Usually, you see me on these pages as your resident film hack, food freak or human interest spotlighter. But today, I’m writing as a concerned citizen – scratch that, a concerned parent.
At Monday’s meeting of the City Council, councillors Paul Toner and Patty Nolan were looking to push a policy order that would revert Garden Street back to two-way motor vehicle traffic while maintaining two-way bike lanes. On paper, this might sound like a win-win. From a public safety point of view, it’s a massive lose-lose. People will get hurt.
Toner introduced a similar policy order in December: seeking to undo the 2022 redesign that converted Garden Street to one-way traffic, accommodating protected bike lanes and preserving residential parking. That order was amended and turned into a request for the Traffic Department to come up with options as to how two-way motor vehicle and bike traffic might coexist given the restrictions of tarmac, bricking and granite curbing. The city released four options last week. The three new ones, including the Option 4 that Toner and Nolan want, are drawing concern from public safety groups and concerned residents.
The main issue is convoluted design, with cyclists crossing traffic unnecessarily to merge into their respective travel zones in one bidirectional lane, akin to what is on Brattle Street, then splitting out to separated lanes. (It varies some between the designs.) The result is a disjointed, hazardous route that compromises safety for everyone: bikers, pedestrians, the elderly and students. It also removes the calming “chicane” effect that is there now, which will most certainly increase volume and speeds on Garden and side streets. This isn’t just inefficient design – it’s dangerous. And we’ve seen the tragic consequences of poor traffic planning too recently with the deaths of John Corcoran and Kim Staley.
To make matters worse, Option 4 would eliminate all parking on Garden Street.
So why are Toner and Nolan pushing for such measures? I’ve yet to hear any sound public-minded rationale. Both have cited outrage from the 2022 change to one-way car traffic and volume shifts, yet data from the city’s own traffic experts shows vehicle volumes on those streets being similar to data from 2018 (pre-Covid and preredesign) and 2023.
As a cyclist who’s biked nearly 4,000 city miles each year for the past 40 years, I used to ride Garden Street back when it was a two-way drag strip. I can handle it. But this isn’t about me, it’s about my daughter and the other CRLS students with whom she meets to ride to school each morning. They choose Garden Street because it’s safe and calm, allowing them to get to Cambridge Common without dangerous conflict points. Their other option, Massachusetts Avenue, is not a safe option.
I also learned this week that this is the route the CRLS Ultimate Frisbee teams use to get to Danehy Park, and the safe path the CRLS girls’ tennis team uses to get to the Pemberton tennis courts. It’s also how Harvard students get to and from the Quad. Option 4, and the other two new options, would undo this safe passage and return the street to fast-moving traffic that endangers all.
When these flawed options dropped last week, residents mobilized. The petition by Garden Street residents and abutters to keep Garden Street safe has hundreds of signatures, a clear majority of those most affected, and a greater volume than Toner’s cited emails.
Given all the voiced safety concerns, it’s troubling that Toner and Nolan remain determined to push forward. We are all aware of the noise and distraction within the council chamber these days. What we need is a council to tune that out, drop the political jockeying and tune in to the people they serve. The ones who ride, walk, live and grow up here.
What should happen next is a transparent, democratic process that puts safety first. Keep Garden Street as is and stop playing Whac-A-Mole with quick-build reversals and shortsighted policy shifts. Let’s engage with the community and design a real, lasting solution that meets everyone’s needs – especially those of the most vulnerable.
We can do better. Let’s prove it.
A stronger
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Bravo, I could not agree more. Please stop tweaking the already safe garden street and focus on its unprotected section north of Huron Ave. Soon Tobin and Vassal Lane schools move into their new building on concord Ave. There is NO safe bike route to that building. No safe bike route to alewife shopping area. This is unacceptable lapse in safety. What would it take for council to make the streets taken by kids safe. A serious injury? A death? I hope not. Stop reworking what’s already is working and focus on the unfinished streets.
The issues on this project have nothing to do with biking safety on Garden Street. In all options proposed, cyclists get two fully protected bike lanes that take up half of Garden Street with priority access to the curb. Cyclists on Garden Street are the only winners. The city has left the neighborhood with half the street and pitted residents against each other to fix the severe problems.
The real issues are the loss of critical parking/loading areas for elderly residents and safety on all other streets in the neighborhood. Crash data shows that cycling injuries have skyrocketed (5-6x) with the conversion of one-way traffic on the adjacent streets (but not Garden). Garden Street itself had no cycling injuries in the two years preceding the installation. The city has proposed two solutions that are irrelevant (#2/#3), fix nothing, and two solutions that have severe flaws (#1/#4). Option #1 is proven fundamentally flawed. Residents can see that Option #4 has problems.
Our elected officials need to fix this. The process is obviously broken. The basic assumptions are wrong.
ok
The usually perceptive Tom Meeks is either disingenuous or deaf when he asserts that he has not heard good rationale for returning Garden Street to two-ways for cars while keeping two protected bike lanes.
Over 500 neighbors of Garden Street have written to City Council reporting that their streets are now less safe as one of Cambridge’s widest thoroughfare’s has been choked off.
Safety in Cambridge is not about one street or one mode of transportation. We are in interconnected network. The city staff failed to consider this network before rerouting Garden Street traffic to smaller roads much less able to handle the volume.
Yet rather than admit their mistake, the traffic department “explains” with half-truths and extremist positions. The bike route from CRLS to Danehy is just one example–there will still be two bike lanes for students and others on Garden, nobody has to bike on Mass Ave.
Bike lanes are great, but we need to be rational and honest as we implement them.
I fully support this thoughtful, well-reasoned argument by Tom Meek.
Community safety must remain our top priority.
Garden Street’s current one-way design with protected bike lanes offers a safe, calm route, reduces accident risk, slows traffic, and supports sustainable transportation. It makes the streets safer for *everyone*, cyclists, pedestrians and drivers.
Traffic data shows minimal impact on congestion, making this a balanced, safety-first solution.
The current design of Garden Street has provided a safe and calm route for many, and it’s crucial that we preserve this rather than risking lives with convoluted and hazardous changes.
In the last city council meeting, Marc McGovern asked and Brooke McKenna (our Transportation Commissioner) clearly answered…
#1 will be the safest plan
#1 will be the plan with the least congestion
Patty Nolan argued that separated lanes are good enough, but we clearly heard from the experts that the current configuration is SAFER.
Elderly residents on Garden spoke in large numbers, asking to keep the current configuration. They talked about needing some parking and how dangerous it was to cross two lanes of traffic on Garden. The current configuration is SAFER.
Parents spoke up asking not to make their children have to bike back and forth across traffic to access a bi-directional bike lane that has more conflicts with cars. The current configuration is SAFER.
Leave well enough alone. Please.
I totally agree with this letter.
Safety is of the upmost importance. We have had too many deaths and injuries on our streets.
The current one-way layout with separated bike lanes provides a secure route, especially for students and the elderly, by reducing crossing points and accident risks.
Traffic data indicates that vehicle volumes on nearby streets have remained consistent, suggesting congestion concerns are exaggerated.
Reverting to a two-way design would increase delays and compromise safety.
@jhanratty’s analysis has a major flaw: it ignores the sharp increase in cycling rates.
The Garden Street project led to a 300% rise in bike mode share and a 500% surge in bike volumes within a half-mile radius.
With more cyclists, some increase in accidents is expected—but studies consistently show that separated bike lanes *reduce per-capita risk*.
The key metric is the accident rate, which has *decreased*, not the raw number of accidents. Ignoring this leads to false conclusions.
Brooke McKenna, our Transportation Commissioner, is a professional. She doesn’t make such errors. She’s been clear:
Option #1 (keep the design) will be the safest and cause the least congestion.
We should listen to experts.
@Peter Glick
The assertion that only cyclists win with the Garden St design is not true.
The one-way traffic and protected bike lanes improves safety for cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers alike. Studies show that narrower vehicle pathways reduce speeding, a major cause of accidents.
While some residents report increased traffic on side streets, this redistribution is part of a necessary adjustment to prioritize safety and sustainable transportation.
The bike lanes have been widely used by students and families traveling to schools and parks.
Safety should be our highest priority.
Reverting to two-way car traffic would compromise safety and delay other critical safety projects across Cambridge.
Instead of undoing progress, we should focus on optimizing traffic flow while maintaining infrastructure that supports multimodal transportation and increases safety for everyone.
I was also going to address @jhanratty’s claim that bike lanes increase accidents. In reality, they reduce accident rates by 50%.
@jhanratty: A 300% increase in cycling would normally lead to more accidents if nothing else changes. That’s why accident RATES, not raw numbers, are the proper measure of safety.
Bike lanes consistently lower accident rates, as proven repeatedly, including in Cambridge. Accurate statistics—not flawed analyses—should guide policy decisions.
Additionally, bike lanes improve safety for all road users, including drivers, by calming traffic. This has also been well-documented.
Please listen to the users and majority of abutters, not those blaming Garden St for broader traffic problems. I applaud this op-ed.
Mr. Hanratty’s “analysis” on safety is beyond misleading. It conflates volume with rates – I ask the reader to look at his work yourself, linked elsewhere.
It includes, for some reason, areas far beyond Garden St and not just Garden St itself. Guess where the crashes are in his handpicked catchment area? And, I wonder, what could have contributed to a sharp decrease in crash (not just bike) totals (not just rates) across the board (not just Garden St) 2020-2021 in particular. Hmm.
What motivates this reasoning? I quote from the end of his testimony at last week’s public meeting. I hope The Day will permit this direct, if pulled, quote:
“I don’t have empathy for cyclists.” – Mr. John Hanratty.
I’m inclined to think the analysis is not motivated by safety, as this op-ed is.
I agree with Tom Meek’s letter—Garden Street is much improved. The design worked. I’m not a cyclist. I am a senior citizen who regularly crosses Garden Street. It’s much safer for pedestrians.
I also want to chime in about Mr. Hanratty’s “analysis” on safety. Studies by impartial experts have clearly shown that the bike lanes have reduced accidents. Claims to the contrary are simply not true.
Agreed. The council should not be trampling over actual traffic engineering expertise + all available data to barge ahead with an option that staff have plainly stated is worse for both congestion AND safety, just to appease some vocal, well-connected residents who are convinced that correlation is causation.
Neighborhood traffic counts would show if northbound Garden St traffic did reroute through West Cambridge. Yet only Appleton saw increased NB volume (+937), balanced out by a decrease (-964) across Buckingham, Reservoir, Fayerweather, Lakeview, and Lexington. This is indicative of navigation apps preferentially choosing Appleton over parallel ladder streets, rather than an influx of drivers displaced from Garden. And as Mr. Meeks notes, 2018 vs. 2023 traffic volumes on Raymond St (both all day & peak hour) were similar, contradicting comments that the Garden St change has caused unprecedented traffic issues there.
Decisions should be based on evidence, not volume of complaints.
Also, to be clear: I’m not saying that the issues on Raymond St aren’t worth addressing, just that taking aim at the most convenient scapegoat won’t solve anything! There’s many steps that can be taken to address speeding and reduce cut-through behavior, such as installing speed humps and chicanes, or blocking the Walker to Raymond turn with centerline bollards on Linnaean. The fact that certain councilors want to skip over all that and jump straight to reverting Garden to 2-way shows that this isn’t actually about finding concrete solutions, but rather is just another fight about the CSO and “process.”