Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

Justin7 said:
Pretty picture, terrible design.
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As a non-biker, and more importantly, a non-street designer, I'm curious, in this picture, are there any simple changes to be made to make the design safe and workable for everyone, drivers, pedestrians, and bikers alike?
 
atlantaden said:
As a non-biker, and more importantly, a non-street designer, I'm curious, in this picture, are there any simple changes to be made to make the design safe and workable for everyone, drivers, pedestrians, and bikers alike?
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Simplest: swap the bike lane and parking lane for a parking-protected bike lane. In addition to minimizing surprise "doorings", this reduces incidences of double parking in the bike lane, which cause people on bikes to swerve into general traffic if they're aggressive riders, ride on the sidewalk for safety if they're cautious riders, or not ride at all.
 
34f34f said:
Simplest: swap the bike lane and parking lane for a parking-protected bike lane. In addition to minimizing surprise "doorings", this reduces incidences of double parking in the bike lane, which cause people on bikes to swerve into general traffic if they're aggressive riders, ride on the sidewalk for safety if they're cautious riders, or not ride at all.
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This solution plays out at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. While it seems better, doorings still happen, and pedestrians get hit pretty often because they think that once they have passed the car layer, they are safe.

There is no good solution other than for people to become more and more aware.

In my years of riding in Cambridge I have seen major routes like Hampshire street become safer and safer simply because of awareness of the drivers, riders, and pedestrians.
 
atlantaden said:
As a non-biker, and more importantly, a non-street designer, I'm curious, in this picture, are there any simple changes to be made to make the design safe and workable for everyone, drivers, pedestrians, and bikers alike?
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Push the parking out, create a cycle track between the sidewalk and parking, remove the median entirely (it is anti-urban and only encourages cars to drive faster), and use that added space to create a bike track buffer/wider bike lanes/wider sidewalks (whichever makes the most sense for this particular space).
 
I didn't notice this at first but why is traffic going the wrong way in that render? Are we in England now? I find the whole picture very confusing. Are all the people to right walking in the middle of the street, or aren't they?
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
No excuse for the sidewalk. I'd imagine the median riders are doing so because they want to turn left and are too nervous or stupid to ride between travel lanes.

As an aside, my #1 issue with bike share programs like HubWay is the number of damn fools who don't know how to ride a bike in the city insisting on doing so; riding the clumsy clunkers on sidewalks, or in traffic while not seeming to know what the rules are, or even how to competently break the rules. I see reckless cyclers on commuter bikes or road bikes, but they also clearly know what they're doing - kinda like many city drivers. The tourists and others are just ignorant of how reckless/lawless they're being.
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In terms of serious crashes Hubway riders have an impeccable record over the years. Google "Boston hubway crash" and what you will find is a speeding driver from Quincy who crashed into and destroyed a hubway station and then drove off.

I'll take an ignorant tourist on a bike over an ignorant tourist driving a car any day of the week. The former may be occasionally annoying but the latter is the one who may kill me.
 
DZH22 said:
I didn't notice this at first but why is traffic going the wrong way in that render? Are we in England now? I find the whole picture very confusing. Are all the people to right walking in the middle of the street, or aren't they?
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It is not. The pedestrians on the right are walking on an expanded sidewalk. The outbound direction on Seaport Blvd is to the far left. Inbound to the city is what is in the center. It's confusing because to the far right of the sidewalk, it looks like cars are parked, but it looks like they just left the parked cars from the original ROW picture accidentally.

Overall, it's a *TERRIBLE* render, but it's all we have for the Seaport Blvd design in the official documents.
 
cca said:
This solution plays out at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. While it seems better, doorings still happen, and pedestrians get hit pretty often because they think that once they have passed the car layer, they are safe.
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So, in this solution, which seems very reasonable, the pedestrians who get hit by bikers in the bike lane are the ones jay-walking since they're crossing not on a designated crosswalk. And I agree, pedestrians need to be more aware. I learned very quickly on my first visit to Amsterdam a few summers ago not to walk in the bike lanes! ;) And I was never so impressed with how bikers are totally integrated with motor vehicles and pedestrians. Works so beautifully!
 
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Crossing my fingers they widen the median and tighten the traffic lanes. Or make the bike lanes bigger to narrow the car lanes.
 
BKNA said:
the BPDA graphic from the scoping review includes parking protected bike lanes.
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Good catch. It actually does. You can barely see them because of the crappy JPEG they put on the slide.

Do you happen to know of/have a higher quality version of that streetscape plan?
 
cjbski said:
Crossing my fingers they widen the median and tighten the traffic lanes. Or make the bike lanes bigger to narrow the car lanes.
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Wait, why do people want a widened median? Wouldn't it be better to scrap the median, add protected bikes lanes & a BRT lane & trees along the sidewalk?
 
Have you ever driven through here at rush hour or really any hour? So many cars, Ubers etc pullover on the side, double park, that it turns into a one land road from Shake Shack down past PWC. Yes, enforcement is an issue, but the fact is, there is always going to be double parking and uber pickups with all the retail destinations, housing and PWC. Making the street a lot tighter will have its consequences with impassable traffic.
 
cjbski said:
Crossing my fingers they widen the median and tighten the traffic lanes. Or make the bike lanes bigger to narrow the car lanes.
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What the heck would narrowing traffic lanes actually accomplish?
 
It would slow down how fast cars drive on the road and it would give more space to bikes and most importantly to pedestrians.
 
citylover94 said:
It would slow down how fast cars drive on the road and it would give more space to bikes and most importantly to pedestrians.
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It's already pretty slow as it is during large portions of the day. Pedestrians have plenty of space on the sidewalks (except for where the ugly SilverLine head house is by Via). By most accounts, the sidewalks can be considered wide. Bike lanes look pretty standard to me. Certainly not any narrower than elsewhere and I don't see backups happening in the bike lanes.

As posted above, the wider lanes at least give a chance for traffic to continue flowing when so many Ubers/Lyfts are dropping off and picking up (which I find completely annoying as well - see Sleeper St.). I don't think narrowing lane space solves or improves upon any actual needs.
 
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