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Task force looks at reducing car lanes on Longfellow to give pedestrians, bicyclists more room
By adamg on Tue, 10/05/2010 - 8:30am
One possible outbound Longfellow realignmentA state task force meets Wednesday to consider possible options for re-aligning the venerable bridge as part of the state's $255-million repair program.
The session to consider three options begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Shriners Hospital auditorium, 51 Blossom St.
Options range from keeping the current two car lanes in both directions to shrinking car lanes to one in each direction - and reducing their widths. According to a draft report, most task-force members would prefer to go down to one car lane outbound from Boston to allow for wider bike and pedestrian lanes.
The task force rejected a proposal for "flexible" lanes that would be restricted to bicyclists only at certain hours, in part because task force members realize Massholes would attempt to drive in the lane during those hours.
Regardless of road configuration on the bridge, the task force agrees the state needs to reconfigure the approaches for cars, pedestrians and bicyclists at Charles Circle, and that the state finally build the missing 500 feet of a walkway under the bridge on the Cambridge side. One proposal calls for construction of a new pedestrian bridge linking the Longfellow to the Esplanade.
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Comments
Stupid
Sorry, I understand the bikers have right of way here and I'm a biker myself, but driving over that bridge (evening commute) with one lane for vehicles will back traffic up through and past Kendall Square, there is NO way that will work..
Case in point. Look at Storrow Drive Westbound at the same time. Not enough traffic sign, people talking/texting not paying attention and the traffic after a year of a change is still backed up to the Hatch Shell.
I don't get it.
It looks like it's only outbound
There is rarely much traffic going into Cambridge on the Longfellow, so it makes sense to do this on the outbound side only. I agree that one lane wouldn't work going into Boston, but it doesn't look like they are proposing that. I'd be interested to see how they propose getting that bike lane through the circle though.
I think this kind of thing is
I think this kind of thing is going to have to happen eventually, but Boston, and every other American city for that matter, is totally car dependent. Making one big lane for bikes and leaving only one for cars is not going to change that fact. I would love to see the day (soon) that driving a car is a luxury activity--somthing you only do on special occasions. But we are not there yet so this is just going to create traffic jams and misery. Having said that, I guess drowning in the rising seas or starving to death in the desert is going to be kind of a misery for our grandkiddies too but maybe we will come up with a way to make cars run on fairy pee and we'll stop global climate change by putting giant mirrors in the sky.
Whit
I would love to see the day
When you're 60 years old, you'll be laughing at this - if you remember it.
Will you still drive me when I'm 64?
Boston is actually one of the better places for older people BECAUSE of the public transit networks and tight layout. Elders who depend on cars to get around often become dependent on others to drive them once they can no longer drive. It also means that people drive long past the time when they should drive, and accelerate their decline through inactivity.
Meanwhile, Portland isn't becoming a magnet for retirees because it is an easy place to drive - it is attracting retirees because a lot of older people appreciate being able to get around walking or with a mobility device and not having to have to drive to get to the doctor, to the grocery store, etc.
Driving a car *is* a luxury now...
...at least that is what they told every time I got my automotive excise tax bill (year after year after year).
Whit - do you ever travel this bridge?
I bike it pretty consistently at peak hours for traffic, and only a serious accident or construction seems to affect the speed of the vehicles and backup traffic more than five or six cars deep at the light at Charles. In other words, the bridge could easily be one lane in each direction and affect nothing - particularly since the movement through the light is always held up by people on the left trying to go right and on the right trying to go left!
Even with recent construction gumming things up, it only packs about 10 deep at full rush hour.
Just the other week I crossed
Just the other week I crossed the Longfellow from Cambridge into Boston at around 9:05am. The traffic was backed up way past the center of the bridge, and it took twenty minutes for me to get across. This was with two lanes.
One lane out of Boston? Sure, that is no problem. There is never heavy traffic going that way. But going into Boston? Nightmare.
I also frequently see Boston
I also frequently see Boston bound traffic backed up to the middle of the bridge, both morning and afternoon.
Bidirectional bike lane
Given the Toxic Pedestrian Lazy Wrong-way Stupid we got in the bike lanes when they shut down one side of the sidewalks, I can't even BEGIN to imagine what the "plan" is for getting the bike traffic back on the proper side of the street at either end.
Unless the assumption is that everybody is just out for a fitness ride and all of that traffic will route to the Esplanade. Yeah, right. Totally a joke getting on and off that bridge on the Boston side already.
"I can't even BEGIN to
"I can't even BEGIN to imagine what the 'plan' is for getting the bike traffic back on the proper side of the street at either end."
That was the first thing I thought when I saw the graphic. Keep in mind that there's no way to get from one side of the street to the other until all the way back at Kendall Square, because the tracks are in the way. Unless you loop underneath on Memorial Drive, which adds its own complications and extra distance.
It would also be very difficult to pass another slow bike or avoid debris, much harder than when riding on the existing shoulder.
I don't think removing a lane in the middle of the bridge would cause traffic jams, as long as two lanes are maintained at the traffic light at the end.
(Unlike several other recent or proposed lane-reducing projects, like Mass Ave through MIT and JFK Street in Harvard Square, which cause huge backups because they reduce capacity right at chokepoint intersections.)
An important caveat is that
An important caveat is that this is a proposed view going TOWARDS Cambridge. There is not nearly as much traffic Cambridge bound as there is Boston bound, and there isn't such an awful intersection on the Cambridge end either stopping things up and backing traffic onto the bridge.
Unlike other bridges where space can be redistributed to fit the traffic demands by re-striping, the MBTA tracks aren't going anywhere.
I'm skeptical of this two way bike lane though, mainly because it seems like getting on and off it at the ends of the bridges could be really tricky.
I bike over this bridge daily, and would be happy with another foot of bike lane, a seriously enforced speed limit and a better sidewalk.
CTPS: already less motorized traffic on this bridge
Since the completion of the artery there has been a significant reduction in motor vehicle traffic on this bridge.
See Slide 14 of the July 15th Task Force presentation: http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Highway/downloads/a...
Right into the headlights
I didn't extensively read the document, but it looks to me like the bidirectional path option will send the inbound bicycles directly into the headlights of the outbound cars next to them, effectively blinding these cyclists and risking a head-on collision with the outbound cyclists. Doesn't seem like it would be even remotely safe to me.
No choice
There's really no choice on the bike lane directions. They can't switch to English style wrong side driving as we are conditioned to drive on the right, bike on the right, and even mostly walk on the right.
Maybe they could
add in some sort of divider between the bike lane and car lane, possibly one of those ones with the louvers that break up the headlights?
Also, note that the sidewalk and the bike lanes are depicted as being for white people.
How do you know they are white
and not just light skinned, multi-racial people. They all do appear to be able body folks unless there are some prosthetics under their clothes.
Come on, they're clearly
Come on, they're clearly cocker spaniels.
The extra space for
The extra space for pedestrians will be very welcome. There's a LOT of foot traffic on that side and not really enough room for two people to pass each other on it.
Like the first poster I question one lane for cars. The bridge can be VERY busy in terms of auto traffic and traffic on the boston side can already back up significantly onto the bridge. Taking it down to one lane would make that worse.
And no one seems to be asking the obvious: is there enough bike traffic on the bridge to justify a gigantic bike lane (in this proposal the widest thing on the bridge other than the red line). My answer is no. When I'm on the bridge I see good numbers of cars and good numbers of pedestrians but relatively few bikes. Now maybe it's a chicken and egg situation where bicyclists don't want to use the bridge because there's not enough room for them but it still seems like a bit of a gamble that the increased space for bicyclists will be worth it.
Bike traffic
This is a major arterial for bikes. Now that the inbound lane is closed and bikes mix with traffic, bikes tend to group in groups of 4-10 within the traffic lanes, with multiple clusters forming for each light cycle.
Since each cluster takes the space that would be used by one car, there are close to as many two-wheeled vehicles (bikes and scooters) as there are cars backed up at rush hour. This makes sense since I often pass or get passed by more bikes on the Longfellow than I note cars passing me.
We may not take up much space, and therefore you may not notice us, but there are a lot of us - especially considering how bike lanes that travel the entire length of two cities feed this bridge and end when you hit Boston. Check out the traffic on the feeder lanes in Cambridge sometime - at many light cycles, twice as many bikes get through the lights as cars.
Two-way bike lane doesn't look good to me
especially with the bike traffic travelling the opposite way from the car lane right next to it. I would not want to use this.
This kind of arrangement can work well on small residential side streets but not on a bridge with 35+ mph traffic.
2 things..
1 - A lot of people are saying that "more traffic comes from Cambridge." How do all of these cars get back to Cambridge? Alternate routes? They exit Boston all together? Or perhaps, they just stay forever suspended in Boston traffic...
2 - What about the seasons? Nowhere near as many people bike/walk when it's extremely hot/cold as when the weather is nice and moderate. The hotter and colder days are when you have more people driving and riding the MBTA than walking and cycling. (Which could explain why MBTA ridership this past August was higher than ever before -- it was too hot to walk!) But maybe we'll be lucky, and they'll go all out and spring for an enclosed bridge.
My educated guess
I know a lot of the traffic coming into Boston on the Longfellow is coming off of Memorial Drive. Most of those people are as likely to take Storrow back rather than trying to cross the river at Charles/MGH. So alternate routes probably do play a large effect.
Cheapskates?
Could the disparity also be explained by people avoiding the inbound tolls on e.g. the Tobin?
Unbalanced volumes on Longfellow
The heavier volume on Longfellow into Boston, compared with into Cambridge, is curious. I don't think we know enough about the origin and destination of the drivers on the bridge to know for sure why this happens, but I will offer a personal anecdote:
When I drive to Kendall Square (about 1/3 of commuting days)in the morning from the west, I use Memorial Drive eastbound. In the evening, Mem Drive westbound from the BU bridge to Western is a disaster, with the volumes, signal timing, BU bridge construction, etc. As a result, I go over the Longfellow to get Storrow westbound from Charles Circle. Not much of a time saver (Longfellow into Boston with two travel lanes and three lanes at Charles Circle has a queue length of 850 feet at peak hour - LOS F for your traffic geeks), but you keep moving after the one bottleneck.
Just take out a auto lane in
Just take out a auto lane in each direction, and use the space to widen the sidewalks and bike lanes. Maybe a little buffer or barrier between the auto and bike lanes.
The sidewalk on the pretty side (Hancock Tower, not Museum of Science) especially needs to be widened. Don't try to shuffle more walkers and joggers to the ugly and currently less-convenient side.
Is the red line invisible?
Hello? Is the MBTA out there?
Most people who use the bridge, use the red line.
Whenever there is a disabled red line train downtown, the whole system is screwed because theres no where to store it.
The bridge is the only above ground location north of broadway, meaning the only CHEAP location to add a third track.
BUILD A THIRD TRACK FOR TRAIN STORAGE!
Once in a lifetime opportunity here, dont screw this up.
Actually, the T did speak
And what they said was:
A) Keep the current tracks and right of way just like it is;
B) Make sure there's enough room on the paved part of the bridge to allow bus travel for those times when the Red Line breaks down.
Thats because the T has no
Thats because the T has no forsight. They said "keep it as it is and dont make it worse" but did anyone think "how can we make it better"?
Given the steep grades of the
Given the steep grades of the bridge, I don't think it would be a good place for a pocket track, to possibly hold disabled trains.
I think the bridge is also essentialy built as three bridges side-by-side, with only the center section designed to permanently support the weight of rapid transit tracks. The outer lanes at one tine did support streetcar tracks, but streetcars weigh a lot less than a rapid transit train.
Doubtful
I seem to recall the T is planning to shift the tracks over to one side of the bridge during the reconstruction of the middle deck. So it can apparently handle the weight without too much modification.
Where would they store the train...on the bridge?
??
Overall I think the closing of one lane of car traffic is a great idea! Which means, they probably wont' do it.