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Let's turn Newbury Street into a pedestrian mall, at least some of the time
By adamg on Fri, 03/13/2009 - 2:48pm
John Ford discusses a Boston Courant article (not online since the Courant quaintly refuses to acknowledge the InterWeb's existence) in which Tom Menino proposes the idea of shutting off car traffic on select days in July and August.
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Comments
Insanity
Either keep a street open to cars or close it permanently, but considering closing it only on some days is utterly insane, not to mention maddening to those who drive it occasionally.
Memorial Drive is closed from North Harvard onward during certain summer months, Sundays only. I'm sure it's swell for the roller-bladers and whatnot, but it's a huge pain in the ass for people who actually need to get somewhere from, say, oh, Watertown, to come upon it and then have to figure out an alternate route on the fly.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Sunday Mem Drive closure is awesome
and easy to avoid -- just use Soldiers Field Road on the other side of the river. There are no homes or businesses fronting on this part of Memorial Drive, so the closure has no significant effect on anyone.
Seconded
If people haven't been on the closed-off Mem. Dr., or just hung out in JFK Park when the street is closed, it's worth experiencing.
One of the best things in Cambridge in the summer, IMHO.
I'm Sure It's Swell
Not the point I was making, though. I was saying that it's a pain for a driver to come upon without foreknowledge of the closure. And that's why I'd argue for all-or-nothing, on any street closing.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
for the last 70 years we've
for the last 70 years we've planned our cities around the comfort and convenience for drivers and haven't fared too well. Pardon me if i don't lose any tears over you having to make a right hand turn and drive 25 seconds to the other side of the freaking river
I'm Not Asking For Tears
Especially from you, Pierce.
I drive to some destinations, but I also walk and/or take the T to others. I'm not just a driver who considers himself put upon.
I know enough to go across the bridge and take Storrow, IF downtown is my destination (which you seem to take as a given.) If a driver, and perhaps one not as familiar with the territory as I am, has a destination on the Cambridge side of the river, and beyond North Harvard, it becomes less easy. You know this, of course, but choose to go for the facile snark.
Once again, I am arguing for all-or-nothing on road closings. One could infer from this that I have no problem with Mem Drive being closed permanently, but you chose not to consider that. Again, facile and snarky, but I would have expected nothing more from the likes of you.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Or, to be more exact,
American cities have been planned around suburbanites who regularly commute into the city for work, etc, and the results have been disastrous.
Planned?
Actually, NOT PLANNED is more the case - look at Atlanta, Houston, etc. Boston was NOT PLANNED either - Decades ago, Dukakis tried to get statewide land use planning like Oregon has had for nearly 40 years and encounted townie rage from all fronts.
Shortsightedness is more like it.
In many cities, including Boston, these great big state highways were built to slice right through and/or totally encroach on many inner-city neighborhoods, which also provoked much townie rage and hostility.
And in many cities ...
Including Boston and New York, residents eventually learned to successfully fight off these great big state highways.
Really? Since when?
Boston certainly couldn't fight off the Southeast Expressway or I-93,, for instance.
Nor could Worcester fight off the fact that they have a big state highway, I-290 running right through the middle of the city.
Go Google Southwest Expressway, if you please
Also, Westway.
And while I don't know if there are many online documents about it, Robert Moses lost battles to turn Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn into an expressway and to build a highway between the East River bridges and one of the Hudson River tunnels across lower Manhattan.
Also please notice that I used the word "eventually."
Close it always!
I'm all for closing Newbury Street, permanently. The sidwalks are so narrow, there's always tons of double parkers -- it's a nightmare. Just close it all the time. You can still leave the cross roads open, although to be fair you could probably shut down a couple of them, like Hereford and/or Gloucester without too much trouble, I'd think.
Also, at least it's every Sunday with Mem Drive -- no surprises, I guess. It might have caused me slight annoyance a few times when I forgot about it, but it's not random days, at least. Then again, I think if they re-paved some of the Charles River paths around that area, maybe they wouldn't have to close Memorial in the first place.
Improving the foot paths isn't the same thing
When you're trying to enjoy a little spot of nature, heavy auto traffic zooming past (and idling while people honk angrily at each other at the JFK St. intersection) is just barely tolerable, not pleasant.
Close it forever
Anyone whose driven down Newbury Street can attest to the madness of double parked cars, taxis, pedestrians and twice a year moving vans clogging up the street. It's already almost a parking lot, let's make it official and shut it down permanently. There's two huge main roads directly parallel to Newbury so it might even improve traffic for everyone.
Contrary view
On the contrary, Newbury Street is a model of exactly how cars and pedestrians should interact. The rest of the streets in Boston should be more like Newbury Street, not less.
Traffic is slow, has to stop every block, can never pick up speed, and drivers constantly have to visually and physically interact with and respond to pedestrians. Some drivers cruise up and down at very low speeds, some drivers block the entire street while they chat out the window, and very few drivers run over children.
The mess, confusion, and inconvenience of driving on Newbury Street are not problems. They are measures of its success which increase its safety. If they convince people they should park their cars and walk around instead, that's also a good thing.
Instead of trying to banish the mess and confusion by turning Newbury Street into a pedestrian-only dead zone a la Downtown Crossing, we should be trying to make other streets more like Newbury Street by narrowing streets, removing lanes, installing more horizontal barriers and bump-outs, more crosswalks, wider sidewalks with more cafes, etc. City streets shouldn't be either raceways or shopping malls. They should be interaction zones. Life is messy.
No thanks
I assume this will mean that it's closed to cross traffic too (otherwise, what's the point?). That would cut off basically all of Brighton/Allston, and parts of North Brookline from a good portion of the South End, Boylston St, and the Pru/Copley area.
Otherwise, all of those people have to come into that area by Huntington (no thanks), turning right off of Comm Ave onto Mass Ave past Hynes and then a left onto Boylston (bigger NO thanks), or going past Newbury all the way to the Gardens and coming back west (biggest NO thanks of all).
The whole reason it's not so bad to close off Mem Drive during the summer is because it's right along the river and nobody needs to cross the road to get anywhere (other than wet) and there are alternatives (like Storrow) to get you East and West instead. Newbury is smack dab in the MIDDLE of just about the ONLY "grid" this Euro-style city layout has. Completely closing it to traffic isn't intelligent at all.
In our CBD, 90+% of shoppers
In our CBD, 90+% of shoppers travel without automobiles. What's good for walkers is good for local businesses.
I hope our city officials have seen the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, CA!
No need to close cross streets to traffic
and you could just put orange cones down the middle of Boylston and make it two-way on those days that Newbury is closed to traffic.
Then what's the point?
If you don't close the cross street traffic, then what's the point? People are going to mosey down the block and still have to get up onto the sidewalks to go around the barriers and cross orderly at the stop signs. If you want an string of little block sized walking areas running through Back Bay, there's already the center of Comm Ave. The whole point in closing the street will be to give people access from one end to the other without any cars whatsoever.
why would they do that?
People would just keep walking down the middle of Newbury, directly crossing each cross street. Same way they cross JFK Street on Memorial Drive when that's closed. No need to get onto the sidewalks or use the crosswalks.
I haven't decided whether this is a good idea or a bad one, but I don't see it causing any major logistical problems.
Then
What keeps the cars from just turning down Newbury? How are drivers on the cross streets supposed to see people coming when they have the entire street width plus sidewalks to look for crossing pedestrians? If you're going to let people drive across Newbury, then you're going to have to funnel the flow of walkers, cyclists, bladers, etc. to prevent any problems and you're going to have to still blockade every intersection in some way that allows pedestrians but stops drivers from turning off of the cross streets.
Posts?
Couldn't you just have some brightly painted concrete or metal posts that are put wide enough for bikes and walkers to go through but not cars? Then people could use the whole width of Newbury to cross the perpendicular streets, but cars wouldn't accidentally turn onto Newbury.
Still
It would still then be like driving through 30+ feet of crosswalk for all of the cross-traffic. Not just normal crosswalk either, since the pedestrian entitlement factor will be factorially higher too. If they do this and try to leave cross-traffic open, I give it 2 weekends before a roller-blader or a biker zipping down the center of Newbury gets taken out by someone trying to make the Boylston/Gloucester light on Gloucester.
So ... we should put you in
So ... we should put you in the "no" column then, or would you like more time to think about it?
:)
what's wrong with 30 feet of crosswalk?
That's basically what you have now in the middle of Harvard Square, and that works OK. If you closed Newbury for a day and made Boylston two-way, you'd probably also turn off all the traffic lights on Boylston, turning each intersection into an all-way yield. So nobody's going to be speeding anyway.
Traffic lights
Fine, then put in pedestrian traffic lights all the way down Newbury if you want 30 ft of crosswalk twice a week for two months at a time. Because that's the _only_ reason it works in Harvard Square.
I'll bite
It would be the same thing that keeps people from driving into the pedestrian zone in Downtown Crossing - nothing.
Works fine there, with a few exceptions (I confess).
I agree with Kaz
I can't see how it could be done with out making traffic on Boylston St./Mass Ave/Comm Ave/Arlington St. a nightmare.
Way too much traffic to close those crossovers I think.
At the very least you would have to leave it open past hereford west and east past clarendon.
why not? it works ok
why not? it works ok elsewhere:
downtown crossing
church street, burlington
state street, madison
la rambla, barcelona
pearl street, boulder
in fact, one block away those very same cross streets don't even disrupt the commonwealth mall to the point of failure.
i think a pedestrian zone would be amazing, like parts of madrid around plaza mayor or north of puerta del sol, or parts of london or munich that come to mind, but to insist that its all or nothing is silly. a pedestrian street with traffic crossing is not a non-starter
Missing the premise, I think
I think you missed the premise. This would be a temporary street closure (like Mem Drive). Most if not all of the places you just listed are permanently closed.
Jane Jacobs...
made the argument about why this was wrong 50 years ago and all of her points still stand.