I reported 16 safety hazards in Danehy Park in about an hour on Patriot’s Day, and others should follow suit: As Cambridge’s municipal budget process winds down, now is the last chance to tell city management to do routine maintenance instead of planning for a series of sometimes glorious, sometimes destructive massive renovations. Staff just asked the City Council to set priorities to control costs to mitigate past extravagant spending and the future decline of revenue growth, but its ongoing “run-down-and-replace” agenda continues to cheat children and others out of enjoying our parks fully, and it wastefully increases your taxes.
The most shocking hazard I reported was the crappy electrical wiring at a baseball dugout. Exposed wires were laying on the ground because the plastic conduit wasn’t buried and was (no longer) held together with vinyl tape (code requires glue). The seven broken pavement trip hazards I reported were just a start, and most have been around for a long time. This is a risk for an elderly person for whom a bad fall is a life-changing event that may mean never being able to live at home again. Since the city’s liability for injury is a pittance, management clearly doesn’t care.
Instead, management is charging ahead with construction of a redundant “Danehy Connector,” a bike path that runs parallel to the recently reconstructed New Street, complete with its bike lanes. These New Street lanes, unlike the Connector, connect to Sherman Street by the park’s separated bike path. The Connector will be about 40 percent black asphalt, where standing water now sits after these spring rains.
Management’s “redesign” of Linear Park in North Cambridge ignores the council order to reduce pavement by doubling the impervious area inside the park. Also ignored is an order, based on a paper petition from more than 300 residents, to do better maintenance instead of relying on the “redesign” approach. Management’s own Urban Forest Master Plan – which mandates that mature trees be preserved – is violated by the approach, which will mortally or critically wound more than 150 trees. This degrades the green corridor that has cooled the neighborhood for decades.
To be clear, on-the-ground city staff are dedicated and caring. But they have no control over the multimillion-dollar budgets and contracts. Management tells them where to go and what to do.
Go see for yourself the results of deferred maintenance in parks all over the city, including the basketball courts in Raymond Park. But remember that Danehy Park is critically important, as it not only hosts citywide athletics but also serves the surrounding affordable housing on Rindge Avenue, the Briston Arms on Garden Street and Walden Square on Sherman Street.
City management has to change its agenda from being wasteful, redundant and destructive to repairing and maintaining the parks that we have. Take the tax dollars saved and plant the thousands of trees the Urban Forest Master Plan called for back in 2019, especially in Danehy Park, and replace the dozens killed by not maintaining irrigation.
It’s not too late to tell your city councillors what you want. This is our city, and these are our parks. Management is supposed to work for us.
Charles Teague lives in North Cambridge and is a longtime tree advocate.
A stronger
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I’m still mad about those trees they killed while
The golf course stayed bright green.
There are maintenance issues at most of the city parks I have been to in the past year. It appears that there is not enough appropriate staff to handle all the sidewalk/walkway related damage that has occured since 2019.
As someone with mobility issues I agree that the damaged walkways do become a real challenge and does increase the risk of falls and injuries.
Thanks, Charlie, for bringing light to this latest plan to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
So often it does seem like our city planning departments plan and build first, then analyze and rationalize later. Danehy is a gem, with hundreds (thousands?) of people from all walks of life enjoying every day. Already an easy walk or bike from Rindge Towers, West Cambridge, North Cambridge, and everywhere in between, access is not the issue.
But it’s easy to see signs of disrepair and neglect, as you point out–trees dying, walkways crumbling, girls’ softball fields an embarrassment compared to the boys’ diamonds.
And of course, this is not the only example. Nearby Raymond Park is now slated to close for an entire year(!) for renovations that are as of yet unnamed. As with Danehy, we seem to have decided to bear the price of “improvements” with no obvious benefit to the community. Most gallingly, Raymond St has seen a massive increase in traffic in the name of bike lanes that could have been built without impacting the neighborhood.
Our city manager spoke clearly on the need for transparency before and early in his tenure. But now it feels like transparency comes only after the fact, as window dressing, when it’s too late to do anything but wring our hands.
“Most gallingly, Raymond St has seen a massive increase in traffic in the name of bike lanes that could have been built without impacting the neighborhood.”
Genuinely what are you talking about? First of all, there are no bike lanes on Raymond. It is incredible that you are blaming bike lanes for traffic created by automobiles, even on streets that don’t have bike lanes.
Secondly, bike lanes reduce traffic. Bike lanes have a higher capacity for moving people than general travel lanes, and everyone they encourage to bike is one less car on the road, which are what actually create traffic.
To their credit, the city did extensively study and publish neighborhood traffic study data related to the Garden St project — https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Files/Traffic/2022/gardenst/postinstallationdata/033023gardenstreetsafetyimprovementprojcetlocaltrafficanalysis.pdf
Pages 19 and 20 describe the traffic analysis specifically for Raymond. It looks like southbound traffic has decreased overall from 2018 numbers, and northbound traffic increased about 10% over 2018 numbers, and overall the total volume is almost exactly the same (under 1% different from 2018). The speed data in Appendix B showed that the 85th percentile speed went down 1mph, but both measurements were still above the speed limit.
I do hope that additional mitigations can help reduce dangerous driving on the street, which is the real challenge. My understanding is that some signals were switched on Huron and some turns were changed. There was also discussion about adding chicanes by shifting the parking lane on Raymond, is that something people would want? I know it has been helpful but certainly not perfect on Cardinal Medeiros.
Slaw,
In general, I think bike lanes are terrific, for the reasons you state and several others. To bring you up to speed on Raymond/Garden:
On Garden St, there were two options for bike lanes–build them on one side of the street and maintain Garden for two-way traffic, as was done on Brattle St; or build them on alternate sides and convert Garden to one-way, as they did. Both options created two bike lanes of equal length, but changing Garden worsened traffic on neighboring streets dramatically. All of this paragraph is according to city data.
I do not blame the Raymond St situation on bike lanes, I blame the bike lane team that did not properly notify neighbors that they were considering changing Garden to one way, then pretended to listen to our concerns afterwards. They still have done nothing significant to mitigate the situation, and if they were not so afraid to admit their errors Garden would be two-way for cars with two bike lanes as well.
Bike lanes and park improvements, are great for the city. But they need to be implemented with common sense, this includes community involvement and careful analysis in advance, not afterwards
In fact, PeterG, the city provided advance notice for the many meetings about the Garden Street bike lanes, using emails, USPS mail, laminated signs throughout the neighborhood and the city’s website. The city presented and explained plans for the bike lanes and adjusted those plans based on community responses, over and over, at meeting after meeting.
When neighbors saw an early version of the plan, many expressed preferences for more parking. At the following meeting, the city presented at least two alternatives to accomplish this. One was to put bi-directional bike traffic on one side of the street, the other was to have two bike lanes, one on each side, and make Garden St. one-way for auto traffic. Based on responses received, the city proceeded with the favored alternative. Garden St. became one-way at the request of the neighbors.
This is not a case of inadequate notice or failure to listen. It’s the result of city staff — and most residents — recognizing that allowing folks on each street to push traffic onto the next street is neither a practical nor fair policy.
Cambridge should implement low traffic neighborhoods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Traffic_Neighbourhood
“Instead, management is charging ahead with construction of a redundant ‘Danehy Connector,’ a bike path that runs parallel to the recently reconstructed New Street, complete with its bike lanes.”
First of all the bike lanes on new street are paint only, which while better than nothing are not suitable for riders of all ages and abilities the way off street paths are. Also no one ever brings up this argument for cars, despite numerous redundant routes already existing, the number of lane miles directly corresponding to fossil fuel emissions, and the fact that it is physically easier to detour in a car.
” These New Street lanes, unlike the Connector, connect to Sherman Street by the park’s separated bike path.”
The connector will also have a connection to the paths in the park. It will also immediately offer improved connections to the Cambridge-Watertown greenway which isn’t great coming from new street, and eventually offer connections that New street simply cannot, including to the now federally funded bike and pedestrian bridge over the commuter rail tracks, and to the future planned bike paths connecting Alewife and Porter along the tracks. In the longer term this connector is a crucial link in the region’s off street path network.
” The Connector will be about 40 percent black asphalt, where standing water now sits after these spring rains.”
Hopefully they make it a permeable surface. That seems like something to push for instead of pushing against a necessary connection. Permeable paving on bike paths also reduces iciness in the winter, win-win.
“Management’s “redesign” of Linear Park in North Cambridge ignores the council order to reduce pavement by doubling the impervious area inside the park… Management’s own Urban Forest Master Plan – which mandates that mature trees be preserved – is violated by the approach, which will mortally or critically wound more than 150 trees.”
This is simply untrue. Why is this allowed to be published? In reality only 6 trees will be removed: 1 near Russell Field, and 5 cherry trees near the Mass Ave entrance to the park which are in poor condition anyways. You can see this in this presentation: https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Files/CDD/Transportation/Projects/LinearPark/linearpark_publicmeeting3_accessible.pdf (the presentation also indicates they will PLANT up to 150 trees). Why are you lying?
The wider path is a necessity to address crowding and because the path is narrower than suggested standards for such a busy segment of path. Again push for permeable pavement not against necessary improvements to walking and biking infrastructure.
I completely agree with the author on the importance of regular maintenance, and the issues he reported at Danehy Park need to be addressed. Unfortunately, he just had to shoehorn in his longstanding misinformation campaign against the Linear Park redesign, as well as take a swipe at the planned Danehy Connector…
The Danehy Connector is not redundant. Would you call Linear Park redundant just because it runs parallel to the adjacent Harvey St? The Connector will further expand the network of shared-use paths in the area, giving people a pleasant, tree-lined, and safe off-street route between the Watertown-Cambridge Greenway/Fresh Pond paths and Danehy Park, rather than having to use New St, which runs past a bunch of auto body shops and has completely unshaded sidewalks + narrow paint-only bike lanes I would not consider safe enough for kids. It will also link to the upcoming bridge over the Fitchburg Line (and in the far future, to a path alongside the tracks to Porter Square), connecting residents of Rindge Towers and Jefferson Park to some of the city’s largest green spaces.
As for Linear Park, could it have been maintained better in the past? Probably! But even with perfect upkeep, it would’ve still needed a design update/reconstruction at some point to reflect the ways the park is used today (after all, it predates even the Minuteman Bikeway).
As I mentioned above, there’s a lot of misinformation being circulated around the Linear Park redesign. Cambridge4Trees (of which the author is president) stated in their original materials that it would “damage or destroy over 80 mature trees.” Then in his op-ed here last September, the author wrote that it would “kill or maim nearly 100 trees.” And now, in this latest piece, it’s “mortally or critically wound more than 150 trees.” Funny how that number keeps ballooning!
Last fall, I looked through Cambridge4Trees’ annotations of the 75% design plans. Of the “100+ trees to be removed/maimed,” only 6 of those were actual tree removals (5 of them due to poor health) and the vast majority were counted based on proximity of the asphalt path to root zones. And in reality, only ~15 of the trees Cambridge4Trees themselves labeled “high-risk” would actually see more root-zone asphalt due to the redesign, which also isn’t the death sentence it’s made out to be.
In addition, the actual increase in total asphalt area is ~13%, nowhere near the “doubling” claim they achieve by counting stone dust surfaces as pavement. If the author is so concerned about impervious surfaces/runoff, he should focus on the car infrastructure (oversized roads and parking lots) that is the biggest culprit. For example, the Memorial Drive road diet between Eliot Bridge and Harvard Square, in replacing excess vehicle travel lanes with parkland, will reduce impervious surface area by a full acre – several orders of magnitude greater than the square footage “saved” by fighting modest pedestrian/cyclist path improvements!
Picoplaff, it is disturbing that you do not appear to know the difference between a road and a park. On that point, I suppose you and the City agree. I do know the difference. Linear Park is a park with a paved multiuse path running through it. Harvey Street is not a park; it is a street.
@heatherhoffman I think you misunderstood. I read picoplaff as saying New street does not make the Danahey connector redundant just as Harvey street does not make the linear park redundant.
There’s no reason to assume that we can either have maintenance or improvement, but not both.
What a mess, as usual: since the 1940s Cambridge has NOT had a dedicated Parks Department.
Various highly administrative departments [https://www.cambridgema.gov/CDD/Administration/] are “responsible” for care of all Cambridge’s open spaces [https://www.cambridgema.gov/CDD/parks/parksmap/]. This is a recipe for tree-management disaster, as we have been witnessing for too many years.
“Open space in Cambridge is the collective responsibility of several departments, including
• the Department of Public Works (responsible for park maintenance and operation; “for issues contact the Parks Division of the DPW” [there is NO “Parks Division @ DPW on Cambridge.gov website] at 617/349-4885 or cfosher@cambridgema.gov [there is no one with this name working for the city as I write]);
Note: for information on off-leash dogs in parks, contact CDD Neighborhood Planner Gary Chan at 617/349-4603; gchan@cambridgema.gov). [Why not Animal Control?]
• the Department of Human Service Programs (responsible for recreation facilities, people programs, [and Danehy trees]: for issues in Danehy Park, contact the Recreation Division of the DHSP at 617/349-4895 or DHSP Recreation Director Tom Cusick: tcusick@cambridgema.gov).
Note: Danehy Park and its trees are nowhere listed on DHSP website as part of DHSP services and responsibilities: https://www.cambridgema.gov/DHSP/aboutus; the DHSP Recreation Director would have NO idea about or budget/staff for keeping trees at Danehy healthy and thriving—as we experienced during 2022 drought summer. DHSP killed Danehy trees through total neglect, starting with not watering them;
• the Conservation Commission (responsible for environmental permitting and community gardens),
• the Water Department (responsible for Fresh Pond Reservation; for issues at Fresh Pond, contact the Water Department at 617/349-4762 or Water Dept. Fresh Pond Reservation Site Supervisor Vincent Falcione: vfalcione@cambridgema.gov),
and
• the Arts Council (responsible for public art installations).
“[Community Development Department]/CDD collaborates with these [above] departments and others [even more fragmentation! which others?] through the work of the Open Space Committee [https://www.cambridgema.gov/CDD/parks/osplanning/]”. CDD has “5 programmatic divisions:
•Community Planning,
•Housing,
•Economic Development,
•Environmental and Transportation Planning,
• Zoning and Development.
“CDD takes an interdisciplinary approach to manage and guide [implement would be a more salient term] physical change in a manner consistent with the City’s [whose exactly?] priorities, engaging and collaborating with community partners [whom exactly?] and other government agencies [which ones & at what level—municipal, state, fed?]… CDD’s Community Planning Division conducts open-space planning throughout the city and oversees major design, construction, and renovation projects for Cambridge’s [over 80 parks, playgrounds, and open spaces].”
As Mike N. posted on Cambridge Trees Google Groups in drought summer 2022, “…we’d need to plant 200,000 trees at a rate of 4,000 per year to achieve the goal of restoring the [city of Cambridge’s] canopy to where we were 15 years ago [2007], and it would take 50 years [to 2073] to get there.”
See you all at the polls, folks, on Nov. 5, 2024 for another round of Council elections.
@AnitaMcClellan is that 200k number accurate? That seems like more trees than could even fit in Cambridge.