Crossing this intersection is especially dangerous during the morning rush hour when students are walking to campus and drivers are in a hurry to get to work. Speeding commuters rarely yield to pedestrians. Cambridge police could improve safety by occasionally enforcing speed limits and traffic laws at this crosswalk like they do at other ones around the MIT campus.

I agree with most of the other posts. Drivers do not understand the meaning of a raised crossing and often believe they have right of way before pedestrians, leading to dangerous situations.

What is the meaning of a raised intersection? It's not a crosswalk.

This intersection would be much better if they got rid of the raised part, and replaced it with regular crosswalks with sidewalk bulb-outs.

Before Brookline Street was reconstructed, there was plenty of extra width for biking, even when there was snow on the ground.

Then they narrowed it by removing parking on the right, and painted a bike lane. But the bike lane is full of plowed snow piles for weeks after each storm, so it's much worse than before.

I hope Cambridge keeps this in mind the next time they redesign a road.

Please send all traffic concerns to the city's traffic and parking department. They do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Cambridge DPW. Thank you.

I agree -- if most pedestrians would get a walk light as soon as they pushed the button, then buttons would mean less pedestrian waiting time than a pretimed light.

As far as my suggestion to combine a stop sign and traffic light, how far apart do the streets have to be for it to count as two separate intersections? The stop sign/traffic light setup works just fine at Green/Magazine/River, and Pemberton/Rindge/Mass Ave.

What do pedestrians do in practice at this intersection? I suspect most walk as soon as there's a gap in traffic, even if the walk light isn't on yet.

How often is there a line of cars waiting on one street while there are no cars or pedestrians crossing it? Even within the current guidelines, there might be some retiming that could save time overall.

Nobody gets a turn as soon as they arrive at the intersection -- cars or peds. Say, for example, the light turns green for Binney Street and 2 seconds later a ped pushes the button. It's a poor idea to turn the Binney Street light red (to give the ped a WALK) after just 2 seconds of green. So the pedestrian will have to wait after a minimum amount of time. And since this intersection is coordinated with the intersections on either side (to minimize the number of stops cars make along Binney), that minimum time can be rather lone, particularly in the run hours.

An intersection is defined as anything within the stop bars. If I were to treat this intersection as two, cars would have to stop twice on both Fulkerson and "little" Binney, once for a 'stop' sign (every time), and again for the red light (most of the time) with about one or two car lengths worth of space in between. The stop-controlled intersection would usually be gridlocked from cars waiting for the red, leaving cars tuning right from Binney no place to go. It would be a mess.

Jeffrey R. Parenti, P.E.
Principal Traffic Engineer
City of Cambridge

Making this street wider, or one way, or banning parking on one side, would be the opposite of traffic calming. Cars would drive faster, and it would be scarier for pedestrians to cross.

It's the same width as most two-way streets in Cambridge and Somerville.

I'd prefer it if they fixed the pavement quality, signage (including missing one-way, do-not-enter, and street name signs), and the smashed up, unreflectorized guard rails in this area.

I agree that this street is dangerous. One of my co-workers was recently biking on this stretch of road and got crowded into the curb by a car. He crashed his bike, but thankfully he was not permanent hurt.

Raised crosswalks are like an intentional, unavoidable pothole.

Scott, I'll check the to see if there are lane usage signs present on the bridge. If not, I will ask DCR to post them.

Jeffrey R. Parenti, P.E.
Traffic Engineer, City of Cambridge

Jeffrey - noticed some signs went up this week on the left-hand side of the bridge. Any chance the right-hand side will be signed as well? Thanks for helping to get this idea implemented!

Would be great to hear if there's any updates. Have not seen any changes to the signage/lane stripes here, aside from extra "right turn only" signs last year.

How about removing the problematic cars and routing them onto the nearby highway?

The road in question is how cars get from the T station garage to the highway.

The real problem is that the awful design at the traffic light allows very few cars per green to go from the T exit ramp onto Route 2. The solution is to build a grade-separated ramp that bypasses the light, as was in the original plan for the station.