed approach seems to be a much better solution maximizing the available cross section, even if it'll take longer.
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Yeah, also the Cambridge Main St quick build was recently delayed. It was supposed to be done this year, but has been pushed to next year, probably the Spring. Not sure what's causing that. Still Cambridge is doing really well.

I agree with all these criticisms of Boston's bike lanes, but I'm going to shoehorn in some optimism here. I moved back to the Boston area last year after living elsewhere for about seven years. From when I used to live here, I remember exactly one protected bike lane. It was in Cambridge for a block and it didn't connect to anything. There weren't even many painted bike gutters in the region. I biked everywhere, and it was basically all in traffic. Imagine my surprised moving back last year and finding long stretches of protected bike lanes, even on the Boston side of the river. The vastly improved biking was the biggest shock moving back*. So y'all are right that Boston is moving slow and not always building high quality. But Boston has also come a long way. Both are true. And the improvements in Boston would probably seem ever greater if Cambridge and Somerville weren't doing even better.


*other than, obviously, the total collapse of the T. You win some, you lose some.
 
DCR has posted 75% design for Birmingham Parkway: https://www.mass.gov/doc/birmingham-parkway-reconstruction-meeting-presentation-2222024/download

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bigeman312 said:
What a huge improvement over what's there now.
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As someone who frequently bikes and sometimes drives this stretch, I totally agree, overall this will be way better. One point and two questions.

Point: I do wish they would put in more bocce courts. I think it would be pretty cool to have maybe a half dozen (with maybe some additional parking spaces) - it would create more of an attraction with minimal encroachment on the existing open space.

Question 1: Maybe at cross-purposes with my point, but: are there any traffic safety issues presented by those parking spaces? I imagine one would have to parallel park into them once they start to fill up, which seems dicey to do even in what I'm guessing will be a reduced-speed condition compared to existing.

Question 2: At the western terminus of the proposed bike path (by the existing IHOP), does anyone know whether there's any kind of discussion or plan to somehow get across or over Soldiers Field Road? It would be pretty amazing to connect to the river path and the path on N. Beacon St. on the Watertown side.
 
Here's the presentation from the RT 2 Study. Lots of expansions of turn lanes at the existing intersections, improvements to acceleration and deceleration lanes, nothing concrete about the Concord Rotary. Notably, came out too close to news of the prison closing to address that, but it flags the entire thing as a conceptual plan only. Given that Secretary Tibbits-Nutt and the Highway Administrator both commute through the rotary daily, I'd imagine any real improvements will have a decent champion.

 
Some interesting ideas. I feel like it’s a “how long have you lived here” to remember when Hosmer and School St in Acton allowed you to cross Route 2.
 
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crispino said:
Question 2: At the western terminus of the proposed bike path (by the existing IHOP), does anyone know whether there's any kind of discussion or plan to somehow get across or over Soldiers Field Road? It would be pretty amazing to connect to the river path and the path on N. Beacon St. on the Watertown side.
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There's other studies/proposals out there for the circular disaster to the west, the drawings for this seem to pretty clearly indicate that they're keeping the scope of this project out of the intersection.

I do agree that building that path if the intersection work isn't coming at the same time is going to be....problematic.
 
Stlin said:
Here's the presentation from the RT 2 Study. Lots of expansions of turn lanes at the existing intersections, improvements to acceleration and deceleration lanes, nothing concrete about the Concord Rotary. Notably, came out too close to news of the prison closing to address that, but it flags the entire thing as a conceptual plan only. Given that Secretary Tibbits-Nutt and the Highway Administrator both commute through the rotary daily, I'd imagine any real improvements will have a decent champion.

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I never understood why Taylor and Homer weren’t made into overpasses. Also, and this could be a pet theory, but when looking at the Route 2 Grade Separation option, the language beneath the renders says “Environmental, ROW impacts,” and then looking at the At-Grade alternatives, they mention all of this “bike lane” and “sidewalk” incentives for the At-Grade. Judging by the language used in the At-Grade and Grade Separation option, I feel like MassDOT is pushing for the At-Grade. The language in the presentation tells me that MassDOT won’t rest until Route 2 is one big boulevard.
 
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kingofsheeba said:
I never understood why Taylor and Homer weren’t made into overpasses. Also, and this could be a pet theory, but when looking at the Route 2 Grade Separation option, the language beneath the renders says “Environmental, ROW impacts,” and then looking at the At-Grade alternatives, they mention all of this “bike lane” and “sidewalk” incentives for the At-Grade. Judging by the language used in the At-Grade and Grade Separation option, I feel like MassDOT is pushing for the At-Grade. The language in the presentation tells me that MassDOT won’t rest until Route 2 is one big boulevard.
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Because no matter how shitty and horrible the road or how few reasons there are to be on it, there are just hoards of would-be cyclists and pedestrians, dying for the right infrastructure to walk and bike on. We live in an era where everything has to be about everything. Why cant we have a transportation department that realizes that sometimes, some roads actually need to be upgraded to fulfill their only purpose, which, sorry, just so happens to be auto traffic. It's not like this entire area isn't otherwise a phenomenal area to bike in. Like, literally everywhere around here is great. Nobody is ever going to grab their Bianchi and head to Concord to ride on Rt 2. And we shouldn't have government officials pushing for that to happen, either.
 
FK4 said:
Because no matter how shitty and horrible the road or how few reasons there are to be on it, there are just hoards of would-be cyclists and pedestrians, dying for the right infrastructure to walk and bike on. We live in an era where everything has to be about everything. Why cant we have a transportation department that realizes that sometimes, some roads actually need to be upgraded to fulfill their only purpose, which, sorry, just so happens to be auto traffic. It's not like this entire area isn't otherwise a phenomenal area to bike in. Like, literally everywhere around here is great. Nobody is ever going to grab their Bianchi and head to Concord to ride on Rt 2. And we shouldn't have government officials pushing for that to happen, either.
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I don't see any plans in here to run bike lanes along Route 2. The proposed bike lanes are only for cross streets, and only touch these projects because they would run through existing signalized intersections. That would allow people in Concord to bike along, say, Sudbury Road, and have some space to go through Route 2 at the existing light. That seems very reasonable to me.

Every other part of these plans looks like they're making Route 2 more highways-like. Sections are being expanded to 3 lanes each direction. Longer acceleration/deceleration lanes. They're considering converting the Concord Rotary to an overpass, even though this is likely 5 times more expensive than a simple, signalized intersection. These are all incremental upgrades for the benefit of auto traffic.

(There was a recent discussion of some of this, spread across a couple of threads, but mostly starting here. FWIW, I remain skeptical it's worth it to grade-separate the rotary. Again, that could be 5 times the cost of a simple intersection, for nowhere near 5 times the benefit because of all the other signalized intersections nearby on Route 2. Eliminating all the other at-grade intersections would be at least a $1B project, and I don't think we should be spending that much of our limited transportation budget on new highways. But in that thread, people thoughtfully disagree with me)

Stlin said:
Here's the presentation from the RT 2 Study. Lots of expansions of turn lanes at the existing intersections, improvements to acceleration and deceleration lanes, nothing concrete about the Concord Rotary. Notably, came out too close to news of the prison closing to address that, but it flags the entire thing as a conceptual plan only. Given that Secretary Tibbits-Nutt and the Highway Administrator both commute through the rotary daily, I'd imagine any real improvements will have a decent champion.

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Those slides are a little thin on detail, but they mention some recent(?) study. Any idea where I can find that? I don't see it on the State's website.
 
FK4 said:
Because no matter how shitty and horrible the road or how few reasons there are to be on it, there are just hoards of would-be cyclists and pedestrians, dying for the right infrastructure to walk and bike on.
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Ha ha, that is ironic, because when I was in my 20s, I'd bike up Route 2 from Cambridge to Acton just because I liked the area. Of course that was before the Minuteman and other bike trails existed.
 
Equilibria said:
DCR has posted 75% design for Birmingham Parkway:
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Since it's already at 75% design and DCR isn't MassDOT, I know it won't happen, but I swear the western spur of Birmingham should be totally eliminated and replaced with a WB pike ramp. It should take a lot of load off the disasters that are Galen St and Watertown Square. Soldiers Field Rd already serves local motor vehicle traffic.
 
W-4 said:
Since it's already at 75% design and DCR isn't MassDOT, I know it won't happen, but I swear the western spur of Birmingham should be totally eliminated and replaced with a WB pike ramp. It should take a lot of load off the disasters that are Galen St and Watertown Square. Soldiers Field Rd already serves local motor vehicle traffic.
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Yup, though my vision actually has the Pike itself using the current Birmingham alignment to space it out from the rail line enough to accommodate a full set of ramps, but same idea.

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