Thursday, April 25, 2024

City offices will be closed Monday in observance of the Independence Day holiday. Trash and recycling pick up will be one day behind for the remainder of the week.

The Cambridge Cemetery office will be closed the Fourth of July, but cemetery gates will be open as usual from 6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

In addition, there will be vehicular and pedestrian traffic restrictions in place for the area’s Fourth of July celebrations. All roads will remain closed (unless noted otherwise) until the Department of Conservation and Recreation has an opportunity to clean them. As was the case last year, police said, there will be no fireworks viewing allowed from the Longfellow Bridge due to construction.

Police also noted that the Red Sox are playing home games Sunday and Monday, and people driving to the games will face closures of portions of Storrow Drive on both days; those fans, as well as anyone else who would be using Storrow on those days, may wish to seek alternate routes.

Safety alert

Area police have set up a dedicated “Text-A-Tip” line in case anyone at Fourth of July events “sees anyone or anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, or anything that just doesn’t look right.” In addition to calling 911 or telling an officer on the scene, texters can send messages to 67283, making sure to enter the characters “B4” as the first two characters of their text.

Traffic, parking restrictions

Cambridge restrictions for the Forth of July start at 12:01 am. with a ban on parking on Memorial Drive (either side) from 450 Memorial Drive to the Longfellow Bridge. All vehicles remaining after this time will be removed. There is also no parking on Cambridge Parkway, from which all vehicles must be removed by 1 a.m. Tuesday. (The Parkway can be accessed and used for parking only by cars with handicapped placards and plates.)

Starting at 7 a.m., the right-hand travel lane on Charles River Dam Road (at the Museum of Science) will closed and some traffic from Boston’s Leverett Circle entrance to Storrow Drive West will be shunted to Monsignor O’Brien Highway to Cambridge.

At noon, a lane on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge going to Boston from Cambridge will close and stay closed until the entire bridge closes to vehicles and pedestrians at 4 p.m.)

At 4 p.m., Memorial Drive in both directions from Massachusetts Avenue to the Longfellow Bridge will close to vehicular traffic (except for Hyatt Regency Hotel customers), as will Main Street from Third Street to the Longfellow Bridge; Ames Street from Main Street to Memorial Drive; Wadsworth and Amherst streets; Land Boulevard from Binney Street to the Longfellow Bridge; and Hayward, Carlton, Charlotte’s Way and Dock streets. Access to 1 Memorial Drive will be allowed only with an issued permit, and the Longfellow Bridge will close to vehicular traffic as well. Pedestrians will be allowed on the downstream side, but not from around 9 p.m. until the end of the fireworks.

Also, as in previous years, no fireworks viewing from the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge will be allowed. It will close in both directions to vehicular and pedestrian traffic from Beacon Street in Boston to Vassar Street in Cambridge. Vassar Street will be closed to vehicular traffic from Massachusetts Avenue to Memorial Drive, except for residents and Hyatt customers.

At 10:30 p.m., Third Street becomes one way from Main Street to Monsignor O’Brien Highway.

Cleanup begins a half-hour after the fireworks end. All roads will be closed until they are clean and maintenance crews are gone.

Police said they would try to open roads in this order: The Massachusetts Avenue Bridge; Longfellow Bridge; and Memorial Drive. Boston roads around the fireworks will open afterward.