Union Square Somerville Infill and Small Developments

The Union Post office WAS the biggest one in the town center. It's not totally gone though, just downsized two-minutes around the corner on Bow Street. Took over the wig shop.
 
Another problem is that the stomach for grand expressions of retail government has been greatly diminished by the meme "government is not the solution, but the problem" since the Reagan era.
 
I think it's great. The post office can obviously function fine out of their new place on Bow street. The old building doesn't get turned into condos but is turned into a venue for the arts/entertainment. It's win win as far as I'm concerned. The library does need to change but the setup of libraries seem to be changing fast. Perhaps a new build as part of the Union Square development would be more suited to this.
 
Ruairi said:
I think it's great. The post office can obviously function fine out of their new place on Bow street. The old building doesn't get turned into condos but is turned into a venue for the arts/entertainment. It's win win as far as I'm concerned. The library does need to change but the setup of libraries seem to be changing fast. Perhaps a new build as part of the Union Square development would be more suited to this.
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Yea. I don't know the latest news, but Somerville has been considering making a combined Library/City hall project as a part of Union's redevelopment for years. Not sure if that's still in the works, but I know that the current library and city hall are below standard.
 
Great Somerville By Design meeting last night on street improvements. This is a 3-4(+) year interim change that amounts to some signal improvements and reconfiguring traffic flow with some new street paint.

Big news is these changes could go into effect this year, and both Webster and Prospect would open to two-way traffic. Bike improvements will be modest. The city says they will assess the effects and propose bigger changes post-GLX (wider or narrower streets, separated cycle tracks, etc).

Good news for both cars and bikes, with modest upgrades for ped. Bikes will now legally be able to go either way on Prospect/Webster, and there will be bike lanes on Somerville Ave and Prospect leading into the square.

Quick view of the changes here. City will post materials soon:

EDIT: Blue shows changes to car flow (adding two-way for cars on both Prospect and Webster). Green shows where there will be bike lanes. City will add sharrows on side of the street without a committed bike lane as well.

oCFaHTD.png
 
One substantial chink out of the stupidest traffic policies of any city - nowhere else have I ever seen a city with so many roads that suddenly become one way in the opposite direction. Its just openly hostile to the driver - "fuck you if youre not from this stupid little neighborhood, take another street".

I'd like to see these changes made to the bigger northeast/southwest running cross streets fixed (both somerville and cambridge too) so you actually get around within these cities without making ten millions changes of road. So fucking stupid. Ditto for Marlboro in Boston (ruins the street, as far as Im concerned - it's castrated!).

Ok, im done.
 
FK4 said:
One substantial chink out of the stupidest traffic policies of any city - nowhere else have I ever seen a city with so many roads that suddenly become one way in the opposite direction. Its just openly hostile to the driver - "fuck you if youre not from this stupid little neighborhood, take another street".

I'd like to see these changes made to the bigger northeast/southwest running cross streets fixed (both somerville and cambridge too) so you actually get around within these cities without making ten millions changes of road. So fucking stupid. Ditto for Marlboro in Boston (ruins the street, as far as Im concerned - it's castrated!).

Ok, im done.
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Boston's got a reputation of being difficult to drive in to defend. Seriously though, I wonder how many people would get cars if they didn't think it was hard to drive around.
 
Smaller issue, but Somerville finally got ride of the hail pedestrian light 50 feet ahead of the SomervilleAve/WashingtonSt/WebsterSt intersection that contributed a lot to the backups down Somerville Ave towards Market Basket. Also seriously screwed with the 87 bus. The series of intersections around Union are still messy, but that pedestrian crossing light was egregious. It's flashing yellow now, which makes sense. They should add a "yield to pedestrian sign" and be done with it.
 
FK4 said:
One substantial chink out of the stupidest traffic policies of any city - nowhere else have I ever seen a city with so many roads that suddenly become one way in the opposite direction. Its just openly hostile to the driver - "fuck you if youre not from this stupid little neighborhood, take another street".

I'd like to see these changes made to the bigger northeast/southwest running cross streets fixed (both somerville and cambridge too) so you actually get around within these cities without making ten millions changes of road. So fucking stupid. Ditto for Marlboro in Boston (ruins the street, as far as Im concerned - it's castrated!).

Ok, im done.
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I guess you've never been to London. It is very similar to Boston only moreso. Many London 'neighborhoods' were located before the metro area filled in. Therefore connecting each neighborhood is a single direct road at all sorts of weird angles (i.e. Kensington High Street, King's Rd, Brompton, Fulham Rd, Holborn, Whitehall, Oxford, Strand etc). All of the residential and commercial infill streets within these neighborhoods is a warren of non-through streets and ultimately one-way so that through traffic and taxis can not use them as cut throughs.

So between Covent Garden and Fulham there is at most 3 potential ways to go, and probably only one that makes sense time wise. Also the reverse direction is likely to be a different route because of one way streets.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this system. The advantage is side streets are quiet and attractive for residents and businesses. The disadvantage is that through traffic has to take a single route (including the main bus lines) and is therefore very slow. So yes it is 'hostile to the driver' but maybe it's not simply stupid to give advantages to the neighborhood and not to every driver who wants to 'cut through' on their way to somewhere else.

In fact, in your way of thinking the best solution would be an 8-lane highway cutting through the neighborhood, with a few limited exit ramps and you sitting in even more induced demand traffic. But perhaps not building those highways has made some amount of sense in the end. (In London's case a great subway system also plays an important role in making it work).
 
Just a quick observation on this: the problem is very similar to London in the respect that Greater Boston, outside the CBD, is a series of squares that were built not to accommodate cows (urban legend) but horse-drawn streetcars and electric trolleys. They were the original TOD neighborhoods. Areas like Union, Sullivan, Davis, were designed as regional catalysts where every traveler needed to pass.

That was fairly pleasant when it was by horse or trolley (except for all the poop). Different experience with cars, where the neighborhood change from catalysts to bottlenecks. Folks coming from highways trying to just. get. through. No one stopping to shop or work.

So all these weird road configurations came in decades later, mostly in the 1980s, to make the places more accommodating to pedestrians: slow traffic down, minimize shortcuts.

Davis was fairly successful, but that's largely because almost no one NEEDS to pass through Davis to get anywhere. There's lots of ways to avoid it. Some squares are unavoidable for many routes: Sullivan, Union, Central, and Harvard are the big ones.

Thing is, I never think of Harvard Square as being as big a clusterfuck as Union. But I have to believe it MUST get more cars. Anyway, here's hoping round 4 of Union street redesign works out well.
 
kjdonovan said:
Just a quick observation on this: the problem is very similar to London in the respect that Greater Boston, outside the CBD, is a series of squares that were built not to accommodate cows (urban legend) but horse-drawn streetcars and electric trolleys. They were the original TOD neighborhoods. Areas like Union, Sullivan, Davis, were designed as regional catalysts where every traveler needed to pass.

That was fairly pleasant when it was by horse or trolley (except for all the poop). Different experience with cars, where the neighborhood change from catalysts to bottlenecks. Folks coming from highways trying to just. get. through. No one stopping to shop or work.

So all these weird road configurations came in decades later, mostly in the 1980s, to make the places more accommodating to pedestrians: slow traffic down, minimize shortcuts.

Davis was fairly successful, but that's largely because almost no one NEEDS to pass through Davis to get anywhere. There's lots of ways to avoid it. Some squares are unavoidable for many routes: Sullivan, Union, Central, and Harvard are the big ones.

Thing is, I never think of Harvard Square as being as big a clusterfuck as Union. But I have to believe it MUST get more cars. Anyway, here's hoping round 4 of Union street redesign works out well.
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The definitive read on this is a book circa 1960's by Prof. Sam Bass Warner Jr. of MIT --reissued as a paperback in 1978 -- so when you read it and he says 100 years ago he really means 150, etc.

Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900
Paperback – January 31, 1978
by Sam Bass Warner (Author)

ISBN-13: 978-0674842113 ISBN-10: 0674842111 Edition: 2nd
Buy New Price: $24.14
21 New from $18.88 43 Used from $0.19 2 Collectible from $20.00

In the last third of the nineteenth century the American city grew from a crowded merchant town, in which neatly everybody walked to work, to the modern divided metropolis. The street railway created this division of the metropolis into an inner city of commerce and slums and an outer city of commuters' suburbs. This book tells who built the new city, and why, and how
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Note that some of it -- including the very vompreghensive introductory part is available at the following link to Google Books

http://books.google.com/books?id=baxaVyCKzqYC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
paperless paul said:
I guess you've never been to London. It is very similar to Boston only moreso. Many London 'neighborhoods' were located before the metro area filled in. Therefore connecting each neighborhood is a single direct road at all sorts of weird angles (i.e. Kensington High Street, King's Rd, Brompton, Fulham Rd, Holborn, Whitehall, Oxford, Strand etc). All of the residential and commercial infill streets within these neighborhoods is a warren of non-through streets and ultimately one-way so that through traffic and taxis can not use them as cut throughs.

So between Covent Garden and Fulham there is at most 3 potential ways to go, and probably only one that makes sense time wise. Also the reverse direction is likely to be a different route because of one way streets.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this system. The advantage is side streets are quiet and attractive for residents and businesses. The disadvantage is that through traffic has to take a single route (including the main bus lines) and is therefore very slow. So yes it is 'hostile to the driver' but maybe it's not simply stupid to give advantages to the neighborhood and not to every driver who wants to 'cut through' on their way to somewhere else.

In fact, in your way of thinking the best solution would be an 8-lane highway cutting through the neighborhood, with a few limited exit ramps and you sitting in even more induced demand traffic. But perhaps not building those highways has made some amount of sense in the end. (In London's case a great subway system also plays an important role in making it work).
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Actyually, I lived in London for a year, but I cant comment on driving in the city because I never did. I do recall many one way streets that mostly appeared designed exclusively for buses. I could be wrong, since again, I was either on foot, subway or bus, but I dont remember any of the residential neighborhoods having the same problem Im describing - it appeared more confined to the Cities proper of London & Westminster. Boston does the stupid reverse one way thing all over the place, intown and hinterlands both. At any rate, London is a great city but Im talking about Boston and the road situation should change because the one way thing is stupid, regardless of who else does it.
 
FK4 said:
Actyually, I lived in London for a year, but I cant comment on driving in the city because I never did. I do recall many one way streets that mostly appeared designed exclusively for buses. I could be wrong, since again, I was either on foot, subway or bus, but I dont remember any of the residential neighborhoods having the same problem Im describing - it appeared more confined to the Cities proper of London & Westminster. Boston does the stupid reverse one way thing all over the place, intown and hinterlands both. At any rate, London is a great city but Im talking about Boston and the road situation should change because the one way thing is stupid, regardless of who else does it.
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Maybe I'm not understanding your criticism.

Is it not having a direct fast through way for cars through neighborhoods? Or something about one way streets meeting in opposite directions. Or is it that traffic is bad in Union Sq and the layout is to blame?

The principle of the issue is that these streets are set up to push neighborhood through-traffic to arterials and to maintain a sense of place and safely limit speeds to through traffic and are driven by the limitations of the historical street layout. If this is frustrating for through drivers it is supposed to be.

London has lots of examples of this design approach. It limits through traffic to arterials as a principle. The neighborhoods are therefore more attractive to residents because of less traffic and slower cars passing through the neighborhood.

Marlborough St seems a good example of this. The goal is to keep Common to Kenmore western traffic on Beacon and Comm and off Marlborough so that people want to live there. It seems to be a very successful approach as this is one of the most desirable streets in the city. And as a whole drivers wouldn't particularly benefit were it open.

If the traffic layout of Union Sq can be improved for drivers without sacrificing the needs of the other neighborhood users then by all means it should be. But the principles that make it awkward to use now seem sound to me. Perhaps as more of a non-driver in London this was your experience there too.
 
paperless paul said:
Maybe I'm not understanding your criticism.

Is it not having a direct fast through way for cars through neighborhoods? Or something about one way streets meeting in opposite directions. Or is it that traffic is bad in Union Sq and the layout is to blame?

The principle of the issue is that these streets are set up to push neighborhood through-traffic to arterials and to maintain a sense of place and safely limit speeds to through traffic and are driven by the limitations of the historical street layout. If this is frustrating for through drivers it is supposed to be.

London has lots of examples of this design approach. It limits through traffic to arterials as a principle. The neighborhoods are therefore more attractive to residents because of less traffic and slower cars passing through the neighborhood.

Marlborough St seems a good example of this. The goal is to keep Common to Kenmore western traffic on Beacon and Comm and off Marlborough so that people want to live there. It seems to be a very successful approach as this is one of the most desirable streets in the city. And as a whole drivers wouldn't particularly benefit were it open.

If the traffic layout of Union Sq can be improved for drivers without sacrificing the needs of the other neighborhood users then by all means it should be. But the principles that make it awkward to use now seem sound to me. Perhaps as more of a non-driver in London this was your experience there too.
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Marlborough Street is completely ruined by this - it's a castrated street.

My position is that no road should switch one way directions, unless there's a legitimate need beyond forcing drivers off the street. Marlborough in particular is stupid because why should a road that was designed as a thoroughfare (albeit, a narrower one, the equivalent of Newbury) be totally screwed up because millionaires live there? Also, I have read that Marlborough was altered in the 70s because that block was a huge gay cruising spot for young male prostitutes coming off the Greyhounds in Park Sq, and cars were hopping off Storrow and circling the block to find streetwalkers.

Traffic should be controlled to make neighborhoods safe, but not tortured and excluded to keep cars off the roads that are the logical place for them to go. This is idiotic. Cedar, Lowell and Central in Somerville all suddenly become one way for no explicable reason, forcing unnecessary detours. Many road in Southie do the same thing. That's dumb.
 
FK4 said:
Cedar, Lowell and Central in Somerville all suddenly become one way for no explicable reason, forcing unnecessary detours. Many road in Southie do the same thing. That's dumb.
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Summer Street too, and probably others. Hancock does the opposite of what you are saying. It can be maddening. I get not wanting to encourage neighborhood streets as cut throughs but it ends up just forcing more traffic into squares where they end up being huge bottlenecks, and that's bad for pedestrians. Crossing streets in Davis and Union can be dangerous, the crosswalk signals are largely a joke.
 
Very cool presentation on the first two parcels to get developed by US2: D2 and D3 are on either side of the tracks from the future station (current site of now cleared out junk yards and the uniform cleaning facility)

Most noteworthy is the timeframe. Slated for construction to start next spring.

JnopQGR.png


http://www.slideshare.net/us2unionsquare/ws4-d2d3
 
kjdonovan said:
Very cool presentation on the first two parcels to get developed by US2: D2 and D3 are on either side of the tracks from the future station (current site of now cleared out junk yards and the uniform cleaning facility)

Most noteworthy is the timeframe. Slated for construction to start next spring.

JnopQGR.png


http://www.slideshare.net/us2unionsquare/ws4-d2d3
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T Station completion timetable seems very aggressive
 
whighlander said:
T Station completion timetable seems very aggressive
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It's meant to be the first station to open of the whole GLX. Presumably there will be delays, given that the entire project has been rife with them, but the Union branch is fairly straightforward other than the flyover by inner-belt.
 
Yeah, the graph doesn't specify that it's just the Union Sq branch. Such a short line can be built pretty quickly. To College Ave will take considerably longer.
 
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