With all of the election posts, and with the school opening issues in a stagnant (but still unsatisfactory) place, I thought I’d post something a bit different as a change of pace.
As most readers of V14 probably know, the City has used the past year to make many changes to traffic flow and road designs all over, but especially in West Newton and Newtonville. In Newtonville some of this has been a part of the planning for new developments now complete or close, Trio and the new apartments at 28 Austin St.
Some observations:
- It will be interesting to see how the new CVS does now that it’s in the Trio development and not located in Newtonville proper (Walnut St. below the turnpike). It’s a longer walk for High Schoolers and HS staff. Open campus is a business opportunity! Also, the empty storefront of the old CVS location on Walnut Street adds to the depression-like feel in Newtonville. How many empty store fronts are there? At least 7….
- Has anyone actually tried walking to Trio/CVS/The Barn crossing Washington at Walnut St. or Lowell Ave. near the post office? There are long waits for a walk light, the actual walk light timing is pretty fast…I’m a speedy walker, but I get warned about time being close to up when I’m only half way across a fairly wide Washington St. Finally, with the placement of the crossing lights and crosswalks people turning right on red can easily miss a pedestrian about to cross…this happened to me. The driver was aggressive but behind me and 10-20 feet to my left. I got the walk light, but here comes the car barreling right at me….and this was a Sunday, not when kids are walking to/from NNHS or other nearby schools.
- Traffic calming measures – When you turn right from Walnut onto Austin at the supermarket there’s a right turn lane. There’s even an arrow painted onto the street as an indicator. Yet, just as you get to Austin and the faded crosswalk, there’s a newly added jut into the roadway effectively taking ½ the lane away…and forcing a car to veer left into the other lane before turning right. Was this intended? Eventually this has to cause an accident.
- Finally, Newtonville is a disaster for pedestrians trying to cross Walnut St. Even where there are crosswalks the paint is badly faded. Sure, the construction isn’t done, the new lanes and crosswalks aren’t final, but can’t we just put down some white paint, or, some barrels that indicate a crossing? I’ve even written to the City email box for citizen comments about the Newtonville improvement project, but never received a reply.
Maybe I’m just whining, but it just seems that we could and should do better. I wonder if our City officials are managing by walking around? They could learn a lot! I think this is highly relevant for our City Councilor elections, our non-race for Mayor, the police, and any senior City administrators. It’s really about Newton’s quality of life, what we claim, and the sometimes different reality.
Michael:
I understand the concerns, but I think you are judging a not fully baked cake. But happily, the cake should be fully baked within the next 3 months, if not sooner.
To address your points:
1) The new CVS is much better in my view. I’m sure the high schoolers miss a place to buy snacks, but generally in my experience the high school kids weren’t spending huge money in the CVS. And the Shaws carries the same snacks half a block a way. But the new CVS has free parking (and tons of it), a cleaner store, better layout, twice the size, and a pharmacy that doesn’t look like a prison. All in all, a huge improvement. As for the missing store, yep, pretty bad. But that is largely due to the pandemic I think. Newtonville is still pulling some very high rents, even for small space. Landlords on the block are a mix, some of them are able to still draw off older tenants, some are waiting for the right tenant, some don’t seem to care. The old pet shop space is owned outright by Village Bank I believe. The Rox Diner space only opened up due to the pandemic. And the CVS space is large and hard to fill. But all of those spaces will be filled within the next 12 months, or at least rented in that time frame. There is a massive turnover on retail due to the combo of Amazon/internet and Covid. Give it some time to come back. But Newtonville has a lot of advantages, and I see no reason that it won’t spring back in late 2021/2022.
2) I walked across both Lowell and Walnut over the past few weeks and not felt rushed. I actually have appreciated the new lighting system. But I do walk fast. I’ll watch out for it, and email the city if I agree.
3) I understand your point on the turn and bump out, but if you can patient for the paving markers and paving to come this spring, it really won’t seem the same way. There are similar bumpouts in other villages, you just process them differently without the paving markers.
4) I agree 100% on the crosswalks. They repainted them before the winter, but they were clearly temporary, and boy do we need the lights and the repaving to occur ASAP.
A prediction: once the street lights go in, the repaving happens, and the pavement markers are there, Newtonville is going to look great. I already see lots of folks using the new benches (and boy are there a lot of new benches). Once the weather gets better, there will be a lot of folks drinking coffee and eating ice cream, burritos and sandwiches along Walnut Street. I’m hoping for some new restaurants or eating establishments to come in. We are pretty set on coffee though. Mida is coming to Trio, as is Clover Food Lab. Mida looks terrific, can’t wait for that.
Any type of rehabilitation of village center is going to be painful to some degree. It is a rehab in place. But absent the need to wait the winter to finish the thing, I’ve been impressed so far. Hopefully the city can bring the process home, and the plantings, pavings, new lights, and all the finishing touches will be enough to change your mind.
I’ll add to the complaints. Going south on Walnut and turning left onto Washington Park, there’s now only one lane (there used to be a median area that served as a de facto left turn lane). So all southbound behind the turning car has to wait until northbound traffic pauses to allow the turn.
Given that this had to happen, you’d think the corner (where there are mailboxes) would have had a bump-out added—along with a pedestrian walkway, since there’s always a lot of pedestrian traffic right there between Brewer’s Coalition and the outlet of Highland Avenue. Instead, cars can park right up to the corner of Washington Park. This makes turning left out of Washington Park an exercise in blind faith that no cars are coming: another accident waiting to happen.
Finally, northbound Walnut Street traffic crossing Washington Street now has to swerve about a lane’s width to continue “straight” on Walnut. In theory that’s fine, since everyone in the left lane is supposed to turn left onto Washington. But it’s easy for someone in the left lane to decide they want to continue straight across Washington instead, since it’s now directly in line with their lane—as happened recently when I was driving north in the center lane. As I swerved left to stay in my lane, the driver to my left (supposedly in the left turn lane) simply drove straight ahead, and we had a near miss.
I was looking forward to to the traffic and pedestrian improvements Newtonville was supposed to get when the Austin Street development was completed, but I’m pretty underwhelmed by the outcome.
West Newton and Newtonville streets have become a mase of
lines, colors, symbols arrows bike lanes and sidewalk bump-outs that look like an attempt to micro manage traffic by someone with ocd. Can’t possibly be done by someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone is going to get hurt.
First, everything @Fig said +1. I’ve walked and biked through that intersection regularly since the new lights went in and it works smoothly for me. I’ll note that if you put in your mobile order for either Starbucks or George Howell as you’re standing in front of TRIO, it’s ready as you walk into the shop.
Also, worth noting that there are plans for the old CVS building to become street-front retail with housing above. So that’s likely to remain empty for a while by choice as the new building goes through permitting and construction.
I would add one more thing: the goal of the village center is not to move cars through quickly, but to increase commerce. Cars driving through to get somewhere else doesn’t do the job. Also, for many years the city has tried to push through-traffic over to other streets, including Lowell, which has fewer lights and acts as a smoother access to Comm Ave. I believe (and this is just me, so take it for what it’s worth) that part of the goal here is to focus on Newtonville as a destination, not a thru-access. That is, encouraging people to go there TO stop, not to drive through. During the planning stages of W. Newton I heard the same idea coming across, as people wanted W. Newton to be more than just the access point to the Pike.
Time will tell if that plays out.
Hi Michael.
Like Fig said, they’re not done, and they can’t put down thermoplastic or do all sorts of things until it warms up. In Newton Centre, public outrage at conditions during construction, when new signals had not yet been programmed, forced the DPW to alter plans before they were done, and I think that was a missed opportunity. Hope the ped improvements in Newtonville are great when the project is complete, but at the same time we must realize that approved designs are often a compromise with councilors who choose to give priority to traffic flow over traffic calming. We can’t have it both ways.
If you’re talking about the orange hand, that’s an indication that a ped should no longer begin to cross. Even at that point, the engineers are required to provide enough time for the slightly-below average walker to get across.
Sounds like you’d be a fan of a Washington Street road diet? It was pretty nice when Trio had a lane blocked off for construction with Jersey barriers. Wish it stayed that way. The city didn’t have the courage to take that on during the pandemic, but maybe there will be another chance soon.
The answer is yes, you are just whining. But, this seems to be the/a place to do it. Indeed, given how much whine is served here, we should have to card people before they can post.
It’s so incredibly much easier to cross Walnut St in the redone section of Newtonville now. The crosswalks are shorter, there are more of them, and cars are going slower and actually stopping for pedestrians now.
West Newton is… a bit of a mess, clearly still a work in progress. They did manage to install & activate the new traffic lights, but I’ve heard they’re not properly synchronized yet and the couple of times I’ve driven through there have not been smooth. The West Newton design leans more on pavement markings because there’s just more pavement than in Newtonville, and they can’t put down the final markings until the new layer of asphalt. But the markings for cars, pedestrians, and bikes are pretty confusing in their current unfinished condition.
I’ll add two complaints — 1) I find myself NOT stopping in Newtonville as parking is so much more challenging. There is so few spots left to park on Walnut Street that I now just go elsewhere to the bank, nails, drug store (before CVS moved). 2) It’s also frustrating that they took away that middle lane that allowed traffic to move around cars waiting for parking. Inevitably when the pandemic is over and people are back to their normal routines, we are going to see lots of frustrating traffic scenarios on Walnut street in Newtonville.
Just a couple of comments. I think that once Newtonville is ‘complete’ with lighting and pavement and markings it will be great. It will take time for the retail to fill back in but I am confident that will happen.
As to the bike lane marking when traveling North at Walnut where it crosses Washington, I think they should consider repainting it so it goes out straight first before angling into the bike lane. This will eliminate the feeling that cars turning from Walnut to go West on Washingon won’t interfere with cars traveling North across Wash on Walnut.
As to Chuck’s comments about the old CVS being rebuilt, can anyone point to what is being planned? Those are all 1 story buildings so is someone planning to take out the entire block between the Masonic Temple and Madison? I’d love to know more about this.
David B., I’d love to know more about that as well. How many stores does it involve?
I do wish the City would update the status of the Newtonville Improvements again as well on their website. Not the biggest deal in the world, but a lot of folks wonder about it, and it does seem to be taking forever (I understand why, but throw us some information!).
My family and I have been debating the benches. They are growing on me, and I love how many of them there are. But I’m also hoping some of the shops put on little seating areas again.
My issue with the bump outs is that the sidewalks are skinny in front of restaurants that could use the extra space for patios and wider in front of the banks and retail spaces. On the east side of Walnut it is skinny in front of Brewers & Aji, and then wider in front of the optician and bank. Guessing the civil engineering wsa fixed based on the road and side street configuration, but it feels like a missed opportunity