Revive the Cambridge traffic board
Over the past year the city’s Department of Traffic, Parking & Transportation has been at the center of controversy related to its implementation of the Cycling Safety Ordinance (adopted in 2019, and amended in 2020) mandating 25 miles of separated bike lanes. Many residents have written to the City Council and the department asking for a voice in the implementation of the separated bike lane mandate – essentially a major redesign of our city’s streets – by submitting letters and at least one petition with more than 1,000 signatures. One group has even filed a lawsuit. Although the department has held “informational” community meetings on Zoom, questions and concerns have been answered only with generalities and minor modifications.
Throughout the process, many residents have come to feel disrespected, their observations – about streets that they know very well – ignored. But it didn’t need to be this way. There is an avenue for the expression of concerns open to Cambridge residents who are concerned about department proposals: a traffic board, as provided for in state law.
More than 60 years ago, the act of the state Legislature establishing a city department of traffic and parking (Chapter 455 of the Acts of 1961, Section 1) also established a traffic board, consisting of three citizen members to be appointed by the city manager. The city includes the act and traffic board on Page 53 of the Traffic Regulations it posted in October 2019.
As described on the city website, the purpose of the traffic board is to hold a public hearing upon petition of 50 registered voters relative to any rule or regulation proposed to be adopted, altered or repealed and not yet in effect, and approve or disapprove the proposed action. The board is also available to the traffic director for advice and consultation. As for petitions, the law states that the traffic board shall hold a public hearing thereon within two weeks of filing.
Although a board could play a valuable role in promoting better roads for all users, it has gone unused by the director of the traffic department for years, and consequently has been forgotten by residents. Given the controversy surrounding the installation of separated bike lanes, it is puzzling that the traffic director has not sought the counsel of a board.
Our interactions with the traffic department were around the proposal for a separated two-way bike lane on Brattle Street, a proposal outside of the 25-mile network in the city’s ordinance. We and other neighbors have argued that Brattle Street is not a good candidate for a separated two-way bike lane because of the number of side streets and driveways, particularly when e-bike riders can travel at speeds of more than 20 mph. Nor is the plan supported by the numbers of cyclists or accidents involving cyclists on Brattle, based on our analysis of Brattle Street accidents in Cambridge Police Department’s crash database.
Its removal of half of the street’s parking will also create hardships for visitors to churches as well as nearby schools and hospitals. The availability of parking on Brattle from Mason to Sparks streets also supports stores and restaurants.
The plan comes with a revision of the intersection of Brattle, Craigie and Sparks that is opposed widely by residents. Among those expressing concerns are the many senior citizens who live in apartment buildings west of Fresh Pond Parkway. Similarly, residents of the side streets, particularly in the Half Crown–Marsh district filled with small houses – many without driveways – would find parking even more challenging when spaces on Brattle are removed. In short, the proposed separated bike lane would be disruptive.
Last month, when we learned of the traffic board, we decided to submit a petition of 50 registered voters asking for board review of the Brattle Street project. The petition with some 100 signatures was submitted Sept. 29 to the city clerk; the next day, the city’s election office verified 97 registered voters. (We gathered signatures over 36 hours from neighbors who have followed the traffic department’s proposal. If a greater number of signatures had been needed, we could easily have produced them.)
Since our proposal was filed, a group of Garden Street neighbors has filed a petition regarding the traffic department’s proposal to make Garden Street one-way eastbound from Huron Avenue to Concord Avenue by Arsenal Square.
We look forward to the reactivation of the Cambridge traffic board in response to these petitions. Residents need to be heard – a fundamental requirement for ensuring trust in city decisions. We hope that the results will spur the traffic department in the direction of 21st-century mobility solutions rather than one relying on a 19th-century invention that is not an option for many older and disabled people and that is not the best mode of transportation in inclement weather or when the roadway is made hazardous by ice, fallen leaves or debris.
Please do not interpret this letter as favoring city streets lined by parked cars. For the safety of all – pedestrians, cyclists and drivers – we look forward to a future with better street design, better public transportation, fewer private vehicles, fewer parking lots and garages, less asphalt, more street trees and more parkland. What is the way to a meaningful drop in private car ownership and use? A future with far fewer cars will depend on the development of shared and coordinated mobility services. The traffic department’s most impactful actions in terms of shifting people out of their cars would be to promote such services.
Annette LaMond, Riedesel Avenue, and Karen Falb, Brattle Street
The authors have been Cambridge residents since the mid-1970s. Annette LaMond is a Ph.D. economist who has written a number of papers on Cambridge history and advocated on issues of street safety in the 1990s and 2016. Karen Falb is a biologist by training with a certificate in landscape design history from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Her focus on Brattle Street traffic began 25 years ago, when she worked with a citywide group studying truck routes through Cambridge.
Stuff like this is how we ended up with streets that routinely lead to the deaths of pedestrians and cyclists, and a housing shortage of epic proportions.
50 signatures out of a city of 120,000 people? Any and every project in this city would grind to a permanent halt in service to the NIMBYs.
All you’re being asked to do is share public space with other people. There are elderly and disabled people who can’t drive, but the author of this piece doesn’t seem to care much about them.
These boards are run by old, rich, white homeowners (let’s take a look at the Cambridge planning board and BZA, hmm?) whose only goal is to protect their warped view of what this city is, and slow down and stop and progress being made.
We live in a democracy. We elect our government. They act on their mandates. A bunch of rich people shouldn’t be able to stop something the people voted for.
On Garden St, where these lovely people are trying to stop the installation of protected bike lanes, a driver hit a pregnant cyclist this Friday.
That’s the status quo the authors of this letter and their friends are fighting to keep.
It is worth noting that the traffic board has a well-defined scope in the Traffic Acts of 1961 document. It is unlikely to provide the broad relief that these Brattle Street neighbors mention.
The traffic board can weigh in on things related to ‘rules and regulations’, such as traffic fines, meters, and permits. However the Traffic Acts document is quite clear that 3(b): “The traffic director may erect, make and maintain, or cause to be erected, made and maintained, traffic signs, signals, markings and other devices for the control of traffic and parking in the city and for informing and warning the public as to rules and regulations adopted under this act”, and this section is not in the purview of the traffic board.
One can easily imagine why this makes sense — it would be hazardous to allow three citizens (who are not traffic engineers) to determine an appropriate or safe road layout. That is clearly work for traffic engineers.
Further, the Cycling Safety Ordinance is not a traffic rule or regulation; it is a city-wide law requiring the installation of a protected bike lane _network_, including many miles which are not explicitly named in the law, but are indeed required by it.
Why revive a defunct bureaucratic hurdle? Because the advocates couldn’t win through democratic city council elections? Maybe try litigation instead!
Bureaucratic hoops to slow improvements seems counter to the needs or will of the population.
Re-establishing such a board should not be a decision, its something that should have been made into a ballot question.
It’s so embarrassing to not even try to hide that this whole thing is just about street parking.
We killed the Earth, kids, it was going to take an extra minute to find a spot, we had no choice.
It’s pretty clear that state law is not particularly important to most of the commenters who have preceded me. As the letter points out, the Traffic Board is mandated by state law. It should not require a referendum to see if the City of Cambridge should follow state law.
Similarly, as you will find in Appendix A to the city’s traffic regulations book, state law requires that the director of the Cambridge Traffic and Parking Department be a traffic engineer. I know neither Mr. Barr nor his predecessor Ms. Clippinger met that state law requirement. I am very hopeful that the new City Manager will find the intestinal fortitude to break with tradition and name someone to that position who does meet the requirements of state law.
Unlike these other commenters, I don’t subscribe to the idea that the end justifies the means. If you don’t like state law, then work to change it. Otherwise, follow it, and insist that the City Manager name people to positions who have the training and experience to do the job properly. I have no doubt that we can find people who both fulfill our diversity, equity and inclusion goals and are technically and temperamentally equipped to do the job, not just carry out anyone’s agenda blindly.
Heather,
I do not disagree with your assessment but I cannot figure what the consequence of any of this is. I personally like Barr so I do not want to seem like I’m slighting him in anyway … but if he isn’t a traffic engineer as required by the law … what then? The traffic board technically never went away … they just never convened after ’92 though I think many if not al members are still alive and in Cambridge though may be getting on in years. However even if they had convened they wouldn’t have had jurisdiction over bike lanes, as far as I can tell. The only issue, and please correct me if I’m missing something, is that we now have a petition that is three plus weeks old that has gone unanswered. Just like the traffic engineer issue I cannot find a consequence for this omission/action. The law itself seems like it has no method of enforcement other than a willingness to actually enforce it and has no consequence for the lack of enforcement.
There’s already so much research and implementation of maaaany totally-working solutions (for motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, kids, and people with disabilities) all the heck over the world, and with all kinds of street configurations. So it continues to boggle my mind why it’s such a herculean effort to just talk to, oh I dunno, the LivableStreets Alliance, headed up by the inestimable Stacy Thompson. They have all the data on what actually WORKS for ALL on streets like this (the points raised by residents are valid – and I’m saying that as a staunch cycling safety advocate as well). None of this has to be some ridiculous zero-sum game. We don’t have to invent the wheel, or reinvent the wheel, the answers are already all around us. It’s just truly frustrating that with the saturation of intelligence in our region compared to almost anywhere else that we can’t implement data-driven workable solutions. New England and Massachusetts, as a country (I know it’s not really a country, but you get what I mean) ought to be an example to the US and the world.