Newton Mayor Setti Warren and Needham Selectman Chair Matt Borelli have sent a joint letter to MassDOT objecting to changes that would delay the redesign of Needham Street.
The City of Newton and the Town of Needham strongly object to the proposed delay the redesign will have on the Corridor project and to the fact that MassDOT has taken this step absent consultation with elected and appointed officials in our two communities.
The increase was overstated by $6.8M, perhaps the delay is, too? Way too many unanswered questions here. Perhaps instead of being dismissive of improvements we should find out what’s really going on here.
and maybe, just maybe, this was never about bike lanes.
Feels like some very basic and crucial information is missing here: Would adding bike lanes to Needham Street require removing one or more vehicular travel lanes? What would that do to traffic flow? How many cars and trucks a day use Needham Street? How many bicyclists are projected to use a Needham Street bike lane? What would it cost to turn the old Needham Branch rail trail into a paved bikeway, and how well would that serve bicycle travel in this area and at what cost compared to a bike lane on Needham Street? Was the concept of adding a bike lane discussed before now and rejected by DOT? Why? Why is this coming up now? What is “Adam” darkly alluding to above? Thank you.
@Peter
The street has had bike lanes as part of the design from the beginning, but the difference with what is now coming out is that the bike lanes are protected. This is in line with what is happening elsewhere in Newton, Massachusetts and the country. It’s proven that protected bike lanes encourage cycling and, in the process, reduce vehicular traffic.
There are a number of different roadway designs being considered with varying widths of travel lanes. The designs that I’ve seen (which have all been at 75%) also clean up the entrances and exits to the properties and make for better traffic flow.
As for the question about the number of cars or bikes, that’s a much more complicated thing to answer. A lot of the car trips are short hops that people make by car because it’s not a walk-friendly environment. The same thing doesn’t happen in a place like Newton Centre, where people park once. If you encourage more walking AND adjust the crossing points, then you can create a better traffic flow.
Newton Transportation Director Nicole Freedman had a great line during the West Newton presentation and I’ll paraphrase here: you don’t build a bridge based on how many people swim across the river. We know there is latent demand for cyclists, we see it throughout the N-Squared Innovation District. If you give bikes an access point to retail and services, they’ll take it.
Which is actually the same reason the Greenway doesn’t handle all the cycling traffic. It’s a great amenity to the neighborhood, but it can’t act as the only bike access point.
Thank you, Chuck, very much for this additional information. It would have been great to have had this in the original TAB coverage. If you don’t mind a followup … Is there a URL for a site with images that would make clear what a ‘protected bike lane’ would look like in this area (raised curbs? plastic bollards? a zebra-stripe buffer painted on the asphalt?) and also make clear: Newton, Needham, and MADOT signed off on doing THIS … but we’re now proposing MADOT do THAT, and here is why?? Mayor Warren’s letter makes it sound like having protected bike lanes would jeopardize one of the three lanes on the new bridge over the Charles River, so you’d still wind up with a bottleneck and gridlock. What does the revised design mean for the three-lane bridge? Thank you again for bringing visibility into this process.
Let me start with the toughest question: the bridge.
I’m not sure there is a good answer for that. The last I heard, the bridge could only accommodate three lanes and a bit of pedestrian access. I don’t know if that has changed at all as there is no indication one way or another. We were told that there is no way to expand the bridge and make it wider, but that’s just things I’ve heard, I can’t say what has been considered, nor can I indicate what will happen at this point.
Protected bike lanes in this case are likely to mean either curbs, raised lanes that are sidewalk height, or flex posts. Paint doesn’t qualify as protected.