[UPDATE: event has been postponed again, due to rain. Event will be held June 10-11]
Newton’s planning department will have a Demonstration of a Demonstration this week. The Demonstration of a Demonstration refers to a new approach to communicating and testing changes in traffic patterns prior to spending lots of money and getting the wrong results, remember the Cyprus Cypress St interchange configuration and un-configuration?
For two days, the intersection of Washington Street and Walnut Street will feature a temporary traffic configuration that will demonstrate how the intersection could be redesigned to be more welcoming to all users. The temporary configuration will be made of movable materials and will include elements like curb extensions, pedestrian islands, bike lanes, parklets and art programming.
The trial will be in place for Friday May 13th and Saturday May 14th. According to James Freas, Acting Director or Planning, this location was selected as the one most mentioned during the Visioning Workshop held in February.
Two notes.
In the case of rainthis will be moved to June 10th-11th. The rain washes away the chalk lines and the trial was originally schedule for April 9th-9th. .- Most importantly, this is not a proposed design only a demonstration of how Newton could
devastateillustrate designs in the future.
You may want to take a look on Friday since some showers are in the forecast for Friday night.
Groot, thanks for the post, and for a great photograph of what’s possible in many of our village centers. In my own village of Auburndale, I’d love to see a parklet like that in front of Tom’s Pizza and Wally’s Ice Cream. Think also about how this could transform many locations along Washington Street, turning it from a thru-way into a livable street.
It hadn’t escaped my attention that, if you look closely, the people in the photo very likely biked there. Biking is good for business!
Groot, I hope the demonstration is on, but rain is forecast for Friday night and, if it rains, the demonstration may have to be postponed. Again.
It’s Cypress Street by the way, and I think it’s misguided to cite that project as a failure and a gross oversimplification to say that trials could have solved the problem. Angry residents forced a reversal of the curb configuration before the new intersection timing was functional (including concurrent crossing which was the key to moving more traffic) so we’ll never know for sure whether the curb alignment would have worked. The curb reconstruction (a very small portion of the state project funds, btw) was most likely a red herring. The change of traffic flow caused by the stop sign (a few hundred $ change) was most likely the problem, but instead angry residents and Aldermen prematurely forced the DPW to spend $20,000. It was a good example of what happens when 24 elected officials meddle in engineering projects, and another way we could help downsize the council. In the end, the new signals brought better pedestrian access as well as more “green time” to the traffic.
As for trials, they’re not new, but they’re excellent for educating the public about new possibilities, as we will hopefully see in Newtonville, and done properly can ease anxiety, but there are a lot of things which cannot be trialed easily, such as moving curbs outward, or independent changes which require more complex systems, like new signals, to work properly. More transparency going forward on public projects, along with trials where possible, are necessary so we can move forward and fix our streets and villages.
@Adam, thanks for the correction (post is updated). Cypress St was not an attempt at citing a failure so much as to illustrate a change that was reversed after some expenditures. Perhaps the “angry residents” would have been less angry after experiencing temporary changes with an opportunity to share their concerns and engage in a conversation as opposed to rising up to undo something that looked undoable. While the demonstration tool posted here is not new to you, it is new to me and not widely, if at all previously, used in Newton. I hope the demonstration turns out to be successful and helps the communication and engagement of Newton residents.
@Adam: You said: “It was a good example of what happens when 24 elected officials meddle in engineering projects, and another way we could help downsize the council.”
With half as many Councilors, each would have twice the political weight. What makes you think the one based in Newton Centre wouldn’t then meddle? I believe it wasn’t the Ward Councilor who interfered (for right or wrong). There is plenty of information to indicate that engineers don’t always have to live with their best calculations, oftentimes made under time stresses and with limited budgets.
Agreed, better communication, in both directions, and more transparency is critical. Cambridge DPW uses their website very effectively to explain projects, past, present, and future in ways that temporary sandwich boards and one-time meetings cannot. We ought to have tools like this not just to offer comprehensive explanation but also to better learn from past mistakes and successes. Without that information, people will take the wrong lessons away from big projects like Cypress Street.
Past attempts at trials in Newton have failed, partially because they weren’t accompanied by the communications piece. Some trials are difficult to do accurately (e.g. recreate the geometry without demolition) and others just look terrible and gave people false impressions (e.g. cones and sand bags). The consultant has some clever tricks that should make their trials more palatable, but they also picked a sites which lend themselves well to a trial. Some things, like parklets, are incredibly easy to try out or even implement as pop-ups. Hopefully we’ll see a lot more of this.
Sallee, I don’t think it was the ward reps who were to blame (some of those who meddled were Ward Aldermen from other wards, IIRC) but in my observation the at-large councilors (at least in ward 6) do an equal or even greater amount of local advocacy to their ward counterpart, just with a higher threshold of getting elected to office! My comment goes more to the process. If you’ve ever followed a public works project, before going to the full council it often has to go through at least 3 committees — PS&T, PF, Finance, sometimes preceded by traffic council, which was created by the Aldermen specifically to offload work better suited for professionals than the political process. Each committee has to start from scratch learning about the project and often lacks the necessary background to make the right decisions. And this is why the councilors complain there’s too much work for a smaller council!
That sounds reasonable to me! Makes me wonder whether this blog is getting too reasonable, friendly, and polite? 😉
BTW, I plan to dine at Cook this weekend and see what the streetscape trial looks like.
@Adam: Your response to me was published while I was writing my words above. I do not agree that a smaller council would make for better process. Having a DPW project go through the oversight of Finance, Public Facilities and Public Safety and Transportation brings the discerning eyes of perspectives that would be lost in a smaller Council, unable to (wo)man the various Council Committees. As I said engineers can make mistakes. Calculations and common sense don’t always separately describe the best universe.
I guess I don’t have to worry about too much agreement on this blog!!!!!!!
@Sallee, sure, there are risks to any project, but the ample oversight in this case certainly did not help. If anything, it made matters worse as the Aldermen objected without fully understanding the plans that had been presented to them only months before. The only objections I can remember in committee were over the raised crossing, which today people hardly even notice.
The City and its consultant Nelson Nygaard have done an excellent job with outreach and communication on this pop-up demo and other aspects of the Newton In Motion initiative. They’ve held a series of public outreach events and ample opportunities for public comment and feedback. Out of that collaborative and participatory process came the identification of Walnut St. as the first site for one of several demonstration pop-ups. No one can guarantee it will go off without a hitch, and hopefully residents will give the City a break as staff learns by doing; in addition to testing the waters with the public, that’s the key reason for trying this out.
That’s what I was agreeing to above…I am looking forward to seeing and experiencing the possible changes. No Luddite, I.
It is not accurate to say the Cypress st debacle was due to too many aldermen.
I believe it is accurate to say that as a community we did not give the Cypress St. changes enough time to fully understand the impact.
@Greg: I’m agreeing again.
from the ‘can’t please everyone’ dept: information sign trailer placed on the southbound side of Walnut just south of Lowell is placed in an obstructive location where southbound Walnut traffic attempting to avoid a settled in deep patch area at Lowell intersection run smack into the trailer.
Who’s in charge of choosing trailer site location anyways??
I look forward to this demonstration, both for the specific location and for the concept of previewing ideas.
Two points. First, every change in traffic flow takes time to people to get used to it. We should expect some backups due to driver curiosity and confusion and not assume any problems are inherent in any of the preview ideas. It’s a small price to pay for the experiment.
Second, other communities such as Cambridge and Boston use citizen advisory committees to provide technical review for traffic projects. In Cambridge, every new bike and pedestrian facility, public or private, is reviewed by their official Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committees (both of which are regularly attended by staff members of police, DPW, traffic, and planning departments).
This review has no formal weight other than to provide input to staff. However, it allows specialized knowledge about these kinds of traffic facilities to be developed in a cooperative group setting and applied before anything gets in the ground. The expertise that develops then becomes a resource to lawmakers when addressing any specific issue or project. For private developers, review counts for one element of public outreach.
Any number of critical details that might otherwise have been missed before construction have been caught by these advisory committees, and numerous good ideas implemented. It is much easier to deal with technical issues in a small stable group first than in a more general public meeting.
Newton has the advisory committees in place, but doesn’t seem to use them for advisory technical review. A lost opportunity to make every plan the best it can be, and to assist overworked city staff.
@Greg & Adam, and others:
Regarding Cypress Street. Unfortunately, it is easy to say to give a bad idea more time, when it doesn’t impact you greatly. For the people living in the area it was excruciating, and completely necessary. Back ups of over a half mile, never seen before, on any of the streets involved, now were common at 5PM, on some of them.
But what is worst, are those who have preconceived notions of the way things ought to be, and even when proven wrong,, somehow still suggest , but only if we had given it more time, and a bit of tinkering. It was horrible idea when put in place, and much better when reverted back again; what more evidence is necessary for the objective assessment of a poor plan, and poor implementation. Learn from it, don’t make excuses for it.
Neal, I experienced it, too. I’m not making excuses, but suggesting that we’re taking away the wrong lessons. There were at least three things in play: curb alignment, moving the stop control, and the not-yet-complete signals. Everyone rushed to judgement and assumed it was the curb alignment. In fact, both that and the stop control were undone, many other changes left in place, and the signal work proceeded anyway. They were all related. Not exactly a controlled experiment, so it’s difficult to truly understand which parts of the plan failed, but there are other observations we can make in terms of execution, outreach, and oversight (triple oversight from Aldermen prior to construction here seemed to have absolutely no benefit)
I hear you Adam, I hope you are open to hearing me too. I am suggesting, that long time residents knew this was a bad idea, from the moment it was discussed. Each aspect of it was bad, no light timing would have counteracted it.
Traffic control should follow the motto of “do no harm”, you better have thought it out well before messing around with such a delicate balance of traffic. (and they did not)
This was a cavalier project at best, with no real good reason to proceed. They made up nonsense of it being a dangerous intersection with head on collisions. I wonder what the numbers say, now that they haven’t done anything. Of course there will an occasional accident, particularly with so much going on in a short distance. But that plan should have been rejected before it ever started, all they had to do was ask the residents around there.
Neal, most of the project was not undone. You are entitled to your opinion and so are other residents (long timers or short timers) who disagree with you. Neighborhood input is essential, but if we gave in everytime some “long time resident” who knows better resisted change, nothing would ever get done. Things like induced demand make it difficult to do comparisons, but I agree that measurements before and after would be interesting, and projects should be justified and vetted far better than they have been. That’s what this transportation strategy project is all about.
This just in from Newton In Motion:
Due to thunderstorms in tomorrow’s forecast, the Newton-in-Motion Transportation Demonstration Project will be postponed to the scheduled rain date: Fri-Sat, June 10th – 11th. The reason for the delay is that one of the primary materials used to make this a temporary demonstration is washable paint.
For more information on the demonstration project and to participate virtually in Newton-in-Motion, we encourage everyone to visit http://www.newtonma.gov/transportationstrategy. There will be several ways to get involved online in the next couple months.
We hope you can come out to see the demonstration in June!
Best wishes,
Newton-in-Motion team