Closed Sidewalk On Cambridge St – Courtesy Of walkingbostonian.com
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation held what was billed as the third and final informational meeting to discuss the reconstruction of the Cambridge St. Bridge last night at Jackson Mann Community Center in Allston. The bridge carries 27, prostate 000 vehicles over the Mass Pike every day, view and connects Lower Allston to Allston Village.
The bridge has always presented serious safety concerns due to the speed of traffic traveling over it, check and the fact that while many pedestrians and cyclists use the bridge to get from one part of Allston to another, there are very few areas where it is safe to cross.
The state is reconstructing the bridge because its deck and substructure (aka the road and sidewalk) have earned ratings of “poor”, and the state does not believe it will be safe to travel over if changes aren’t made soon. The bridge’s westbound sidewalk has been closed since a large sinkhole formed there in 2010.
Mass DOT unveiled plans last summer to cut the number of traffic lanes down from three to two on each side, and use that space to create wider sidewalks and a bike lane. The plan drew sharp criticism from residents, who felt it didn’t do enough to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe. A November informational meeting led to healthy dialog between the state and concerned residents, and the DOT was back to present a revised plan last night.
The biggest change made to the plan was the replacement of the bike lanes with a bike track on each side of the bridge. The bike track will be separated from the street by a three-foot tall barrier and a three-foot wide breakdown lane. This will undoubtedly be a huge improvement over the harrowing trek cyclists currently make down Cambridge St.
In addition to keeping cyclists safe, the DOT is also hoping to stop jaywalkers from illegally crossing the bridge. The agency originally planned to build a 6ft tall fence in the median running over the 1,200ft length of the bridge. This also drew criticism from residents, who feared it would create a serious eyesore.
The new plan addresses this by not only cutting the length of the fence down to 600ft, but also creating a “midblock” crosswalk near the top of the Mansfield St. stairs that lead to Lower Allston. This will finally give pedestrians a safe place to cross the bridge that doesn’t involved walking all the way to the Harvard Ave. intersection.
The crosswalk does create a tricky “mixed-use” zone where pedestrians on the sidewalk will need to cross into the bike track to enter the crosswalk. The DOT made it clear that since they were limited to working within the confines of the bridge’s existing steel structure, they had to compromise on some facets of the project, and this was one of them.
The state will address the issue by installing push-button activated LED light beacons at each side of the crosswalk, alerting both cyclists and motorist they need to stop for pedestrians about to cross the street.
While the improvements made to the plan received a generally positive reaction from the crowd, the Q&A session lasted well over an hour, with numerous residents voicing additional concerns.
Chief among those concerns was the re-institution of the left hand turn onto Highgate St. In the original plan, the median (and its 6ft high fence) would have extended nearly all the way to the Harvard Ave. intersection – making it impossible for jaywalkers to cross the street anywhere but the crosswalk. In the new plan, the barrier is cut back to Highgate St., allowing cars to turn, but also allowing pedestrians to scurry across the road at that point.
Another concern among those at the meeting was speed. Many argued that the state needs to address the fact that cars regularly travel at speeds of up to 50 MPH over the bridge, and the plan does nothing to change that. The DOT agreed that this was something they needed to look at in order to protect those at the crosswalk and the local businesses in the area.
While the DOT welcomed feedback, they did note that there was no longer room for major changes, as they expect to put the job out for bid within the coming month, and begin work by late spring or early summer. The construction will cut the bridge down to one travel lane in each direction, and undoubtedly lead to some serious traffic headaches until it is completed in 2016.
Overall, the new approach is not perfect, but it is a big step up over the original plan, and a massive improvement over the sorry state that the bridge currently sits in. The plan is not overly favorable to any one group, but is sure to increases the safety of everyone crossing it, weather on bike, foot, or by car. If all goes according to plan, this project could be a big step in the direction of re-uniting Allston Village and Lower Allston for the first time since the Mass Pike divided it over 50 years ago.
