Though Memorial Drive council order is paused, changes are coming after the death of a bicyclist

Despite the urgency expressed by many after the third bicyclist death in Cambridge in four months, officials signaled Monday at a City Council meeting that there is a long public process ahead for some fixes to dangerous Memorial Drive.

Even that won’t get started formally for at least another week, because city councillor Burhan Azeem hit pause, using his “charter right” on an order to lower the speed limit “as much as possible on all state highways that fall within Cambridge’s geographic boundaries, including and especially Memorial Drive,” where John Corcoran, 62, of Newton was killed by an SUV on Sept. 23.

The order asks the city manager to seek state approval to also replace two car lanes with protected multiuse paths along the entire length of Memorial Drive and meet with the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, which oversees the road, for other safety measures in the short and long term. The bill asks that council go on the record to support a Memorial Drive redesign.

Because city staff had information to bring forward even without an order passing and with sounds of conflict being heard from some councillors, Azeem ended conversation until the next regular meeting, Monday.

“I am not sure exactly how much a Memorial Drive redesign would cost, but it might be tens of millions of dollars. Maybe that’s not something they would do on a small City Council majority. So maybe there’s a way to see what a consensus-building process looks like,” Azeem said.

In a by-now familiar pattern, Corcoran’s death has accelerated safety improvements on Memorial Drive, where residents have long been calling for corrections to protect walkers and bike riders. (“How could an unprotected 3-foot patch of asphalt wedged between a highway and a riverbank possibly be safe?” resident Jacob Klaybor asked during public comment, recalling a near-miss seven years ago when a car drove off Memorial Drive and into a tree less than 5 feet ahead of him. “A freshly paved four-lane stretch of roadway next to a crumbling, narrow path serves the interest of neither conservation nor recreation.”)

Changes coming

DCR staffers are scheduled to appear Oct. 21 before the Conservation Commission to get permits for a quick safety improvement “in the immediate area around the rotary to mitigate some of the substandard conditions,” said Brooke McKenna, the city’s transportation commissioner. Most of the work can go ahead without commission approval.

The most immediate changes were expected to be to infrastructure in the area surrounding the Boston University Bridge intersection, though what that looks like has not been identified, City Manager Yi-An Huang said. It could include traffic islands or protected bike lanes like the city has committed to at other intersections marked by bicyclist deaths – two in June, both from turning trucks. Following that in terms of priority are reducing the speed limit, a long-term redesign of the rotary at the bridge, implementing a road diet on 0.8 miles between the Eliot Bridge and John F. Kennedy Street and eventually creating a “road diet”’ on the remaining two miles of Memorial Drive that run through Cambridge. That would eliminate two traffic lanes with the goal of slowing traffic and adding recreation space.

That final item is lower on the list of priorities because DCR had already shifted its road diet focus to the 0.8-mile segment, Huang said.

The larger stretch of road diet has been protested by some Riverside neighborhood residents, along with opposition to closing Memorial Drive to car traffic on Saturdays to turn it into “Riverbend Park” for people to use for recreation.

“Road diet” concerns

Lawrence Adkins, a community leader in Riverside, was the only naysayer among more than two dozen people heard Monday during public comment. He was “disappointed” that councillors would try to pass the policy order without community input.

“Everything this council does impacts the area that we live in. Every bit of traffic comes and clogs up every single street we have,” Adkins said. DCR commissioner Brian Arrigo came to town Jan. 30 to hear concerns and had promised a swift follow-up meeting about Memorial Drive changes, yet hadn’t been heard from since, Adkins said.

While city councilor Paul Toner said he supported much of the policy order, and offered his condolences to Corcoran’s family, he too worried that a road diet risked increasing traffic on side streets if two lanes of traffic are removed. Councillor Cathie Zusy agreed, mentioning plans for Memorial Drive to be redone entirely within the next decade.

A proposed amendment by councillor Patty Nolan to her own order would add the community input element that was worrying Adkins and others, restarting a “comprehensive community process which last hosted broad meetings in 2019.” Mayor E. Denise Simmons emphasized that this should be a “robust, comprehensive and inclusive process.”

A decade of crash data 

Vice Mayor Marc McGovern acknowledged concerns about placing a road diet on Memorial Drive, but said the time for action was now, considering data from the state Department of Transportation state crash registry: In the past 10 years, there have been 1,200 crashes on Memorial Drive, of which 446 resulted in injuries. Twenty-nine were incapacitating or serious. There were four deaths, “including the one we just suffered last week,” McGovern said.

“It’s important to move expeditiously,” McGovern said.

Former council legislative aide and candidate Dan Totten, speaking during public comment, noted that the council had voted in its previous term for a reduced speed limit.

“It passed this body unanimously,” Totten said, “and it was not acted upon.”

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