West Cambridge / Alewife Area Infill & Small Developments

That area seriously needs some pedestrian bridges over the Fitchburg line
 
Not sure I see the point expanding the parking garage if the roads around it are already unable to handle the load.
 
Matthew said:
Not sure I see the point expanding the parking garage if the roads around it are already unable to handle the load.
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Mathew -- the problem is that the combination of the Fitchburg, the swamp, and some NIMBYs doesn't allow the appropriate connectivity

There should be a dedicated lane on Rt-2 running along in front of the bowling alley which connects to a street behind the "Faces" replacement and which ultimately connects back to the Lake St. Exit complex and behind the Strip along Fresh Pond to Concord Ave.

There is plenty of capacity on Rt-2 if the traffic is distributed properly when the traffic gets to the end of the highway.

At least one more crossing of the Fitchburg Line would make a big difference
 
This neighborhood is a traffic nightmare without these new units...it's going to be mayhem when they're fully occupied.
 
whighlander said:
Mathew -- the problem is that the combination of the Fitchburg, the swamp, and some NIMBYs doesn't allow the appropriate connectivity

There should be a dedicated lane on Rt-2 running along in front of the bowling alley which connects to a street behind the "Faces" replacement and which ultimately connects back to the Lake St. Exit complex and behind the Strip along Fresh Pond to Concord Ave.

There is plenty of capacity on Rt-2 if the traffic is distributed properly when the traffic gets to the end of the highway.
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DOT botched that when they let the new apartment complex abut the highway so close.

EDIT: I misread what you're suggesting because you said "dedicated lane on Rt-2". I'm having trouble visualizing exactly what you're talking about. However, I don't see how making some sort of direct connection between Alewife and Lake Street helps. The Lake Street ramp is also a mess during peak hours.

The issue with the Alewife exit traffic is the garage entry/exit, which backs things up into the general route-2 gridlock, contributing to it.

The other big problem with the inbound Alewife intersection is the bottleneck at the lights. People turning to go east on Route 16 towards Medford have two turning lanes, which backs up and blocks the cars trying to go west on Route 16 past Alewife. Those going west get cramped into one lane that then reopens to two at the light. There ought to be two lanes for both eastbound and westbound Parkway traffic, but I don't know if there's the space to configure that.
 
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BussesAin'tTrains said:
DOT botched that when they let the new apartment complex abut the highway so close.

EDIT: I misread what you're suggesting because you said "dedicated lane on Rt-2". I'm having trouble visualizing exactly what you're talking about. However, I don't see how making some sort of direct connection between Alewife and Lake Street helps. The Lake Street ramp is also a mess during peak hours.

The issue with the Alewife exit traffic is the garage entry/exit, which backs things up into the general route-2 gridlock, contributing to it.

The other big problem with the inbound Alewife intersection is the bottleneck at the lights. People turning to go east on Route 16 towards Medford have two turning lanes, which backs up and blocks the cars trying to go west on Route 16 past Alewife. Those going west get cramped into one lane that then reopens to two at the light. There ought to be two lanes for both eastbound and westbound Parkway traffic, but I don't know if there's the space to configure that.
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Busses -- the root of the problem is all about the fact that Cambridge Park Drive should be more appropriately known as Cambridge Park Driveway -- if you take a right at the light -- you are trapped -- there is nowhere to go

My proposed dedicated lane on the Right side of RT-2 E is similar to the parallel lanes added to RT-128 in Waltham [Prospect Hill], Lexington [Rt-2A], Burlington [Middlesex Turnpike]-- typing several exits together without the need of entering and exiting from the highway

I would tie Lake Street, with Acorn Park and the ramp to the Alewife Station by a lane along the front of the new Complex, Hotel and Bowling Alley

Then I'd tie an extension of Cambridge Park Drive into the existing street Grids to the West and the south across the Fitchburg Tracks
 
whighlander said:
Busses -- the root of the problem is all about the fact that Cambridge Park Drive should be more appropriately known as Cambridge Park Driveway -- if you take a right at the light -- you are trapped -- there is nowhere to go

My proposed dedicated lane on the Right side of RT-2 E is similar to the parallel lanes added to RT-128 in Waltham [Prospect Hill], Lexington [Rt-2A], Burlington [Middlesex Turnpike]-- typing several exits together without the need of entering and exiting from the highway

I would tie Lake Street, with Acorn Park and the ramp to the Alewife Station by a lane along the front of the new Complex, Hotel and Bowling Alley

Then I'd tie an extension of Cambridge Park Drive into the existing street Grids to the West and the south across the Fitchburg Tracks
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There is no way to add a lane anymore. That building is so close to the highway the kiss-and-ride in front is barely larger than the width of a highway lane + shoulder + whatever jersey barrier would be separating the local lane. And it's a very narrow turnout into the curb cut, meaning you have to pull into the shoulder and slow down to make the turn into the place. And a very narrow rebuilt sidewalk with no separation from the road. They somehow managed to take an already bad configuration and make it much worse. Even the hotel and bowling alley are better-buffered than this thing. And it is impossible to make it better for all the decades that building will ever stand. How this was ever allowed to happen is baffling.

Can't shift the roadway 50 feet to the north either to free up that access road space. It's all on an embankment above a swamp.
 
Could a lane possibly be "added" by shrinking down the existing lane widths to a bare minimum (say, 9 feet)?
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
There is no way to add a lane anymore. That building is so close to the highway the kiss-and-ride in front is barely larger than the width of a highway lane + shoulder + whatever jersey barrier would be separating the local lane. And it's a very narrow turnout into the curb cut, meaning you have to pull into the shoulder and slow down to make the turn into the place. And a very narrow rebuilt sidewalk with no separation from the road. They somehow managed to take an already bad configuration and make it much worse. Even the hotel and bowling alley are better-buffered than this thing. And it is impossible to make it better for all the decades that building will ever stand. How this was ever allowed to happen is baffling.

Can't shift the roadway 50 feet to the north either to free up that access road space. It's all on an embankment above a swamp.
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F-line -- you don't need to add much -- there is already a widening as you approach the off-ramp to the Alewife T. The Hotel and Bowling alley can certainly give up about 6 feet and the rest could come from slight shift of the roadway coming out of the traffic lights with some minimal filling on the Westbound side
 
whighlander said:
F-line -- you don't need to add much -- there is already a widening as you approach the off-ramp to the Alewife T. The Hotel and Bowling alley can certainly give up about 6 feet and the rest could come from slight shift of the roadway coming out of the traffic lights with some minimal filling on the Westbound side
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That's exactly what I said would not work. This building, the Inn, and the bowling alley are directly opposite a low-lying swamp with the highway built on a high embankment. You can't shift the highway to the north a few feet without impacting the Alewife watershed. That's not going to pass muster with the EPA. Are you paying attention to the posts before you reply, whigh?

And there is no slight widening to be had on these properties. The 3rd travel lane continues as the Alewife exit-only, but to do that 3rd lane setup they claimed all of the shoulder. There's about a foot-and-a-half on the side before the sidewalk. You couldn't come up with 6 feet of space there to finagle anything if you wanted to. You couldn't revert the highway back to 2 lanes + a wide shoulder before the exit and have it function as well as it (didn't) function before they re-striped the lane layout here. The driveway cut compromises the merging space from Lake St., and is at such a sharp angle that you can't turn on and off and use a would-be breakdown lane for proper turnout acceleration/deceleration. The curb cut is set up like it was turning onto a city street. Any vehicle going in and out, or worse--weaving out across 1-2 lanes to reach 16--slows everything behind it to 20 MPH every time or causes a sudden and dangerous ripple in weaving as people switch lanes to avoid the driver turning out/in.

That's unfixable. This building so closely overhangs the highway and inn driveway that there's too little space to do much of anything with a strip of land-taking by the inn or the bowling alley. The only things that are possible there are widening a little bit of the shoulder...but that hardly makes any difference when the damage is already done to traffic hitting the brakes behind a vehicle turning in/out behind there. They fucked up the highway permanently with this. 1 more failure point on a stretch that's already got 4 or 5 of them strictly in the EB direction.


I drove this today at 10:00am. They had a truck parked right on top of the sidewalk in front of an "Open House" sign with balloons that were literally blowing into oncoming traffic in the right lane. It caused everyone on the highway to have to slow down at that spot...then speed back up to the lights because overall volumes were light. Now go try that 1 hour earlier and see how well that works. Go try that after they rent out all these places and people are using that turnout at rush hour when the Alewife approach is already locked solid. Go try it on one of those unlucky days somebody gets sideswiped or rear-ended coming out of that tight curb cut.
 
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Why can't they extend acorn park drive across the bike path to Camridge park drive? That way cars heading towards Soldiers Field Road could exit earlier, before the triangle of endless wait.
 
Shepard said:
Why can't they extend acorn park drive across the bike path to Camridge park drive? That way cars heading towards Soldiers Field Road could exit earlier, before the triangle of endless wait.
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wetlandswetlandswetlands

Every piece of land not currently cleared for development is pretty much just a big grass-choked moat. There isn't a physical path for connecting the street grid from anywhere to anywhere.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Can't shift the roadway 50 feet to the north either to free up that access road space. It's all on an embankment above a swamp.
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It could be widened 50' north if done on a bridge instead of a fill. Some of the existing fill could also be removed and replaced with the bridge to create even more wetland, to mitigate any wetland takings or impacts by the new bridge. It would cost some $$$, but not that bad.
 
It's barely about two feet as it is. Just a Jersey Barrier and a chain-link fence.
 
There's nothing that can be done for the EB side. The only potential improvements are westbound: easing out the curve on the 16W-to-2W ramp and re-striping so each merge direction cleanly forms each of the two travel lanes and eliminates the last light cycle, then tearing out the curb and that rusted out footbridge for a real shoulder out to Lake St. But that's more of a rotary improvement since highway is fine the second you're past the lights.


You'll have to approximate how much the building and reconfigured curb cut eat up space, but Google gives some idea of the constraints you're up against wetlands-wise: http://goo.gl/maps/kggkP.

All of those light green flat patches easily visible on 45-degree view are swamp. You can easily see how everything west of this building to the Lake St. on-ramp is pinched right up to the side of the highway, and how directly across the street from the building is pinched right up to the side of the highway. There's no shifting-around room whatsoever here. And you can see it's too little too late to carve out any frontage lanes past the building when the building driveway is the one forcing all highway traffic to slow to a near-stop for turning vehicles. Without getting EPA approval to destroy wetlands there is no physical way to mitigate this so that it isn't worse than before.

Map also shows the impossibility of tying Acorn Park Dr. to the outside world. Nuthin' but hundreds of feet of swamp on the west and south sides, and the new path on the east end splits pond and swamp on too narrow a strip to fit a road. Put it this way...if there were an EPA-passable way of connecting all this they would've poured the asphalt 10 years ago when they were mitigating the ex-industrial sites on both sides of the brook. It's all permanently surrounded by a moat.
 
what about the option I suggested earlier, of narrowing all the lanes just enough to make room for adding one more (equally narrow) lane?
 
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