Yeah right. Can we add every other side street that has become a cut-through?

Feel free - click on the map to add. It’s a real problem on streets that aren’t wide enough to accommodate bikes, a lane of parked cars, and trucks and buses trying to pass each other with children crossing the street at the same.

City Hall - FG assigned this issue to Traffic - KC (Permits)

Issue 13657746 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue.

Thank you for reporting your concern to City of Cambridge via Commonwealth Connect. We have reviewed the information you provided our staff and will be investigating this issue further.

Walker between Shepard and Linnaean has the same issue.

Issue 13672674 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue.

I emailed the major that Garden street should remain a 2-way street. This street should be used for traffic, not a storage space for parked cars. Build an underground parking garage with EV charging stations and bicycle parking. Harvard did it, Cambridge can do it.

It's been a month since the acknowledgment by the city and no solution has been offered. Disappointing that the risks created on Raymond and Walker by eliminating 2-way traffic on Garden (the one big enough to manage pass through traffic) do not seem to be of concern to the City of Cambridge.

Issue 13842098 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue.

Concord avenue towards Harvard square too (8:00 am)

We live at the Corner of Linnaean and Raymond street with our driveway on Raymond. During three periods during the day we cannot exit our driveway as cars whip around Raymond from Linnaean via Walker barely slowly andoften beginning to accurate as they turn. When we have a guest we have to physically stand in the street to stop the traffic so you have time to back out into the street. Someone is going to be badly hurt one day because on the dark rainy night last night a car barely missed pedestrians in the crossswalk crossing the street. There has be a way to slow down the turning traffic down as it is like a race track here at rush hour. BTW this includes the school buses roaring up and down Raymond

Unfortunately, Cambridge does not employ a functioning police department. As a result, the very easy solution of enforcing traffic law (which actually nets out ahead financially rather than costing money like infrastructure does) is completely non-viable. The entire department combined issues an average of only 3 citations per day.

It is better to prevent problems with design than to hire police. Yesterday night, I drove on Garden street and the lane keeps switching right and left. I can barely see pedestrians crossing behind the lightened poles.

There are also some situations (red lights, stop signs, crosswalks) which simply cannot be designed in a way that does not require active compliance from the operators who currently willfully ignore the law.

The best part of enforcement is that we don't actually have to hire any additional officers. We simply need to have our existing force actually do their job. How big is the existing dedicated Traffic Enforcement team? 15 fulltime officers? That's 120 man-hours available every single day, and currently those 120 hours produce a laughable and pathetic 3 citations.

Welcome to TPT world. We have been asking for help on N. Mass Ave for a year. Look at this ticket that was opened in June. Nothing has been done about it. You will be ignored just like us.
https://seeclickfix.com/issues/12524562

Issue 13979192 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue.

Issue 14141598 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue.

Thank you for contacting the Cambridge Traffic, Parking, and Transportation Department. We have investigated this concern and our findings are included in the March City Council report that is available on the project's website. We plan to start outreach to discuss potential modifications within the next 1-2 months. https://www.cambridgema.gov/StreetsAndTransportation/ProjectsAndPrograms/GardenStSafetyImprovementProject

Why has the city marked this as closed and banned the public from reopening it? Literally nothing about this issue is closed.

Agree with Concerned NC Neighbor. This should remain open until after modifications have been implemented. TPT disagreed with almost all the requests of the Garden Street policy order entered on Monday 4/3/23. The policy order was based on feedback from residents received by city councilors. It was amended to the point of being irrelevant because TPT said that their report showed the citizens' requests wouldn't make it safer so any modifications that are planned are what TPT wants, NOT what the residents requested. This needs to be an ongoing conversation. PLEASE REOPEN.

As a Linnaean Street condo owner, I trust all the comments, while certainly valid, need to be aware Linnaean Street owners/residents continue to take the bulk of fast traveling cars and trucks resulting often in shaking homes and loud traffic. Hopefully modifications take into account neighbors who live on Linnaean St. All the previous comments seem to simply want to redirect all traffic to Linnaean - as the street is perceived as a main street.
Linnaean St. voices are needed in this conversation. It’s tended to be believed comments as such may not be welcome by side street residents- but as modifications go forward Linnaean residents need be taken into consideration. Thank you.

Neighborhood Nine--Residents wanted Garden Street to be returned to a 2-way, which I think would alleviate your problems. In the TPT report they state they will not be doing this: "Restoring the section of Garden Street from Linnaean Street to Huron Avenue to a two-way for vehicles would likely reduce comfort and safety for people biking and walking, and increase queues, gridlock, and congestion near the Garden/Huron/Sherman intersection. While this change may divert some cut-through traffic from Raymond Street, traffic patterns will likely not change to the extent that residents hope for. However, there are measures the City could take to slow or divert traffic on side streets, which are outlined in this report." file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/Attachment-14429.pdf

I appreciate the concern for pedestrian safety expressed in the report, but the only possible way for that concern to not be fake or misplaced is if cars are driving down the sidewalks. If this is supposed to be legitimate concern, then perhaps we should also be installing meteorite protection above the roadway.

It actually is a serious concern for pedestrians as they try to cross an over-crowded road, especially with young children trying to get to G&P.

There are simple solutions for that (for example, add an additional light with a crosswalk), but those are all out of scope because this disaster was a "quick build" project. These "quick build" projects don't require traffic studies, community feedback, an efficacy study, or even simply a site survey. The last one is why Garden St is now too narrow for the buses on their existing route to turn left from Sheppard without encroaching on the inbound bike lane.

While simple, a light with a crosswalk would still require a modicum of actual work to do correctly and the Garden St SNAFU has shown us that actual work is the very last thing anybody working for the city wants to do.

If you want comments from people on Linnaean St, I've lived on it for 29 years. I'm in a large condo building halfway between Garden and Mass Ave and my bedroom faces onto the street. I have not noticed more traffic or more noise, nor have other people I talk to in my building of 61 apartments. In fact there's been less traffic than there used to be since the first Covid19 lock-down (fewer people driving to work, including me). I don't live on Raymond St, but I'm on it almost every day at various times, either on foot or by car, and don't see traffic on it. I'm slightly inconvenienced by the new arrangement in getting over to Concord Ave, have to go a block or two out of my way at most, through the Harvard-Smithsonian campus, down Bond St., or via Raymond to Walden to Concord. It seems a low price to pay for encouraging bicycle transport and thus reducing car exhaust: both pollution and global warming.

Concerned NC Neighbor, I've provided community feedback for quick-build projects by mail and in meetings: they do solicit it. And they do utilize traffic studies etc (they'd be an awful lot "quicker" if they were just the fiats you assume!) There are transport committees and organizations in Cambridge you could sign up for information from.
I'm sorry you didn't get to provide your feedback, but it was solicited. Maybe it would be better at this point to write to one or several city councilors (cc: the city clerk)--their email addresses are available on the City of Cambridge website, as are notices of all council meetings and community meetings, etc. It's a gold mine.

Feedback was solicited, provided, and then ignored. The perfunctory traffic "study" was not originally going to be performed at all. It was done in response to community feedback. The "study" ended up covering a random Tuesday in June and didn't involve any direct measurement of traffic.

Mary--You don't see traffic on Raymond???? Check out these pictures of how backed up it gets now. And as far as bike safety goes, Garden Street was safe before the separated lanes so I would say yes, this is a high price to pay for what we didn't need in the first place. We have been trying to get N. Mass Ave fixed since November 2021. We have spent hundreds of hours doing so and have been ignored. And both Concerned NC Neighbor and I know how to write to the city council. We've been doing it for over a year with no results.

Issue 14349532 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue.

Issue 14357669 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue.