Trapelo Road & Belmont Street Reconstruction

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matredsoxfan

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MassDOT has started its $14 Million overhaul of the Trapelo Road/ Belmont Street corridor through Belmont. The project begins at the Waltham City Line and runs all the way to the Cambridge City Line. Work includes... Drainage Improvements, repaving, granite curbing, concrete sidewalks, street lighting, traffic signals, street trees, park benches, trash cans and other streetscape items.

The work will create a 5' bike lane in each direction with turn lanes at major intersections. Work began in late 2013 and will be completed by late 2015.
 
As of this week crews have

-removed the old tracks from Church Street and are reconstructing the Waverley Square parking lot

-working on sidewalks along Church Street and on the Eastbound side of Trapelo Road from Waltham Line to Mill Street

-they have also removed the median island from Trapelo Road from Mill to Pleasant Street.

-Work is ongoing on drainage improvements near Beech Street.
 
Commenting to let you know Im interested :)
 
Crews have over the last month have...

-Built new sidewalks from Church Street to Waltham Line

-Widened the intersection of Mill Street.

-Installed the curb bulb out at Mill Street in the Eastbound lanes

-Crews are currently working on sidewalks from Pleasant Street to Beech Street

-Crews are working on storm drainage improvements from the Fire Station to Cushing Square.
 
Way down on the Cambridge end by the intersection with Mt. Auburn, there's also been some restriping and resurfacing. I thought that that area would eventually be within the scope of this project...are they starting the project at both ends of the road and then hoping to meet in the middle somewhere? Or is the Cambridge work unrelated?
 
ErnieAdams said:
Way down on the Cambridge end by the intersection with Mt. Auburn, there's also been some restriping and resurfacing. I thought that that area would eventually be within the scope of this project...are they starting the project at both ends of the road and then hoping to meet in the middle somewhere? Or is the Cambridge work unrelated?
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That's in Cambridge-proper, which is outside the scope of the project. The reconstruction is city line-to-city line, which sets the easterly project limits at Brimmer St. about 4 blocks west of Mt. Auburn. They won't be doing anything in Cambridge other than regularly cycled 5-year-plan DPW stuff like scheduled repaving, overturning old crosswalks for ADA rumble strips, etc.

Mt. Auburn and the Cambridge portion of Belmont St. should be getting new LED streetlights before Labor Day. Cambridge is doing city-wide changeouts of all non-decorative and non-DCR fixtures coincident with street-sweeping days on a given side of the street. They started cropping up on the odd-numbered sides of a bunch of North Cambridge side streets within the last couple weeks, which probably means the whole neighborhood west to the Belmont line gets finished sometime during month of July.
 
Like he said, the resurfacing work is unrelated. This years focus for the project is from Cushing Square to Waltham Line. Next year the focus will be from Cushing Square to Cambridge Line.
 
Crews have now paved the section from Waltham Line to Lexington Street. (So nice and smooth :) ), building new sidewalks between Waverley Square and the Fire station and new storm drainage work from the fire station to Cushing Square. Already seeing the road diet effect near Beech Street where the new sidewalks are being constructed where parking existed. Its great to see this finally happening.
 
So Trapelo Road was one of those special Boston anomalies where you had to know the unwritten rules to use it correctly - most of its Belmont stretch had space for two lanes of traffic, yet was striped for only one (though I am told that, long, long ago, it was striped for four lanes). So people just kind of did the 4 lane thing sometimes, then kind of did the 2 lane thing sometimes. Never made any sense. I figured when they repaved it they would settle this once and for all - make it 2 lanes or 4. And they have NOT! In fact, everything about this project stinks:

- the lanes in most places are wide enough to squeeze two lanes into, just barely, and people are still doing it - then at the crosswalk neckdowns, they have to merge. Cops watch and let it happen.
- NO bike lanes anywhere. And yet there is this weird, single white lane marking that makes a 12 foot wide no man's land between driving traffic and parked cars. What is this space for? Double parking? Right now, it's just used as an extra right turn lane.
- The Mill Street turn off lane stripe is very poorly done and encourages people to drive in the no-man's land; or follow the rules and sit in traffic for an extra two minutes before being allowed to legally turn right.

In short, it's smoother, but that's it. I really don't get Belmont at all.
 
FK4 said:
So Trapelo Road was one of those special Boston anomalies where you had to know the unwritten rules to use it correctly - most of its Belmont stretch had space for two lanes of traffic, yet was striped for only one (though I am told that, long, long ago, it was striped for four lanes). So people just kind of did the 4 lane thing sometimes, then kind of did the 2 lane thing sometimes. Never made any sense. I figured when they repaved it they would settle this once and for all - make it 2 lanes or 4. And they have NOT! In fact, everything about this project stinks:

- the lanes in most places are wide enough to squeeze two lanes into, just barely, and people are still doing it - then at the crosswalk neckdowns, they have to merge. Cops watch and let it happen.
- NO bike lanes anywhere. And yet there is this weird, single white lane marking that makes a 12 foot wide no man's land between driving traffic and parked cars. What is this space for? Double parking? Right now, it's just used as an extra right turn lane.
- The Mill Street turn off lane stripe is very poorly done and encourages people to drive in the no-man's land; or follow the rules and sit in traffic for an extra two minutes before being allowed to legally turn right.

In short, it's smoother, but that's it. I really don't get Belmont at all.
Click to expand...

^Agreed with everything you just said. I bike this every day and it's quite interesting to say the least. I use the left side of the MASSIVE (20+ feet) parking "area" as a bike lane.

There are still covers over the new stoplights/crosswalk signals in Waverley Square, but unless they are about to paint on new crosswalks and have a new signal configuration, it doesn't look like they have done much to improve the pedestrian flow throw the square. Waverley Square has the worst pedestrian flow configuration in the Boston area, in my experience. Bar none.

A couple positive changes include the streetscape/sidewalk areas in/around Waverley Square, as well as the hugely successful road diet at the corner of Waverley and Trapelo. They could have, and should have done so much more to improve this corridor, though.
 
The project is still under construction. There is still another full year of work ahead. New traffic signals need to be installed and also the pavement everyone is riding on is not the final course that will go down next year. The area between the parked cars and the current white line will be the 5 foot bike lane. By the width I would say it will be buffered. There is also raised medians that need to go in between Beech St and Cushing Square so there are many more improvements to come.
 
That's excellent to know. It does have some signs that this isn't finished. Still, they could have put a few bike makers in, but Im glad thats in the final plan. For a while I thought Belmont had gone totally anti-progressive.
 
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