City faces uncertain fight for Lechmere market; some unsure it will fight
The Lechmere T stop could become a public market if Cambridge government fights for it, according to discussion at an April meeting. (Photo: Marc Levy)
The plan to build a public market in the proposed Lechmere Square in East Cambridge is not yet out of the question, but the city will have to doggedly negotiate with state transportation officials.
At a Transportation, Traffic and Parking Committee meeting April 28, city councillor Craig Kelley acknowledged the council does not have as much clout in these matters as the state Department of Transportation, but said Cambridge will work to make the state aware of residents’ wishes.
“My fear is, once the state and NorthPoint get their respective plans to a certain point, we won’t be able to impact them much,” he said.
Building the market will also depend on the development of NorthPoint, the 43-acre development that will become home to the Lechmere MBTA station and train yard when the stop moves from its current location.
To build the 30-stall, 1920s-style public market in the emptied station space, the city will have to block a plan to expand Monsignor O’Brien Highway. Widening the highway, even by a bit, would render plans for the market unfeasible.
Expanding the highway, however, would give drivers the chance to make a right turn onto First Street, which could ease the flow of traffic down Third Street toward Kendall Square. The highway would narrow again after the turn.
But cutting down on area traffic may not be that simple: As East Cambridge resident John Paul pointed out during the hearing, First and Third streets let out in different areas, meaning many people may keep their current routes to and from Kendall Square through Third Street.
“If that’s the case, it doesn’t really relieve the traffic,” he said. “I’m not advocating increased traffic on Third Street either, but I’m saying if it’s perceived as largely commuter traffic, why not send it further on down to the intersection near the Museum of Science, where there is a lot of room … rather than sending it through city streets, and turning what is an urban residential condition into a suburban superhighway condition?”
With Lechmere Station on the other side of the highway and a wider highway, some commuters would have to cross six lanes of traffic to get to East Cambridge homes and businesses.
Reluctant champion
Heather Hoffman, a Cambridge resident and real estate attorney, suggested those relying on the city to fight for a market and against widening the highway had chosen a reluctant champion. Based on attendance at Green Line Extension meetings, she felt Cambridge’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department was motivating the widening of the highway.
Somerville is against it and has made its concerns known to the Department of Transportation,Hoffman said.
“Somerville doesn’t want to be split in two by a surface highway,” she said. “Somerville is actively working, as I understand, to change the road dramatically. And yet, what Cambridge is insisting on … I was told in no uncertain terms that every bit of this push [to widen the highway] is coming from Cambridge. If Somerville is trying to make this a significantly better road to have in a city, to make it possible for actual humans to cross the road, then what the heck are we doing undoing all of it?”
Somerville wants to “boulevard” the highway — lowering as it passes through the city — and is working with the state on a study to see if it is possible, but results will not be released until 2012.
Further complicating matters is the fact the city’s traffic and pedestrian data come from a study completed nearly eight years ago, and the picture may be significantly different now and when the project is completed. Transportation committee members were also unsure who would build the new Lechmere Station – The MBTA, NorthPoint developers or the city of Cambridge?
Kelley said he will order a request to City Manager Robert W. Healy to look into contracts with NorthPoint and verify who is responsible for building the station. He also said he will seek updated traffic study numbers, and any decisions about the fate of the area would have to wait a number of weeks until the committee has better information.
Let me elaborate. The City of Cambridge is not monolithic. Outside of Traffic and Parking, Lechmere Square has gotten a significant amount of visible, helpful support, including from the City Council, Community Development and the City Manager, not to mention private developer interest. The problem I see is that the Green Line Extension team is not listening to that support in formulating its plans; it is only listening to Traffic and Parking, which is unwavering in its insistence on widening the O’Brien Highway for one or two blocks where there is no bottleneck; the actual bottleneck is on the Charles River Dam, which can’t be widened. Even that is up for debate, given our recent experience with months-long closures of one direction of traffic on the Dam with no visible effect on O’Brien Highway traffic.
My neighbor John Paul is correct about the differences in traffic that would use First Street rather than Third Street; if First Street were so attractive, why aren’t cars using it now, when it has four lanes (at least nominally, when you overlook the illegal parkers, especially the ones from Cambridge Traffic and Parking outside their First Street facility) and very little traffic? I don’t accept the Traffic and Parking response that that’s because First Street doesn’t go through to O’Brien Highway. In my opinion, the jog around the end of the current Lechmere Station, which has dedicated turn lanes in every relevant direction and a traffic light, is nowhere near the barrier to traffic flow that six or more blocks of slow-moving backup on Third Street are.
What I learned at this meeting is that the right turn onto First Street Extension isn’t the problem; it is the insistence on having two left turn lanes for traffic coming from Boston onto First Street Extension, which will then become a turn-only lane (right or left is unclear) and a straight lane a block later at Cambridge Street. There can’t be two lanes for non-turning traffic because the City has changed its plans for First Street in the past couple of years from the current four lanes to two with room for parking and bike lanes. Yet that significant change in the configuration of the street that all of this traffic is supposed to be pouring down has not prompted a reconsideration of the design proposed for O’Brien Highway.
The reason the two left-turn lanes matter (by the way, the highway will be seven lanes wide on the side of the intersection closer to Boston, not six) is that the median on the other side is being widened to twenty feet because of the additional width of the roadway required to accommodate those two lanes. That is what’s driving the widening of the highway, not people coming from Somerville and turning right on First Street Extension.
The other reason for the twenty-foot-wide median is the failure to come up with a safe way for pedestrians to cross the highway without spending a light cycle standing on that median. Given that several million people use that station every year currently, and there’s no reason to believe that they won’t still overwhelmingly want to go to or be coming from the south side of the highway, and given that the MBTA is planning to discontinue all bus service on Cambridge Street east of Third Street and leave only the 69 bus to provide any service south of the O’Brien Highway, that median is going to be holding a lot of people.
I would also point out that Traffic and Parking does not agree that the O’Brien Highway is being widened west of Third Street because the number of lanes is not being increased. Apparently, in their world, making the distance from curb to curb twenty feet or so greater doesn’t count as widening. I bet the people having to negotiate that distance won’t agree.
There are graphic aids to understanding all of this available at http://www.lechmeresquare.com/LECHMERE_SQ_2010.03.02.pdf.