- Improve safety for everyone by slowing speeds and reducing conflicts, especially for younger people traveling by foot, bicycle, and school bus
- Improve walking and biking connectivity between Washington Street and the Charles River.
This Neighborways project arose in response to public concerns about the dangers of traveling by foot and bicycle along the Albemarle corridor from Washington Street to the Charles River. The changes will create much safer crossings at Albemarle and Watertown Street, the bridge, and Crafts Street. The changes along Brookside and Albemarle, including a fully buffered bike lane, will make it significantly safer for cyclists here. This plan will also tie in with the Washington Street Vision Plan, to be tested on a trial basis this summer. The bike lanes created along Washington Street will feed into a safer route to the Charles River Way, a shared bicycle/pedestrian path that runs for miles between Boston and the western suburbs.
Needless to say, some resistance has emerged to certain features of the project. The biggest concern so far is the back-in angle parking. This change in the configuration of parking increases the safety of bicyclists using the bike lanes on Albemarle Road. Those lanes, painted onto the road surface, have no physical separation from the street. Angling the parking, with the driver facing the road, gives drivers better visibility of bikes and other cars while creating extra space for the lanes themselves.
Other residents have complained about the diminished number of parking spaces resulting from the shift from perpendicular parking to angled. The benefits, however, outweigh the loss. If the city truly wants to encourage more bicycles and pedestrians and fewer automobiles as part of its climate action plan, it must take steps to make people feel safer when walking or biking. That might require sacrificing some parking spaces and improving bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, as is proposed in the Newighborways project.
This project, to be sure, is merely a first step or trial run for more permanent changes. It complements an SRTS grant, scheduled for FY25, that will focus specifically on improving the safety of the Crafts and Albemarle intersection where there have been many recent serious vehicle crashes. Employing mostly paint and posts, the Neighborways project will test things out before we invest in a more fully re-engineered Albemarle Road: a project that addresses the flooding risk of Cheesecake Brook and the safety of all road users.
How scary is it for residents on foot and bicycle near Albemarle Park? Ask the locals and you will get an earful. It’s even dangerous to drive there. Let’s make changes to remedy the situation! The first steps? Slow down the traffic, improve the infrastructure, and encourage more residents to walk and bike, instead of driving, to the park and the schools there.
This is a good start. A couple of worthy additional improvements would be to signalize the Crafts/Albemarle intersection and to address the periodic flooding of Cheese Cake Brook during heavy rains.
(I overlooked the part about the Brook; it’s good to see it will be part of the project0.
Thanks, Andreae. Glad to hear that Crafts and Albemarle will be signalized. There’s really no other solution. Between the speed of drivers coming down the hill on Crafts, limited sight angles, traffic volumes at rush hour, pedestrians crossing, and vehicles turning against traffic, there’s no other solution.
Bob, thank you for posting this. With its recreation facilities and multiple schools (Fessenden, NECP, F.A. Day Middle School), the Albemarle corridor enjoys so many visitors throughout each day and week. Each school day buses load and unload, kids stream down the hill from the neighborhood to the west and cross at the footbridge, NECP parents park and walk their students over to NECP. With no formal route for people on bikes, kids on bikes are in all places. The Crafts/Albemarle intersection, with de facto multiple approach lanes from the south and north limiting driver visibility, has seen recent dramatic, high impact crashes and has resulted in Horace Mann and F.A. Day families who live close to the schools driving their kids, further exacerbating traffic concerns. (FWG, the Safe Routes infrastructure award will likely include signalization of the Crafts/Albemarle intersection, with work to begin in FY25/Summer 2026).
The Albemarle Neighborways project will organize bicycle and vehicle movements through the corridor with a focus on safety and predictability. DPW is additionally installing some of the suggestions from the Road Safety Audit that was part of the Safe Routes to School grant that will make the Crafts/Albemarle intersection immediately safer for drivers and people walking and biking. I have been part of formal and informal observations at that intersection and have seen too many near misses each time, most caused by driver frustration at the traffic congestion.
The school arrival/dismissal traffic congestion scourge will only be ameliorated by providing safe, convenient and comfortable walking and biking routes to school. This will help with parking concerns at the fields and pool as well. There are many streets within a 5-minute walk of Albemarle where one can park and walk over to Albemarle, but only with a safer Albemarle corridor and crossings. This project will be a strong next step in making the Albemarle area work better for everyone. I hope that City Council votes to approve the project, which is fully funded and ready to be implemented this summer.
This is all great and I applaud all involved in making this plan happen for improving student and cyclist safety. Again I see no confirmation that accessible parking access aisles will be 8 feet, not 4 feet.
What happens if the reverse parking is a disaster? Will the bike lanes still stay?
Its definitely not easy, and can imagine cars getting hit if the spaces are not wide. I tried when city hall did it… i could barely do it
FWG–in 2025/6 the Albemarle/Crafts intersection will be signalized–Newton got a state highway grant for that. In the meantime, Newton’s Transportation Division will be making some changes to improve safety in that space–already the speed limit has been lowered to 20 mph because of the schools/parks, etc. along Crafts there.
Another impetus for this project was the crazy driver behavior, particularly at school arrival and dismissal–passing stopped school buses with red lights flashing, near-misses of masses of students walking across at the bridge. A good portion of Albemarle southbound has no sidewalk, either. If I were a parent with a middle school kid at Day, that would make me nervous.
Thank you, Bob, for illuminating the important work underway to make Albemarle safer for all who live near, play at and pass through this vibrant city asset. As Friends of Albemarle shared when presenting the petition (https://friendsofalbemarle.org/2023/02/14/safer-streets-petition), “Everyone who enjoys, uses, commutes, exercises, or appreciates Albemarle is at risk due to the unsafe driving in the area.”
We need immediate action to prevent the kinds of accidents and reckless behavior we’ve all observed (https://friendsofalbemarle.org/2023/01/20/four-high-speed-accidents-in-eight-weeks). Some of it needs to come in the form of engineering, from flex posts to speed bumps, and some of it needs to be in the form of new behavior that prioritizes safety over convenience. Yep, like changing the way we park.
Back-in parking on Homer St. did have detractors – though I always found it FAR easier than backing out onto Albemarle. Everyone who has ever backed out of those spaces knows that blindly moving across that roadway risks the lives of those biking, walking and driving down the road. Just tonight, dropping my son off at soccer, I again witnessed the honking and yelling that comes with people backing out – and then speeding off in frustration, down a road filled with children, seniors and others trying to get to the park.
If we can’t agree to try it at Albemarle, then we should reduce parking there by 50% and make it all parallel parking. Keeping it as is can no longer be an option. We have to make it safer.
The safest bike lane on the pool side would be in the park (not part of the roadway) especially if we want it to be used for locals to get to the pool and the schools. Can anyone imagine students or pool goers actually using the bike lane as designed when they can just ride on the sidewalk or through the park? At least this way we give them their own path. This change would also do away with the back in parking which seems awfully devisive.
Billy, the new Albemarle Park design will have multi-use paths in the park space to get to activities, primarily along the quieter eastern edge. Those paths will also connect to F. A. Day. The lanes on the road helps get people to the park and enables a better connection between Washington St. and the Charles River.
Why wouldn’t the north bound bike lane go between the sidewalk and parking? Most cyclists going down this road are likely there to visit the fields, playground or pool and they would have to cross the road to get to those places. This would provide cyclists a much safer option.
Hi Kyle, the idea of putting the lane near the park side is appealing and was considered.
Unfortunately, things like access to the curb for handicapped parking and loading/unloading buses, plus no way to prevent vehicles from protruding into the lane, meant that such a lane wasn’t viable for this low cost project.
Ideally, bidirectional bike travel would be allowed along the field, while also maintaining on-road through connections between Washington St and the river.
This is all good news. I witnessed the aftermath of a kid getting hit on his bike a few weeks back at Albemarle and Craft. He was ok and the driver was helping him up but, then everybody starts honking. I wanted to get out and start screaming at them ” There is a hurt kid lying in the road. Should we just kill him so you are on time to soccer practice?!!”. Drives me crazy how rude everybody is. A traffic light there should really help.
Based on the proposed design there is no traffic light or crossing flashers being added to the craft street intersection. Cyclists will still have to cross all 3 lanes to continue on Albemarle in either direction.
The intersection of Craft St and Albemarle will get some improvements including flex posts near the two crosswalks across Craft. This will keep the traffic to one lane each direction. This intersection will be improved with a much larger grant that will be installed in two years. It is currently being designed.