Attend Cambridge meetings from Nov. 7-13: Garden Street traffic, bus routes and Alewife
These are just some of the municipal meetings and civic events for the coming week. More are on the City Calendar and in the city’s Open Meetings Portal.
Concord Avenue at Craigie Street during rush hour Wednesday has gridlock westbound after changes to traffic on Garden Street. (Photo: Annette LaMond)
Transportation by bus, car, rail
City Council, 5:30 p.m. Monday. This meeting is dominated by transportation issues, though likely the hottest is the recent installation of protected bike lanes on Garden Street from Mason Street to Huron Avenue, which has turned the thoroughfare out of Harvard Square into a one-way and angered drivers and residents of roads where traffic has diverted. The bulk of the agenda’s 79 communications from residents are about the result, and there’s a policy order asking city staff to meet with residents “to discuss strategies to mitigate and reduce overflow and cut-through traffic.” A report would be due back no later than March 27.
The council remains concerned about changes to bus routes being undertaken by the MBTA. “While the October redesign has addressed many of the issues brought forward by the community, many notable concerns still exist,” including on service cuts to a path considered essential for high schoolers. Councillors are also interested in getting in on the transit agency’s two-year pilot program with the City of Boston and Cambridge’s Google and Sanofi offices to bill employees’ rides later so workers can essentially ride for free as needed. Finally, drivers could be banned citywide from turning right on red lights; the motion says this is already the case in more than half the city’s intersections.
Councillors are following through on a promise to get involved in budgeting before the budget is set and needs approval; there’s a call for the Finance Committee to meet to talk about funding for municipal projects that would come in the next fiscal year.
The council meets at City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square. Televised and watchable by Zoom video conferencing.
Statement of values for charter
Charter Review Committee, 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. The themes of a meeting Oct. 25 will be summed up by staff from the Collins Center for Public Management at the University of Massachusetts at Boston – the city’s consultants in touching up its governing document after 80 years – and members will discuss a values statement. Watchable by Zoom video conferencing.
Alewife zoning recommendations
Alewife Zoning Working Group, 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday. The group plans to present a draft zoning framework for the area, looking at updated zoning recommendations with hopes of refining them. Watchable by Zoom video conferencing.
I count 8 cars in that line in the photo presented.
What a waste of space.
Always so much anger from the pro-car crowd whenever there are too many cars (but obviously not their own).
If there isn’t enough space for roads to be safe for all users, then there was never enough space for all that car traffic to begin with. Enough said.
These car drivers need to reduce their carbon footprint and start biking! How incredibly selfish of them. They are still living in the past – get a bike and get into the wide open bike lane and ride to Watertown, Newton, wayland.
Crazy they think they have the right to drive here in the PRC!
Once this sets in it ought to be a boon for the damaged real estate commercial and residential in Cambridge.
This is absolutely ridiculous I drove down Garden Street the other day why is there two bike lanes one going one-way and one going the other way. Cambridge is getting absolutely ridiculous as soon as I find an apartment outside of Cambridge and far away from Cambridge I am moving I am a long time resident of Cambridge and I lived here all my life I am out of here. The city Council is brought me to this I am so aggravated with this City they drove me to this I cannot live in the city no more in my family was raised here and we lived here our whole life from my grandparents all the way up my mother was born in Breed here . And I work in this city. I will travel back to work here but it’s far as living here once I move out of here good riddance! I can’t wait to move out of the city you said the counselor is ridiculous!!
Cambridge is out of control with all of there Rules and regulations on these bike lanes changing roads , everything for all of these people that rides bikes! Next thing you know there’s not gonna be any cars on the roads anymore ,leave it up to the city counselors!! Half of the people that ride the bikes don’t even follow the rules and regulations of the road ! Racing up and down the streets passing each other and then when they get hit it’s our fault the people that drive the cars!! Save the streets for everyone!! Not only the bike people for the car people too!! How much money did you get from the bike people ?? Because Cambridge is all about the money!!
I will never understand why there isn’t more anger at why our system is set up to have so many commuter cars using residential, municipal roads like garden street, and that is somehow preferential to bikes which make no noise, generate no pollution, and don’t kill pedestrians.
What if the powers to be made garden st a large bike lane and just forget the auto lane all together?
Why bother with any car lanes? I mean just get on with it and finish it off.
Who said anything about that, I’m only questioning why we would want that much commuter car traffic going to down a residential municipal road, with or without the bike lanes?
These people are commuting out of harvard square. They have memorial drive, they have storrow, they have mass ave.
The comments suggesting these car drivers don’t have options have no ground to stand on. I didn’t even mention the T or the busses, both of which would serve the commuters going out to 2 on concord ave.
FYI — I strongly believe that the city should do something to mitigate the impact on the residents. I would be upset too. Car commuters should be encouraged to use the plethora of options they have available to them that are not quiet residential streets.
Pedestrians should be able to walk around this city without cars making it insufferable and dangerous. This isn’t just about bikes.
Pretty crazy to think that the entire backed up stoplight represents 8 cars and maybe 10 passengers. Brings into clarity how poor a use of space the roads are for single passenger vehicles.
I approve of the Garden st changes, and hope it is a prelude to far more ambitious changes
The bike crowd fails to recognize the difficulties posed to those who need to rely on a car. The bike is good, the car is bad. End of story.
The fact that you see the picture and count the 8 cars and think it’s a waste of space, but not for one second think about the person stuck in traffic who is driving home after work to be with his/her family speaks volumes of your “openness” to society.
It is because of this attitude we liberals are going to take thrashing on Tuesday. We might win the battle, but we are losing the war with this attitude.
Oh, and I hope I used the right pronouns. Look how liberal and woke I am!
The amount of car driver entitlement also speaks volumes. Last I checked, there remains a full car lane occupying half the road space. Now there’s a road, bike lanes, and comfortable sidewalk for pedestrians. Equitable in my eyes. I could see getting upset if the last car lane was removed for bus, pedestrian, or bike use
What we need is a way to determine how much of the traffic is actually local to the city and how much is people from outside the city coming in or passing thru from/to Boston.
I seriously believe that the majority of our traffic problem is not from residents but the long term results of bad road design by the State in regards to Boston Traffic control.
Blaming the local car drivers or the bicyclists for what is the result of Boston congestion and the problems this year with the MBTA in all its forms (including cut backs of bus service, subway speed and commuter rail frequency) isn’t helping anyone.
Our Local representatives need to take note and press for further upgrades of the public transit system and funding from the statehouse to make this possible. Charlie Baker’s hand chosen board and management for the MBTA have proved to be typical Republicans, cutting maintenance and services and wanting to privatize rather than doing the job of fixing things.
The last I checked, the economic contribution of the automobile to society is exponentially more than the bicycle or a pedestrian walking. So you want to talk about equity – let’s divide the road based on economic contribution since is what infrastructure is designed to do.
We can go around in circles all day. We just have to agree to disagree. The only way this is resolved is through the ballot box.
I’m a Cambridge resident and generally sympathetic to the view that we need to get people to reduce their use of cars and increase use of bikes, buses, the T, scooters, walking, whatever else works. That said, I can’t help but note that we Cambridgers contributed to the commuting mess by approving tons of new labs and office space but not doing nearly enough to increase the housing supply. Cambridge has an incredibly vibrant economy but when you create so many jobs someone has to fill them–and if you don’t create housing in the city then those jobs have to be filled by commuters. So to me at least a part of this is our fault.
That’s Cantabrigians, not Cambridgers.
Cantabrigians who work in labs typically have enough money to live in houses in Cambridge, if they want. We shouldn’t care about those people with regard to increasing the housing supply. The people we should care about are those currently living in Cambridge who need affordable housing.