Description
The new pavement markings / parking designations on CPD are a disaster and poorly designed for the following reasons:
1) The parking on the North side of the street is literally in the middle of the road. I have not seen this setup anywhere else, ever. That doesn't seem safe.
2) ~14ft of space was set aside to accommodate 2 bike lanes and a hazard lane on the north side. This is entirely wasteful. The road is only ~1/3 of a mile and has a bike path running parallel ~50 yards to the north. There is no need to take a majority of the road for bikes when they have an adjacent path. Why not consider a "share the road" signage for bikes to travel with traffic for that 1/3 of a mile? Building multiple lanes for bikes has greatly reduced the amount of road available for vehicles to park/travel. Also, when you get the the intersection at the newly renamed "Steel Place" you get dumped into the Alewife traffic sans bike lane. Benefit = minimal. Really poor planning here.
3) Traveling down the street by car is really tight now. The 2-way travel is often encumbered by illegal parked cars, drop offs for ride sharing, double parked delivery vehicles, etc.
It used to be easy to travel down this road. Now its a headache. Taken as a whole, with the parking and bike paths you took a street that could easily accommodate 4 lanes, with parking on either side and 2 way traffic, into a single side parking with VERY TIGHT 2-way travel. Everything is more congested now, both during rush hour and off-hours. Anyone have any industrial grade paint thinner to fix this problem and try again?
4 Comments
Traffic - BMcK (Streets) (Verified Official)
Chuck (Registered User)
Acknowledged Traffic - DS (Signs) (Registered User)
Closed Traffic - DS (Signs) (Registered User)
The parking spaces are near the middle of the right-of-way, but the travel lanes have been shifted to accommodate the new street configuration. It is called a Parking Protected Bike Lane or Protected Cycle Track. Despite not having seen this configuration before, it is consistent with both the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide and the MassDOT Separated Bike Lane Design Guide, and similar configurations currently exist elsewhere in Cambridge, as well as in Boston, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and other major cities in the United States and around the world. Having the parked vehicles serve as a physical separation between bicyclists and moving vehicles makes this configuration SAFER than a more traditional parking-bike lane-travel lane configuration, not less safe.
While the eastern section of Cambridgepark Drive does not currently have any marked bike facilities, that will not always be the case, and that is not a good reason not to improve the bike facilities on adjacent roadways, especially with the increasingly residential nature of Cambridgepark Drive.
We are aware that a number of vehicles remain illegally parked on the south side of the street, but we are confident that this will become less and less of an issue as people become familiar with the new parking regulations and configuration. We flyered all illegally parked vehicles yesterday and the Police Department began issuing parking tickets this morning. We have also begun installing the bike lane markings last night, and as we continue with that work it will become more clear that vehicles parking on the south side are illegally obstructing a bike lane. The travel lanes are also not nearly as narrow as you would seem to believe. They may seem narrow in contrast to the previous condition, but they are both wide enough to comfortably accommodate passenger vehicles and small trucks. Many streets in Cambridge that have two-way travel have narrower lane widths. Narrower lanes also help to encourage lower speeds, which is a good thing on a street that is becoming more residential and has a number of marked crosswalks and a lot of pedestrian activity.
I hope that I have been able to help you understand the new configuration and why it is an improvement for all street users, and to alleviate your concerns about illegally parked vehicles. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the Traffic Department directly at 617-349-4700 or through the contact forms on our website, cambridgema.gov/traffic.