Riverbend Park expanded without public process; Riverside residents say traffic is ‘overwhelming’
Riverbend Park is formed by closing Memorial Drive to car traffic. (Photo: City of Cambridge via Twitter)
Residents engaged in a fiery back-and-forth Monday over the expanded hours of Memorial Drive closings and their effect on traffic, pleading their cases during public comment at a City Council meeting.
An outraged Lawrence Adkins had to be told by Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui to lower his voice while he spoke of the impact the closings have had in Riverside. “I cannot leave my house without being stuck in traffic for 20 minutes. I cannot make it down Putnam Avenue to get to Western Avenue for another 20 minutes,” he said. “I’m demanding that this be stopped.”
Several councillors worked over the pandemic to expand use of “Riverbend Park,” which is created by closing off parts of Memorial Drive near Harvard Square to cars – usually on Sundays. Saturday closings were introduced by the Department of Conservation and Recreation beginning April 23, with the state road that follows the Charles River staying closed to vehicles overnight as well. Councillors approved the move 8-0-1, with E. Denise Simmons not present for the vote.
A policy order from Simmons Monday asked that the city manager return to the status quo.
The neighborhood had not been consulted about the expansion of hours, Adkins said.
Also significant support
After he finished, there was applause from the other four members of his neighborhood who had come to speak – one calling the traffic “overwhelming” and suggesting the inconvenience held her “hostage” in her home. The applause drew another admonition from Siddiqui.
Countering the indignation of neighborhood residents testifying in person about the diverted traffic clogging neighborhood streets were about 10 people who spoke over Zoom to support keeping the Saturday closings in a city that has less open space than most.
Itamar Turner-Trauring, a member of Cambridge Bicycle Safety, opened the meeting by speaking of the “wonderful benefit” the open space provides residents in Cambridge and beyond and emphasizing the road closing’s popularity. A petition created by his organization on Friday to keep Memorial Drive closed on Saturdays already had 2,150 signatures, many from ZIP codes near the park, he said. (At least half were Cambridge residents, councillor Patty Nolan said later.)
Lack of public process
Simmons’ order wasn’t acted on – councillor Paul Toner used his “charter right” to set it aside for one regular meeting and provide a chance to work on some of the issues raised by the Riverside residents. “I don’t want people not to have access to the river way on Saturdays. But I do think there are legitimate concerns,” Toner said. “This is just another example of us not doing outreach to the community.”
In addition, “I felt like I took a vote under false pretenses that evening, because I was told there wasn’t a problem last time.” Riverbend Park had been closed Saturdays, Toner said. “I was going to vote no on that night [but] I asked questions about how did this go last year and everybody said it was fine.”
When Riverbend Park hours were first expanded, Simmons said, it was at the height of the pandemic, when there was less traffic overall.
Still, the council had asked for and expected a public process, Nolan said, and “DCR expressed an interest in looking at this and recognized that it would be through a community and stakeholder engagement process. And they were in the process of setting that up.” The process had apparently been lost in a confusion of orders, though Simmons also observed that “we also know that DCR isn’t great at public meetings.”
Councillors generally supported working with Riverside residents to ease the problem of diverted traffic. But councillor Quinton Zondervan said he would want to see Riverbend Park hours expanded even further, to Friday, rather than for the council to go back on a vote. “It’s going to take some time” for drivers to realize and adapt to the change, Zondervan said. “Some of these traffic challenges will undoubtedly resolve.”
L Adkins haven’t you got the Cambridge menu ? It’s called a “road diet” and it’s the only option on the menu.
Less cars – less traffic- less exhaust – less fossil fuels – less global warming – we are all happy!
Come visit north Cambridge during rush hour!? Please don’t drive an “automobile”though as you’ll spend it sitting in a mile of bumper to bumper traffic.
Suggestion. Sadly and I don’t mean to be harsh but you have to deal with it or move. This road diet is city wide and when you are trying to raise a family it makes it near impossible to remain in Cambridge. Then toss on the completely moronic school closures with zoom school while all private and parochial remained open in person and no wonder enrollment is plummeting and hasn’t hit bottom yet.
After seeing how the n Cambridge quick destruction was communicated (not) designed (terrible all kinds of paint signs everywhere trying to bandaid it all) and implemented (literally hacking up mass ave, removing businesses parking handicap parking, painting the streets).
Ps go ahead and try to voice concerns and solutions – they are amazing at compromising hahaha.
Let me get this straight:
For literally two generations Memorial Drive has been used as a park on Sundays. For two years, it has also been used on Saturdays. This has led to joy for countless thousands and thousands of people.
The city council enthusiastically voted to codify the Saturday closure into state law, and also separately to identify other locations which could benefit from such parkland on the weekends, by unanimous votes (for those who were present).
This year, somehow “a number of residents”, which seems to resemble _FIVE_ says that it is just too challenging for them to tolerate the traffic.
Denise Simmons proposes a policy order which instead of focusing on the actual traffic concern says that we should cancel the park.
A petition goes online and in three days collects over 2,000 signatures to keep the park open, with over half of the signatures from Cambridge residents.
Then, in cahoots, the buck clearly stops with ‘I voted for this under false pretenses’ Paul Toner. He decided not to actually discuss opportunities for improvement, and instead pretend that community outreach was lacking. Both clearly know this is unlikely to succeed, but they want to keep scoring petty political points.
Despite an apparently 200:1 ratio of people speaking up in favor of the park, the title of this article is “Riverbend Park expanded without public process; Riverside residents say traffic is ‘overwhelming’”
Sorry, this just does not reflect reality on the ground.
If you enjoy the park, please sign the petition here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14UkzDJluNWrOX3fgrHKWDPcFGAFxl3hEmpoSbxiX76I/edit
The benefits of closing Memorial Drive surely outweigh any (apparently dramatized) inconvenience for drivers. If you need to drive through Cambridge along the Charles you can take Soldiers Field Rd. I’d imagine that most of the trips taken on Memorial are not within Cambridge but through Cambridge.
Come to Newton. We have cookies and plentiful parking.
Memorial Drive was originally established not to carry the amount of traffic that it currently carries.
It was never designed for commercial vehicle traffic of any kind but as a ‘leisure parkway’ for recreational use. The use of it for the Riverbend park would certainly count as part of its original intent.
The traffic problems are caused by the redesigns of the local streets that Cambridge has done.
When they redesigned Western Ave and basically narrowed it they failed to properly track the usage levels during the summer months, especially Sundays, and the traffic jams problem that such would cause. Other street changes and construction since then have exasperated the problem. This was brought up time and again at the public hearings and meetings but the city engineering team and the New York “expert” they brought in did not listen to the local residents of Western Ave at that time.
They also failed to carry out the street signal light synchronization on Western Ave into Memorial Drive as they had claimed that they would. The same is true in regards to the Street signal lights on River Street. This makes a complex situation worse.
There are too many vehicles passing thru the city on the way in or out of Boston. There is no easy solution to that part of the problem. They cause the traffic issues and create regular air quality issues for the neighborhoods of Cambridge.
Perhaps a wider ranging, year long 24/7 traffic analysis of the entire city’s traffic patterns and developing a non-piecemeal computer model of the whole thing could allow the development of options, but there is no quick fix to the whole mess.
The city has a tendency to do things in a reactionary manner without thinking things thru (or pretends to study something, drops it on the city manager’s desk and then gets ignored for decades).
The root of the problem is accountability in this city. The City Manager form of government means there is no accountability to the people that live here. The City council has no teeth and cannot be held accountable for what the manager does or does not do and the buck gets passed back and forth.
City Managers should be REQUIRED to be residents of the city for their position. This should be considered as part of the qualifications of the position, if nothing else, so that neighbors can approach them with grievances more effectively.
As for the River Bend Park, I want it to remain existent as it is the sole piece of the ‘Leisure Parkway’ that Memorial Drive is supposed fulfill that remains.
It also needs BETTER maintenance of its sidewalks etc. as I learned far too well last year when I took a fall due to badly maintained sidewalks that left me with 14 facial stitches, nearly cost me my eyesight in one eye permanently and gave me the first broken bone I had ever suffered in my long life.
@prc 3 disability spaces were added during the North Cambridge quick build project, none were removed.
Riverside resident here and this is a good thing. Please do not pretend to speak for all of us.
So when do we recall Paul Toner?
Toner can kick rocks. Let the people rollerblade
Memorial park weekends are one of the most tangible positives that I’ve personally experienced from city council actions. I drive in the area as well and happily accept the extra 5-10 minutes detour. For a city as dense as Boston, driving takes a lot of space and shouldn’t be encouraged relative to walking, biking, and micro-mobility.
I love how this news story has been buried and hidden from general view and discussion now that Councilor Simmons, who evidently wants to eliminate the Saturday park opening entirely has rushed to create a “Emergency Public Meeting” at the Calendar Street Community Building to drum up support for her effort to do so in the neighborhood after it was shown that only 5 people were opposing it originally and that the vote on Monday might not go her way.
I would like to note another article which came out today in the Harvard Crimson — https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/5/27/memorial-drive-closures-debate/
It’s about the same topic, but check out the difference in title and framing. The story isn’t centered around the outrage of 5 people at a city council meeting, it’s about the backlash of over 2,200 people who signed a petition to stop the proposal.
I realize it’s all how you look at it, but that framing does seem to do more justice to the situation.
Another moment where empathy might be helpful. Vilifying councilors trying to do their job (outreach) for those residents inconvenienced by this shouldn’t draw internet outrage unless you’re all just mindless trolls searching for a cheap endorphin rush. I live in Riverside and like the closures but I can see why people are annoyed. People who live on the other side of town weighing in and dismissing the frustrations of those actually impacted should 1) drop their cowardly internet anonymity (after all we are all adults right?) and 2) spend a hot second considering the other side of the issue no matter how difficult and foreign a concept that may be.
I live near the river and am not inconvenienced by the weekend closures. But I must say, I do not find the Riverbend Park heavily used most weekends. Maybe Sundays only would be enough.