Mass Ave Reconstruction

As of last week, there was no visible sign of work from Newmarket Sq to Symphony Hall.

Don't know anything about bike lanes in Kenmore.
 
I thought they were starting at Albany st and working up, but the only work I found was around the Mass Ave station, and only sidewalk/curb stuff.

Nothing here
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This is newish
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Oh looky
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Soon mass ave will connect to other bike facilities
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Curb goes in for parking...yet parking is allowed on both sides
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Ah, heres what itll look like....just like comm ave
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What kills me is that there already is an artery around Mass Ave, Melnea Cass Blvd, that can take the traffic. Mass Ave doesn't need to be butchered like this.
 
Mass. Ave. is much more appropriate than Melnea Cass for bike lanes. I'm looking forward to them.
 
Ron Newman said:
Mass. Ave. is much more appropriate than Melnea Cass for bike lanes. I'm looking forward to them.
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Oh totally, but it would make more sense to take out a travel lane and widen the sidewalks. The traffic can easily flow around Mass Ave.
 
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This must have been designed by an alumnus of the Rose Kennedy Greenway School of Landscape Architecture.
 
That's what remains of Chester Park. The right thing to do would be to remove the added lanes of Mass. Ave. from the middle of the park, and diffuse through traffic into the little-used surrounding grid streets.
 
Ron, you've got to be joking!! What purpose would be served by reconnecting Chester Park?? And you think there's enough roads on either side to carry the loads of cars heading into and out of the city? I don't agree.

I think the new Chester Square parks are quite nice.
 
Because the old Chester Square was a thing of great beauty (look around for old photos) and deserves to be re-created. Ramming Mass. Ave. through the middle of it was just as much a mistake as Storrow Drive or the elevated Central Artery. Let the traffic go elsewhere -- Worcester St, Springfield St, Camden St, Lenox St, Northampton St, etc.

From earlier post:

Chester Square. What was, and could be again.

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From the description:

Street-level view northeast of Chester Square, located between Tremont Street to the west-northwest and Shawmut Avenue to the east-southeast. Houses lining the northeast side of Chester Square are included in the background of the photograph. Lanterns adorn the roofs of these houses. The fountain and street light located in the park at the center of Chester Square are visible in the center of the photograph. A wrought-iron fence encircles the park.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Oh totally, but it would make more sense to take out a travel lane and widen the sidewalks. The traffic can easily flow around Mass Ave.
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I highly disagree with that. If you go to Northeastern like me, you can see how congested Mass Ave can be during rush hour. The congestion often backs up intersecting streets such a Huntington Ave which backs up other smaller streets like St. Stephen all the way up to the MFA.
 
KentXie said:
I highly disagree with that. If you go to Northeastern like me, you can see how congested Mass Ave can be during rush hour. The congestion often backs up intersecting streets such a Huntington Ave which backs up other smaller streets like St. Stephen all the way up to the MFA.
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Taking out a traffic lane would lessen the traffic. It is very counter intuitive but it works where there is space to drive around (Cass Blvd). Traffic engineers would never admit that it works because it goes against everything they've ever known about traffic but it is proven.

A perfect example of this is the new Times Sq pedestrian plazas which closed off traffic to Broadway in Times Sq for people. It has been a massive success (anyone who every says the contrary has not seen it in person) and traffic easily flows down 7th Ave or around Times Sq. The same could be done here.
 
^^That's quite easy, if you live in a gridded planned city. Where in NYC, there's always a way to get around a bottleneck by driving an extra block down and go down that intersection, the same thing cannot be said with Boston. There are little to no alternative. While trying to get to Cambridge and onto Memorial Drive from Northeastern while avoiding the traffic backup of Mass Ave., I had to go through a maze of small streets and then make my way into the Fens in order to get into Storrow Drive and then onto Memorial Drive.
 
But what I'm saying is that of all the places in Boston where this is possible Mass Ave is high on the list. It would be much harder in, say, the North End. It would be possible with Mass Ave, or at least in the South End, to divert traffic (between Huntington Ave and the Harvard Bridge it would probably have to stay 4 lanes). Parking might have to be taken off a couple of side streets and new connections made (I'm thinking Ruggles St through Northeaster/WIT would have to be expanded to 4 lanes. The MBTA or city has an easement on the land which is why there is a large setback on that stretch) but the traffic would be better distributed.
 
Van...I think you're dead wrong about rerouting traffic...Mass Ave is already gridlock most of the day. Rerouting is a dead end IMO.
 
sidewalks said:
Van...I think you're dead wrong about rerouting traffic...Mass Ave is already gridlock most of the day. Rerouting is a dead end IMO.
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Cutting capacity is counter-intuitive but it works when done right. It works the same way as adding capacity increases traffic (which is also counter-intuitive).
 
I understand that...but there needs to be SOME crosstown axis through the city. The fact is that mass ave is a major thoroughfare from Cambridge. Travel through that corridor is inherently limited by the bridges over the river and the access to 93. How would drivers coming from cambridge continue their route to the BMC area? Make everyone take a right onto huntington and then a left onto a widened ruggles? Sounds like a disaster to me.
 
You're forgetting that many of the cross streets through the South End hit dead ends at the SW Corridor Park and the various anti-urban housing projects. It doesn't help either that many of the through streets alternate one way status to prevent direct traffic in an attempt to slow drivers. Mass ave is busy in part because of it being the easiest and most direct connection thanks to BTD, BHA, and BRA meddling.
 
Lurker said:
You're forgetting that many of the cross streets through the South End hit dead ends at the SW Corridor Park and the various anti-urban housing projects. It doesn't help either that many of the through streets alternate one way status to prevent direct traffic in an attempt to slow drivers. Mass ave is busy in part because of it being the easiest and most direct connection thanks to BTD, BHA, and BRA meddling.
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See, the "experts" set it up that way and now we have the mess we do. Time for a new thinking about urbanism in the South End.
 
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