Starts & Stops
The Boston Globe
For future of the Longfellow, task force crunching the numbers
By Eric Moskowitz
The Longfellow Bridge is many things to many people ? historic landmark, visual icon, engineering marvel, symbol of neglect, and centerpiece of the state?s $3 billion Accelerated Bridge Program. But just how many people use it?
Some would have you believe that the bridge carries 49,500 automobiles a day ? a figure that appears in Wikipedia, in a 2008 press release from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation (at the time, the bridge?s owner and caretaker), and in multiple news articles over the past few years.
In fact, the bridge carries half that many vehicles each weekday, just under 26,000, a figure that drops by a few thousand more when weekends are included. That is the combined traffic for vehicles headed to Cambridge and Boston. But I?m betting that someone once mistook it for the number of vehicles in one direction and doubled it, and that others saw the figure and perpetuated it.
Vehicle traffic on the bridge fell almost every year over the past decade, down from an average weekday high of nearly 31,000 in 2000, according to Central Transportation Planning Staff data.
The state estimates that each vehicle on the bridge carries an average of 1.22 people.
By comparison, about 100,000 riders cross the Longfellow each day on the Red Line, according to the MBTA, making it first and foremost a public transit bridge.
Full-day pedestrian and bicycle estimates are harder to come by but probably number a few thousand.
The figures were presented earlier this summer to the Longfellow task force, convened by the Department of Transportation and scheduled to meet through October.
The task force ? which includes transportation officials, civic leaders, representatives of nearby institutions, and leaders of bike, pedestrian, and environmental advocacy groups ? is discussing how to balance transit, roadway, bike, and pedestrian needs during the next six years of bridge reconstruction and in the bridge?s final form.
As previously reported, the state ? as part of a $3 billion program to repair or replace hundreds of aging bridges ? is in the process of spending $300 million or more to shore up the 107-year-old Longfellow for generations to come, a once-a-century investment that naturally has stirred debate.
The bridge for years has been configured to carry two vehicle lanes in each direction, separated by the Red Line tracks, with the Boston-bound road surface widening to three lanes at the Charles Circle approach. The bike paths and sidewalks that flank the roadways are narrow and incomplete. The state initially suggested keeping the same layout with some improvements for bikers and pedestrians, but a network of advocacy groups has called for more dramatic changes, wanting fewer vehicle lanes and wider, more inviting promenades and bike lanes.
It is a debate over how to reconcile the demands of today?s car-centric society with the goals of encouraging more biking, walking, and public transit ? goals that have recently been written into state and federal transportation law and policy to promote fitness and quality of life and reduce carbon emissions.
State officials have said they want to make the decision based on facts and analysis, rather than emotional appeals or past practice. The usage figures are part of that, and they include a count of everyone crossing the bridge in both directions in one hour of peak traffic during a recent evening rush: 10,202 Red Line riders; 2,622 vehicle drivers and passengers; 326 pedestrians; and 167 bicyclists.
