One of the signs that we seem to be on the mend: the traffic is back. Parents driving their kids to South and the south-side middle schools say it was the worst traffic they’ve seen in years, even prior to the pandemic. Even with encouragement to walk and bike to school, with school back in session full time, a new temporary schedule with nearly overlapping arrival and dismissal times, very few kids on the school buses, no MBTA bus, and rainy weather, it was a perfect storm of sorts. Traffic backed up for close to a mile on Parker Street. How were people moving around in your neighborhood today?
On a related note: Traffic Council is hearing an item tonight to install bicycle lanes on Parker Street
My kids took the bus since Kindergarten however, my under 16 year old is not vaccinated so I won’t let her take the bus. I hope she can do the bus in the fall. I drop her off a few blocks from South in the morning. I miss the school bus!
The bike lane item passed Traffic Council tonight, 5-0. Several Parker Street residents spoke passionately for traffic calming protecting young cyclists. Several others spoke passionately for rarely used on-street parking and the inconvenience bike lanes might cause landscapers. I’ll just leave it there.
Does anyone know the history of Great Meadow Road being on way from Parker to Brandeis? It makes absolutely no sense.
*One way
Don’t you just love it when landscapers block the streets with their pick-ups and horse trailers and then force children and other pedestrians to walk out into the street to get by them while they ride their exhaust-spewing mowers along and over the sidewalk and blast clouds of dirt into the air and on to the street with their leaf blowers!
Kudos to Nicole Freedman, Jason Sobel & crew who ran an open & inclusive public process to make the Parker St bike lane happen. And they brought the data to address concerns about parking.
Some of that gridlock is composed of high school students driving themselves. They must feel very grown up to be stuck in gridlock just like their parents & teachers.
@Nathan. we shouldn’t blame the students. The blame is squarely on the School Committee. The school committee was caught asleep at the wheel. Free bus service for all students would help solve this situation – we should not charge for bus service now or ever. It is crazy that the city of Newton uses bus transportation as a way to increase revenue for the schools. This practice needs to stop.
Second, the school committee should be demanding temporary protected bike lanes for safe access to the schools. We expect students to cross too many busy streets to get to school. Some high schoolers and middle schoolers have to cross Rt 9 and ride along Parker to get to school. That is crazy.
During Covid, the lack of leadership and creativity from the school committee is astounding. We deserve better.
Jackie, I wasn’t blaming the students, even those who we’ve indoctrinated to feel like they’ve joined the world of grownup car culture. I blame all the adults in the room, who’ve shown kids from kindergarten on that all their adult role models drive. Just like Lisle Baker put it: “Newton is a place where people drive.”
Part of the problem is the amount people in Newton drive has increased (excepting a brief break for Covid).
Daily Miles Driven per Newton Resident went from 20 in 2015 to 24.7 in 2019. (MassDOT statistics).
This mirrors what is happening in the entire country. All the gains in reduced air pollution from increased fuel efficiency in cars have been obliterated by increased vehicle miles traveled – and the vast majority of the increase in VMT is from personal vehicles (as opposed to mass transit, commercial trucks, etc.)
Agreed, Jackie. Also, there just aren’t enough bus stops! I have a child going off to Day in the fall and I was looking at the bus stop map. The only his stop within reasonable distance is a 15+ minute walk in the wrong direction. I can see why parents opt to drive – the stops are too spread out making it not necessarily worth the fees. We are trying to think of the best options for getting to Day which is 1.75 miles away. My child has a visual spatial disability making bike riding an unsafe/unlikely option.
We make it cheaper to drive than take the bus, and our bus service is poor. We make it unsafe to walk or bike. We cut down old oak trees for pavement. School committee members have argued that traffic calming will produce road rage that literally risk running down students. Zero schools have parking & transportation demand management plans.
Once parents feel confident, more students will ride the bus. But I agree that bus service to school should be free to all and that biking routes ought to be made safer. As a teacher who cycled to Newton South for over three decades, I am glad to see so many bikes parked outside school these days. But more students would bike and not be driven to school if everyone felt safer on Newton’s crowded roads. The bike lanes on Parker Street will help (hooray!), but more needs to be done.
We normally are a bus family but my kid isn’t vaccinated so I am not comfortable with the bus right now. Hoping for September. The high school busses pre Covid had busses that arrived at 4 pm to pick up students (when school got out at 3:20). My kid made due but I am hoping post Covid the bus schedules and stops make sense.
A year ago there was a four way stop sign at the Roosevelt Road/Theodore Road intersection that was supposed to help this congestion. However, due to a “traffic volume study” during the height of the pandemic when NSHS was closed, the stop signs on Roosevelt Road were “deemed unnecessary” and taken down. While the stop sign for Theodore Road and a private way still remain, perhaps this should be revisited now that Carmageddon is a thing again?
I also agree with Alex’s comment about landscapers showing up at random times to do yard work, sometimes right during the height of the school rush. This certainly exacerbates the problem of trying to commute to schools, though may not have an easy solution either.
Those stop signs were utterly ridiculous in my opinion, One of the four streets is a private driveway for a single house. And why would this four way stop arrangement help reduce congestion?
My kids have had some convoluted bus routes. Going from the Highlands to Newton Center to Waban and then to Christina st via chestnut then to Brown . In 8th grade I just had my child cross Centre St to Clark catch a bus directly to Brown. At Hs that is not an option as buses don’t stop at Clark. The crossing of Centre from Cushing to Clark needs a flashing light. It is very difficult for walkers and bike riders to cross there as people driving consistently ignore them. Someone emailed traffic about this but I don’t think it went anywhere. Letting my kids ride their bikes also made me incredibly nervous due to the RT9 crossing where there is a lot going on in many directions…people coming off RT9 at 2 points and people turn left from Clark etc. I also believe that when kids cross Parker on the North side of right 9 it is not a dedicated pedestrian crossing, that cars can turning right off rt 9 and left from Clark i found it difficult for my kids to ride home from Hs with sports due to darkness in the fall. Since it looks like the school day is going to end later I worry about more kids riding home in the dark .
Agree about the need for flashing lights. All along Centre street there are dangerous crossings: Woodcliff/Hyde, Cushing/Clark, and two in Newton Center: at Langley Road and at Pleasant Street. Our traffic council is usually quite proactive about safety issues and I cannot understand why nothing is being done about this.
@Newtoner for Cushing/Clark maybe they don’t realize how many kids go that way to school. There are a fair amount of kids who bike around Lake or come from the Highlands that come via side sts to cross Centre @cushing. I was thinking a light like they have on Parker where the light actually goes red then flashing red but I guess I would take a flashing sign too. I believe there is actually a flashing sign at Centre and Pleasant which I was glad to see because that is a dangerous crossing where one lane going southbound may stop and a car on the other lane doesn’t realize why the other car is stops and they continue or go around them in the second lane since they can’t see the pedestrian. I am 99% sure I saw the flashing sign there as I thought it is about time.
On the other side of town people seem to be going pretty fast through the village center of Newtonville. It’s now pretty tight there. I hope kids use side streets to avoid that area when biking go NN.
I hope the school committee will examine bus fees and student parking fees. The fees are about the same. One would think that if Newton were so green, the SC would ramp up parking fees for students to help subsidize bus expenses
More people = more cars = more traffic. Call it the Density Triangle. It’s all related, If you want one, embrace the others.
That said, happy the Parker Street bike lanes got approved. Don’t think it will improve traffic, but it won’t hurt it because unlike other bike lanes in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, car lanes are not sacrificed for bike lanes. And kids that opt to bike to school can do so more safely!
Less parking, less cars, less traffic.
Housing built on parking lots = more people, less traffic.
Less parking, more dissatisfied residents, new Board of Alderman, more parking.
Housing built on parking lots = more underground parking.
Realistically, how many families are going to move somewhere where there’s not enough parking? Not everyone can get to work using our sub-par public transit and not everyone is comfortable or physically able to bike everywhere. I feel like building without enough parking is naive without a majorly substantial public transit overhaul. (Which I think we really really need)
When are the bike lanes on Parker going to be painted? After the double yellow lines have faded….
Speeds on Parker are too high for me to allow my kids to ride on those bike lanes when they head to the middle school in a few years.
@Dalek, bicycle lanes were approved by Traffic Council last week. The city has to wait for an appeals period of a couple more weeks, then the lines can be painted. The thermoplastic should last a while.
But Dalek’s point is well taken. Veteran cyclists can manage painted bike lanes, which are better than nothing but hardly safe. Observations by parents like Dalek make the irrefutable point that we need dedicated, separate bike lanes to make streets like Beacon and Parker truly safe for young adults. Right now bicycle advocates embrace any proposal that creates a space for bicycles. Ultimately, though, Newton needs to reconfigure its streets to slow down traffic and to create safer streets for cyclists and pedestrians. It seems that everyone behind the wheel is in a rush.
MMQC, I’m supportive of your position. I don’t think “everyone” should bike or walk. And I do think that the barriers you identify – poor transit service, unsafe streets and sidewalks – rule out using active transportation for a large number of people who would otherwise like to have those choices.
At Bike Newton (where I’ve been part of since 2009) we are making a concerted effort to become better allies for people of all abilities, learning about the challenges disabled people face on our streets and sidewalks, whether they are in cars, wheelchairs, handcycles, or using walkers. And we are advocating for changes to address the legitimate problems you identify that prevent people and families like yours from having healthy, safe and convenient mobility options. Allocation of precious space on streets and parking lots is a big and contentious core of this issue, so it’s not an easy conversation, for sure.
Where’s the like button when you need it? Thanks for your advocacy, Nathan.
I agree Nathan, disabled and bike/ped advocates have much common ground and should be allies. Both seek to protect the most vulnerable road users and encourage human-centered design. Despite this, leaders of Newton’s Commission on Disabilities consistently come out against bicycle and pedestrian safety measures and, based on what I heard at the last meeting, do so out of spite and ignorance. It was very disappointing. This shouldn’t be a turf war. It would benefit both communities to learn about each other’s challenges and show a lot more empathy.
MMQC, we so need all of the above when it comes to transportation. The most important thing we can do is give people more reliable choices. We will reduce congestion, improve our environment, and make new and interesting places one trip at a time. That builds a resilient system. We can’t just think about getting people to give up their cars or forcing choices onto them. We have to make the other choices more appealing, and that starts by making them at the very least viable and safe.
What does more choice mean? You can drive to work, or take the T (potentially multiple lines or buses). To get the T, you could walk, bike, or drive depending on the circumstance. If you need to, you can take ride share. At your destination, you could walk to lunch or use bike share for a quick errand that you’d otherwise need a car for. After work, you can stop by a marker, bakery, drug store, or restaurant for takeout in a village center. You can choose based on time, weather, and how you feel.
But your choices are made for you if you don’t have a sidewalk, a safe neighborhood street, or we’ve had a big snow and the sidewalks aren’t clear. Or you live far from the T, or the T’s schedule doesn’t match yours, or it’s not reliable. Or your village or neighborhood doesn’t have viable walk-in stores, or they don’t have bike parking. Default: all trips all the time by car, even if you get stuck in horrendous traffic. And that’s one of the worst choices for our growing community and warming planet.
Schools are such a great place to start to offer more choices and encourage ones that are a net benefit for the community as a whole. We control the schools. We control the buses. Schedules are relatively fixed. We in general know where people are coming from. So much of our traffic is school related, so if we improve school traffic we improve our overall traffic.
The flip side is safety. Being driven or driving to school is statistically the most dangerous way to travel, yet right now we are seeing many more parents driving their kids because of COVID. Making biking and walking to school even easier and more appealing gives everyone more choices for schedules, independence, and health. We have to improve safety, but we also have to improve the sense of safety. The reality is that our neighborhood streets are generally safe enough for, say, middle school age kids to ride on the street where they don’t conflict with pedestrians, but they don’t because of a perception of safety. That’s a perception of adults (primarily parents) that gets passed on to kids, who then never develop the skills to ride safely in a metropolitan environment like Boston.
One quick example: many people focus on the need for separated bike facilities, and they definitely encourage more riders, especially kids and novices. However, if you look at Newton’s crash statistics, most bike crashes happen at intersections. In a built-up environment like Newton, it’s very hard to make intersections 100% conflict-free for cyclists (though we could do much better for pedestrians than we do now). What we need is a combination of bike riders who have gained experience from riding, law-abiding drivers, and modern traffic signals and infrastructure design that minimizes conflicts.
And that finally brings me to “traffic culture”. We need to change traffic culture in Newton. Cultural changes are always slow and hard. However, there are plenty of cities of towns not too far from here where people treat pedestrians and, perhaps to a lesser extent, bicyclists with more deference and respect. Where drivers are looking more for the kid near the street than for sneaking a peek at their cell phone. It shouldn’t be too hard to say we are a community where the safety of every road user, starting with the most vulnerable, is paramount. Where we accept that people are imperfect and sometimes make inexperienced or stupid decisions, but that they shouldn’t cost someone’s life. And where people have confidence enough to do such outlandish things like cross the street or ride a bike to their neighborhood school or village without fearing for their health of lives.
Let’s start by defining the kind of place we want to live, and then shape policies and infrastructure to meet that vision. People across the entire spectrum from the car-free to those who say “Newton is a driving city” should be able to come to consensus about safety and respect for all road users through a robust transportation system that offers people choices.
@Mike- While I agree with the overall sentiment of your post, I disagree that the reason more kids do not bike to school is due to the perception of adults that it is dangerous. The danger for kids biking on Parker St to Newton South, Oak Hill, or Brown is not perception. It is reality. Cars drive fast down Parker St and there is only a narrow strip of road for bikes to travel. I assure you it is not my perception that it is dangerous for my kids to bike that street. It is fact and I would not want them biking down Parker on a daily basis in its current condition.
Agreed!
Bruce, I don’t mean to say that higher speed roads like Parker aren’t a hazard for bicyclists. They are. We should l keep making them better. I also don’t mean to belittle perceptions of safety. We live our lives based on risk assessment and make our choices. On top of absolute safety, lower stress travel is wonderful. If it doesn’t feel safe and it isn’t enjoyable, many of us just won’t do it. (And that overlooks people who don’t have a choice. Those tend to be voiceless and invisible people who often get overlooked in general.)
Unfortunately, though, we won’t be able to build ourselves completely out of this problem. Every practical route will involve roads without dedicated bike facilities, or driveways, or intersections. These hazards tend to be hazards for pedestrians and those with disabilities as well. To deal with these hazards, we need to rely on human behavior to avoid injury or death.
We need to do the engineering stuff. But all of our actions, be they engineering, policy, social pressure, or bully pulpit all need to work toward building a culture of safety and slowly changing driving behavior. At the same time I believe we’ll change a general attitude toward the safety and viability of walking and biking as well.
Maybe this should be its own thread, but Newton being cut off from the commuter rail for half the day is a huge problem IMO. Imagine moving to one of these “transit oriented” buildings in Newton, getting rid of a car because there’s not enough parking, then seeing commuter rail access being reduced. This could have a devastating effect for the new apartments springing up around Washington Street and an even more devastating effect on traffic in the area. I hope this can be remedied.