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© 2021 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
By Rachel Berets
The Somerville Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee (Somerville PTAC) met Thursday, July 16 to discuss Somerville’s “Shared Streets” initiative, the Washington Street Bridge construction, and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) ridership in Somerville.
The purpose of the “Shared Streets” project, which started in late May, is to give pedestrians and bikers enough space to social distance from one another by “opening up low-volume or residential side-streets to pedestrians, cyclists, and other users while still allowing vehicle access for residents of the street, first responders, delivery drivers, sanitation trucks, and street sweepers.”
In late June, the “Shared Streets” project entered its second stage, as Elm Street and more became “Shared Streets.” At the Somerville PTAC meeting Justin Schreiber, a Transportation Planner with the Mobility Division, revealed that “It’s taken us a lot of time to get these two phases out” because of the installation of midblocks to cordon off sections of the street.
To speed up the process and push “Shared Streets” further along, the City proposed that sawhorse barricades or A-frame barricades be used until midblocks can be installed. “The idea here is that we don’t want to leave anyone out and get to September and October and November and still have many [“Shared Streets”] to go. We are hoping to launch all of them together,” said Schreiber.
Schreiber also offered an update on the Washington Street Bridge Underpass in Somerville. In January, the MBTA released a plan for the underpass, but community members were dissatisfied with the proposed two travel lanes in each direction and no bike lane.
Now the city is working to bring back the bike lane and help speed up the buses that go under the Washington Street Bridge. “We have been working with the transit priority team to come up with a design that more fully honors our commitment to sustainable transportation,” said Schreiber.
The members of the Somerville PTAC also discussed the uptick in MBTA ridership, including buses, the subway, and the commuter rail, for the first time since mid-March when the COVID-19 pandemic began. “Everything is increasing a little bit each week, 15 percent increases on the bus and about 9 percent on the subway.”
More information about the Somerville PTAC and their projects can be found at https://www.somervilleptac.org/ or https://www.somervillema.gov/departments/somerville-pedestrian-and-transit-advisory-committee.
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Good luck trying to share the street between bikes and cars when there are two lanes of traffic on a narrow street, and there isn’t room for a dedicated bike lane. Nobody is going to win.
Lowell and Cedar Streets should be one-way the entire length, and then one side could be cars and the other bikes. It might be slightly inconvenient, but it would defiinitely be safer.
We just have too many narrow streets because we are an old city, and unless you can widen them, this will continue to be a problem.
Linda, the one way street idea is a possibility, but it seems like it would inconvenience the residents and not really realize the idea of a shared street.
The idea here is you only take a car onto these streets in the first place if your destination is on the street, and you drive at a jogging pace at most, and you fall in line behind any foot or bike traffic ahead of you. Seems easy enough. There’s a few tiny little streets here in the Duck Village area that have always worked like that, informally, and you can drive two ways on at least one of them.
Ideally the shared streets would someday be paved differently and have more permanent signage (and the rules internalized better by residents and eventually visitors), but obviously we don’t have time or budget for that right now.