Grounding the McGrath

Teban54 said:
If the Rutherford alignment does play out, I'm worried about Gilmore Bridge, though. It's not part of the redesign, and looks like it gets a lot of traffic.
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Gilmore Bridge has only two traffic lanes each direction, and with bus lanes will only have one traffic lane each direction. Seems a bit tight.
 
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LexSEDotVille said:
I was able to attend the meeting. A big question that arose for me was: why fill the existing right-of-way with more road infrastructure (medians, verges, parallel frontage/local access roads, and long driveway access cuts) just cause there's the space to?

A lot of what was shown seems to aim to keep the existing width of the corridor, doing little to stitch back together the urban fabric it tore through upon construction. Why not cede some of the remaining space after the road diet + bike lanes + bus infra. to development that's better in scale with the scale of the McGrath corridor? Upzone abutters and yield some of the corridor to create space for development. Development along the corridor (of a denser variety) would help shield the surrounding quiet neighborhoods from traffic noise and direct exhaust, while better framing the wide Blvd., and would help stich together the surrounding neighborhoods.

The presenters highlighted the new 'green space' that was being created, but... it's still going to be alongside or in the middle of regular McGrath traffic volume and speeds...

Here are the main 'design' slides I captured from the meeting:
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This is an excellent point and makes perfect sense.
It's gonna take 10 years for the trees to mature, till they do this will be a huge expanse with lots of under used green space.
 
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This project is a worthy example for the discussion about down gauging in the Crazy Highway Pitches thread. Specifically, could it be made local, rather than a cut-through for folks on 93? What knock-on changes would be required to make it work? What further optimizations would a down gauging unlock?
 
RandomWalk said:
This project is a worthy example for the discussion about down gauging in the Crazy Highway Pitches thread. Specifically, could it be made local, rather than a cut-through for folks on 93? What knock-on changes would be required to make it work? What further optimizations would a down gauging unlock?
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The current grounding proposal is for 2 lanes in each direction, plus left turn lanes. That could be reduced to one lane each way, but IMO that would be too much of a reduction. McGrath and O'Brien Hwys are major arterial routes connecting many other major thoroughfares. A traffic modeling run of the roadway system would be needed to see what a 1 lane (each direction) McGrath Hwy would do to traffic in the larger area.
 
PPT is up: https://www.mass.gov/doc/massdot-meeting-presentation-somerville-mcgrath-hwy-21324/download

It has renders in addition to the layouts:

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So basically it'd be like Broadway from Magoun Square through to Sullivan. But with dedicated bike-lanes.

Super over-wide, not especially pedestrian friendly or convivial-feeling, but WAY WAY better than the current McGrath.
 
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After revisiting the slides, I'm especially disappointed by the lack of bus infrastructure along the stretch of McGrath from Washington St > Somerville Ave/Medford St. This stretch will have 3 bus routes terminating/looping, two of them being "T" routes (87 (likely to stop looping), T47, and T96). There are no bus lanes along this stretch of McGrath, no clear layover space, and relatively small/short bus stops (aren't some of the "T" routes supposed to be bendy?)

The same can be said about the redesign of the Washington St bus infrastructure (along which 4 busses will run - 85, T47, T96, T109): small stop, no bus lanes heading east. The way this stretch of Wash. backs up now gives me little hope for efficient/high bus throughput in this new plan.

So, despite the indicated move of the SL6 to Rutherford, this stretch really demands major improvements to bus infrastructure!

Also, what does purple indicate in this plan? Mountable curb? Woonerf?

(edit: 87 loop elim)

Images for context:
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Made a quick mockup of what I previously suggested - returning some of the width of McGrath back to Somerville to be rezoned to better stitch together the neighborhoods, improve ped experience, and reduce the excess right-of-way width. (Open to suggestions, and very rough)

(would probably flip bus lane on W side of Washington - not depicted, E side of McGrath could be further narrowed)
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It’s a little hard to tell if you are reworking the lanes or simply replacing the bike lanes with the rezoned land around Washington Street.

I do support the removal of the frontage roads. That’s excessive pavement, which nets little improvement in the urban fabric.
 
Interesting conversation - which points need rezoning? Immediately altered section is south of the truss where a giant blvd is a strange change.

These properties just south of the truss bridge are terribly sited.
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What a mess. There's a park that could be extended on the East. There are underutilized commercial parcels on the West. Extend the commercial, and transition the east to a larger park?
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Oh lord. I suppose you shift the boulevard east and could add a row of Res/Commercial on the Southbound Mcgrath?
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I'm all for bike lanes but dont really understand why you'd have both directions on each side running parallel to the community path.
One direction each way with good green separation from the road seems fine.
I also wonder if theres any way to reduce the size of the intersection at washington and McGrath.
 
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Ruairi said:
I'm all for bike lanes but dont really understand why you'd have both directions on each side running parallel to the community path.
One direction each way with good green separation from the road seems fine.
I also wonder if theres any way to reduce the size of the intersection at washington and McGrath.
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The community path is good for long distance travel but less useful for local trips, and bike lane redundancy is never a bad thing, imo.
 
Re-gauging the road to 1 through lane, maybe 1 bus lane, and 1 curb separated bike lane in each direction, and yielding the rest to development would be the daring approach to the problem. It wouldn’t happen because it would be conceding that McGrath is not a highway anymore, and that is failure in the eyes of the DOT.
 
RandomWalk said:
It’s a little hard to tell if you are reworking the lanes or simply replacing the bike lanes with the rezoned land around Washington Street.

I do support the removal of the frontage roads. That’s excessive pavement, which nets little improvement in the urban fabric.
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The main thing I altered was the frontage roads - SUPER excessive in my opinion. Most of the state proposal was left intact in the illustration above, I just shifted the location of some of the proposed infrastructure to eliminate the frontage roads. Travel lanes, sidewalks, verges, separated bike lanes, medians (could see eliminating) are all about the same (state proposed) size. I did add a bus lane to McGrath S of Wash.
 
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LexSEDotVille said:
The main thing I altered was the frontage roads - SUPER excessive in my opinion. Most of the state proposal was left intact in the illustration above, I just shifted the location of some of the proposed infrastructure to eliminate the frontage roads. Travel lanes, sidewalks, verges, separated bike lanes, medians (could see eliminating) are all about the same (state proposed) size. I did add a bus lane to McGrath S of Wash.
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As someone who lives a block off McGrath, we definitely need more of those access lanes. I want them at the section between Medford and Washington st. It would keep the noise of faster moving traffic further away from homes and smaller businesses.

If anything I want the boulevard roadway moved even more to the east. There are much fewer homes right up on the edge of the property line on that aide and more businesses. (Also, screw Herb Chambers.)
 
lainpimicaja said:
Totally agree that there should be more land-use planning and re-zoning as a part of the corridor redesign. I think this is one of the areas where it's helpful to look at maps from before the highway tore through the city. There's the remnants of a much more human-scaled urban fabric lying latent beneath the highway: https://atlascope.org/#/view:share$...maptiler-streets$overlay:ark:/76611/al8d3azt7

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Bring back “Central Square”.
 
as02143 said:
As someone who lives a block off McGrath, we definitely need more of those access lanes. I want them at the section between Medford and Washington st. It would keep the noise of faster moving traffic further away from homes and smaller businesses.

If anything I want the boulevard roadway moved even more to the east. There are much fewer homes right up on the edge of the property line on that aide and more businesses. (Also, screw Herb Chambers.)
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I live a block off McGrath and want it moved even more to the west :)
I'm with you on Herb Chambers tho.
Cant believe they gave him permission to build his commercial fleet warehouse on the doorstep of a future T station.
Helicoptering himself in and out.
Brings nothing to the area other than people test driving luxury cars past people who could never afford them.
 
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Ruairi said:
I live a block off McGrath and want it moved even more to the west :)
I'm with you on Herb Chambers tho.
Cant believe they gave him permission to build his commercial fleet warehouse on the doorstep of a future T station.
Helicoptering himself in and out.
Brings nothing to the area other than people test driving luxury cars past people who could never afford them.
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Maybe you're an east-sider?

I'm just so tired of all the late night noise from the people racing up to the overpass. Every foot to the east helps create better conditions for trees and also reduces how much noise makes it to my home. :|
 
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