After bike lanes were added to Garden Street in West Cambridge in October 2022, taking up enough roadway that a five-block stretch had to go down to one-way car traffic, the city’s transportation staff told unhappy residents and councillors asking for a reversal to wait six months so a proper analysis could be done of the change.
Six months passed a long time ago, councillor Paul Toner said Monday, renewing his call from that December for two-way car traffic to be brought back to Garden Street from Bond Street and Huron Avenue.
“I would not even be bringing this up if, after a year, I didn’t hear about it. It’s two years now. I’m still hearing about it,” Toner told the city manager and staff. “This isn’t just that people didn’t get used to it.”
Around 65 residents took time during public comment to talk about Toner’s order, some calling for the one-way traffic to stay in place for bicyclist safety but more calling for a reversal, with even several identifying themselves as bicyclists asking to end the experiment. Ruth Allen of Paddy’s Lunch, a 90-year-old neighborhood bar, said she represented “many small-business owners who were not taken into consideration when they did this project.” She gave testimony that “our customer base has gone down. People are stuck in traffic. My deliveries are not on time, or nor can they get there.”
Toner’s order called for two-way car traffic to be returned as soon as possible but no later than April 1, but that ran into manager concerns about process – making sure all voices can be heard about a change, as residents and councillors frequently call for – and a literal cold reality: Until April, the temperatures will be “generally below 40 degrees, and it’s not possible” for permanent car-lane changes to be marked on Garden Street, said Owen O’Riordan, deputy city manager.
Ultimately, it passed with the council calling unanimously not for the work itself on that timeline, but for a report with analysis and “possible options for implementation.”
There were factors other than the weather to take into account. Toner and others urged the changes because of the effect Garden Street has had shunting car traffic to side streets, and because the shared Tobin and Darby Vassall school campus promises to add to car counts when it reopens after years of construction; but O’Riordan and City Manager Yi-An Huang pointed to how the work would ripple through the scheduled work on installation of bike lanes elsewhere in the city. Another factor: moving lost parking spaces from Garden onto side streets.
The Garden Street bike lanes – one on each side of the roadway, heading in opposite directions – are part of changes citywide resulting from a Cycling Safety Ordinance passed in 2019-2020 largely for completion in March 2026. Working to find new parking spaces that would otherwise be lost to bike lanes has already pushed that deadline to November 2026 after a proposal to go into 2027.
Adding back a lane
A suggestion for Garden Street in December 2022 was to add back two-way car traffic by taking the bike lanes on opposite sides of Garden Street and putting them side by side, using less space. Having the directions of bike traffic separated is “always better,” with more predictability and safety resulting from fewer crossings, transportation department chief Brooke McKenna said then. Now councillor Patty Nolan raised the possibility instead of squeezing out more space another way: bike lanes that were “narrower than ideal, but we have a lot of narrow bike lanes in the city where we just don’t have the room.”
Instead, more conversation Monday went toward making room for a returned car lane on Garden Street by taking away slightly more than half of the 32 parking spaces on the affected stretch, only around 80 percent of which tend to be used at a time, Huang said.
Nolan’s own research agreed it was doable. “It has never been the case that there aren’t at least 10-plus spots on those side streets within two blocks – not five blocks away or 10 blocks away,” Nolan said. “If the number of cars is 30, there’s been at least 40 open parking spots within two blocks” in daily checks she’s conducted over the past week, looking at midday and night.
“We do need to understand how we’re going to deal with deliveries, et cetera, but we deal with that in other parts of the city as well,” Nolan said.
Intending outreach
There were councillors prepared to vote Toner’s order through Monday, with some noting that this corrected a change that was made in the fall of 2022 without proper outreach to residents beyond Garden Street itself – despite the predictable effects of cars diverted to those nearby streets. “Not to shade our city staff, because they do an amazing job in trying to do the best they can,” councillor Ayesha Wilson said. “I personally was a direct abutter to this Garden Street installation and was not aware of it until the Friday before. And I was an elected official on the School Committee on maternity leave, walking my baby there every day.”
Neighbors were so angry afterward that even meetings on other topics turned into dialogues about Garden Street – and heated ones, with intense attacks on transportation staff who were carrying out a law passed by the council, Toner said. “I thought I was going to have to call the police,” he recalled of one meeting.
Those feelings of neighborhood anger haven’t faded entirely, Toner said, and now “I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but there was more community outreach on this particular issue by the citizens – residents of the area, about eight of them, who went out and leafleted their neighborhood and sent emails to folks. And I won’t get into it, but my aide counted 530 emails on this issue in the past three days.”
Huang acknowledged “a pretty significant community that feels very strongly that something needs to change,” but that didn’t mean it was wise to create new grievances by moving quickly and missing outreach opportunities again, he said.
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@Slaw what strain are you on? Puff puff pass. You should take the senior center out for a bike ride, see how that goes.
Ps you can catch a dui on a bike, just like a car.
@jray nor do bikes
Bicyclists who utilize city streets should be made to carry personal injury and collision insurance.
@bahmutov Excellent point. Most car trips are short errands that could easily be replaced by biking or walking.
If you’re complaining about traffic, consider cutting back on unnecessary short car trips.
Maybe walk 10-15 minutes instead of hopping in the car. It’s healthy. Reducing these short car trips could significantly decrease the number of cars on the road.
Perhaps it’s time to prioritize safety over convenience. Many cyclists aren’t hobbyists out for recreation. They are on bikes because they can’t afford cars. They trying to get somewhere, just like you.
@bigbikelane Small-minded people make small-minded comments.
@bigbikelane Of course not, and I did not claim that they do.
Funny to hear @bigbikelane wish for a world where they didn’t need a car.
You already live in one: about 40% of Cambridge households don’t own a car, and car-free commuting here is 10x the national average.
Sometimes, a car is necessary, but much of Cambridge thrives without one. Consider using a car only when truly needed, not for convenience. It would mean fewer cars, less traffic and safer streets for everyone.
Convenience should not be prioritized over public safety.
All the problems that people are complaining about are due to cars. Cars cause traffic. Traffic is cars.
Maybe you should shift your blame to all the people in cars rather than the people who are not part of traffic.
My comments are being screened. Enjoy your echo chamber mrnice.
Remember: arguing on the internet is like competing in the special Olympics.
My comments are being screened. Typical censorship
@bigbikelane. If only that were true.
Says the person arguing on the internet.
I’m not arguing, I’m spitting facts
“@Slaw what strain are you on? Puff puff pass. You should take the senior center out for a bike ride, see how that goes.”
My mother is a senior. She bikes to work in Cambridge.
“Ps you can catch a dui on a bike, just like a car.”
You literally cannot. The law says “Whoever, upon any way or in any place to which the public has a right of access, or upon any way or in any place to which members of the public have access as invitees or licensees, operates a motor vehicle with a percentage, by weight, of alcohol in their blood of eight one-hundredths or greater, or while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, or of marijuana, narcotic drugs, depressants or stimulant substances, all as defined in section one of chapter ninety-four C, or while under the influence from smelling or inhaling the fumes of any substance having the property of releasing toxic vapors as defined in section 18 of chapter 270 shall be punished by a fine of not less than five hundred nor more than five thousand dollars or by imprisonment for not more than two and one-half years, or both such fine and imprisonment.”
“operates a motor vehicle” is the key term there. Bikes are not motor vehicles. The law is specific to motor vehicles. No DUIs on bikes.
MR Nice has a good point, you aren’t stuck in traffic, you are traffic. On my bike I am not stuck in traffic nor am I contributing to it. If you hate traffic so much get on a bike.
@bigbikelane What facts? every single point you have made has been thoroughly refuted with actual facts.
As a city we should be working to reduce car use by both volume and speed. I live in Cambridge and have two children. The biggest safety concern I have for them is people driving cars recklessly. I’m frankly flabbergasted that even in the city of Cambridge MA the residents here still worship car culture. Cars are dangerous and people operate them in an unsafe manner regularly. Maybe our city councilors should worry more about the human trafficking in their midst than whether or not cars will get even more public space dedicated to them.