Graduate Student Counil, MIT

This intersection has a raised brick "crosswalk" but no painted white stripe lines. The result is that cars driving down Albany rarely yield for pedestrians in an area with a large student population.

This new marking on Broadway has cyclists in the door zone it’s too narrow and it was so much better before when we had the sharrows because traffic in this area moves slowly ...people jump in and out between cars and cross the street in this commercial area, so to be pushed over into the cars is really dangerous

There is no longer a No Turn On Red sign from Main Street east to Ames St south. There has always been one in the past, but it was not reinstalled with new traffic lights. See Google Streetview: https://goo.gl/maps/eA2n6rFftkG2. This is a high pedestrian area which should not allow right on red.

The major snow emergency routes throughout Cambridgeport (Putnam, Magazine, Pearl, Brookline) have barely been plowed! I am shocked not to have seen a snow removal vehicle since early Friday morning. Compared to other parts of the city, nearby cities (e.g. Watertown) and Cambridge's historic effectiveness at ensuring streets are passable, the Cambridgeport neighborhood seems to have been forgotten this week. There will certainly be problems once school buses are trying to navigate tomorrow, and this should be anticipated and avoided.

I witnessed a bike-on-bike crash today. Luckily, everybody was OK, but the crash illustrates an important problem with our infrastructure.

I was heading South toward Main St on the new two-way bike lane on Ames St, riding behind one other person. Right after we passed Cava, at the driveway leading toward Google / Kendall Center, another person on a bike swooped across the bike lane, apparently taking a left from the southbound travel lane on Ames, and crashed into the person in front of me. Thankfully, they both got up, inspected themselves, and appeared to be OK.

Now, you might think, 'huh, sounds pretty reckless on the left-turner's part', and you wouldn't be wrong. However, there was another contributing factor worth considering: a catering van was illegally parked exactly in the daylighting spot intended to prevent such incidents. See my photo of the scene below. While it's true that the left-turner should have noted the limited visibility and the obvious bike lane, and proceeded cautiously, but I think that gives an unfair pass to the delivery driver who created an unnecessarily dangerous situation in the first place.

If you look at the picture, the problem might become more clear: there's nothing physically preventing the driver from parking in the daylighting spot. This is true in a concerning number of our protected bike lanes (see also the South Mass Ave lanes). I understand the pressure to conserve flex posts (which are hideously expensive), but we really need to account for the fact that people will park anywhere they aren't physically blocked from accessing (i.e. paint is not protection). It's possible that a single additional flex post might have made this incident much less likely.

This taxi was stopped here in the bike lane when I approached, and there was one parking spot ahead of it and two spots behind it that it could have easily pulled in to to let its passenger out. Drivers stopped in bike lanes unnecessarily like this should be warned, at minimum.

This intersection was recently redesigned and a northbound bike lane was included to cross Broadway via 3rd. But there is absolutely no v
isible traffic signal for bicyclists to cross Broadway on Third. It's absolutely dangerous and an unbelievable oversight...

Cab

Hi,

I live in Central square and it’s been almost a week( starting from May 25th) that there are multiple really loud firecracker and fireworks noises every nights (7pm-2am) from north(Mid-Cambridge). It’s really loud that I’m sure all my neighbor communities in Cambridge and even Somerville can hear it too. It def passed beyond the noise control level. I’m ok with some of them before 11PM but it just seems really strange to have firecracker noise in the sky multiple times per night at around 12AM and 1AM still, like today(May 28th). It completely destroys my sleep for the whole week but I had no clue what those loud fireworks noise’s for. Could you please take a look at the firework noise that’s been happening everyday from May 25th in Cambridge? Many thanks!

In case the city wants to send a bill to the business destroying the bike lane infrastructure.

You need to re-engineer how the bikes come across prospect at Broadway and Prospect Street, right now the pinch keeps pinging bikes into the rear of the parked cars, putting in a bike lane giving a delayed signal, putting the bikes in the center as opposed to off to the side make much more sense

This intersection needs a 4-way stop. Traffic on Brookline is much too fast. Cars on Franklin who are either crossing or turning onto Brookline often don’t realize Brookline does not have a stop sign. A dangerous collision happened just today. And it happens every so often. Perhaps other traffic calming treatments are needed if a 4-way stop is not warranted