I'm bumping this thread only because I couldn't find a specific place to stick this post - mods, please move if you think it's better situated elsewhere.
Anyways. I'm grew up down the street from Harvard Square to the west; at this point, driving/walking/biking through (but more often around) the Square is akin to muscle-memory. But that's both good and bad. Here's a basic traffic flow chart
Now, if you're traveling west-to-east in Cambridge by car, Brattle is the better street: there are no stop-lights after Fayerweather, the traffic usually flows decently compared to Concord, but there's one increasingly annoying caveat. And that is Cambridge's much-beloved and much-despised three-way-fucking-stop at the corner of Brattle, Ash, and Mason
Like I said before, I grew up in the neighborhood and I know how this intersection works. If I'm traveling on Brattle eastwards towards Harvard Square, I have the full-on, no-stop right of way through that intersection. The problem is that many people don't know it's a three-way stop - who can blame them, it's not like Cambridge has ever fucking signed it as such. They see the "Don't Enter" on the opposing side of Brattle and it seems they make a very normal - and, honestly, rational - subliminal decision that the intersection is a 4-way stop and they act accordingly. This gets very annoying for people that do know how the intersection works, but more importantly (because this is where the danger comes from) when a car yields when they're not supposed to, it signals to stopped cars on Brattle or Ash that it
is a 4-way stop. The problems is, obviously, that it isn't a 4-way stop: one car may yield, but the next in line probably won't. I've seen and have myself come close to a litany of close calls over the years. And just to make things even more dangerous, there's a well-trafficked ped crossing at the end of the Brattle-to-Mason turn - with all the focus drivers have to pay to other cars at that intersection, many forget they might plow through a pedestrian or don't notice the crosswalk until the last moment. That intersection is partly the reason I prefer to walk to Harvard along Concord not Brattle.
So I think it's high-time that Cambridge, at the very least, puts up "3-way fucking stop" sign to help people not familiar with the area. But I think there's actually a broader point about that area and how it's designed. I've scoped two ways a few ideas, that center are centered on the idea of closing off the foot of Brattle St (between Brattle Square and Church St) to cars and extending the pedestrian plaza over the area. I think it'd open up a lot of space for, in particular, out-door seating for restaurants and/or the general public in much the same way the current bowl by the Brattle Square T entrance is well-utilized.
That small stretch of Brattle is, effectively, useless from a way-finding perspective. Autos entering from the south have the better-trafficked option of bumping up Eliot-to-Bennet-to-Mt. Auburn whereby they can access the "would-still-be-open" section of Brattle. Autos from the north have the option of Church street as well the Bennet-Mt. Auburn wrap-around. If anything it'd be nice to axe that left turn from JFK onto Brattle since that's a fucking zoo as well. I think that space can be far better utilized. Here's the general gist of a "change as little as possible re-design:
I'm not particularly tied to anything other than the ped-plaza, I was more just fooling around, trying to make sure everything matched up and no important traffic flow was redirected. The second idea is a bit more out-there, in that it'd make Brattle a two-for the entirety of it's course. As it stands now, Brattle sucks cars away from the Square itself, which gets fucking annoying because: A) it forces the, somewhat substantial, cohort of traffic that uses Church St to loop through along Garden St and, most annoyingly, B) Brattle is a heavily utilized parking street, but as it's one way for so long, it forces parkers to continually loop through more crowded intersections which screws shit up for the brunt of traffic that doesn't go through the Square, but uses the arteries around it. I'd rather have a Brattle-Story-Mt. Auburn loop than a Garden-Mass-Brattle Square-Brattle. Here's the general concept in my head
