During peak commuting times, over 300 bicycles travel Somerville’s Beacon Street an hour, making it Greater Boston’s busiest cycling corridor.
It’s also considered to be the most dangerous in the state, with 154
bicycle accidents in the Inman Square area between 2002 and 2010,
according to a state Department of Transportation report.
The
street is riddled with potholes, and in certain areas cyclists are
frequently exposed to the danger of being “doored:” struck by an opening
door of a parked vehicle. But despite the dangers, it has become
increasingly popular as a direct bicycle route from Porter Square to
Kendall Square.
Using a combination of federal and state grants, Somerville and state transportation planners have devised a $5.5 million project
aimed at addressing safety issues and making the street more
bike-oriented. It will reconstruct 1.1 miles of Beacon — from Oxford
Street to the Cambridge city line, including creating a cycle track,
which separates bicycle traffic with a barrier dividing it from cars —
and give cyclists their own traffic signals.
City officials
and proponents say the plan will enhance bicycle safety without
impacting vehicle traffic. But it has become a divisive issue as some
residents and business owners have objected to the sacrifice of parking
spaces to make room for the cycle track. As currently drawn up, the plan
will eliminate about 100 street parking spaces.
Domenic Ruccio, owner of the Beacon
Street Laundromat, said he thinks losing parking spaces will hurt
businesses and property values.
“If you take a neighborhood like
this and it gets a reputation of being unparkable, the rents of these
apartments goes down, then the value of the real estate follows it,” he
said. “No one is anti-bike, everyone wants them to be safer, but you can
do it in a way that doesn’t cause such collateral damage.”
Cyclist
advocates, meanwhile, said improving the road for bikes will bring more
people to the area, improve safety, and make it a more desirable place
to live for those who embrace the lifestyle.
“There seems to be a
knee-jerk reaction to the eliminated parking wherever something like
this is proposed.” said Pete Stidman, executive director of the Boston Cyclists Union. ” . . . We think if it was fixed up and made safer, you’d see an even huger increase in cycling there.”
Hayes
Morrison, Somerville’s director of Transportation
Infrastructure, said the city has reviewed the street through two
parking studies and found there is ample parking available, and there
would continue to be after the reconstruction and loss of spaces.
City
officials have listened to the concerns of business owners and
residents, Morrison said, which have been aired at five public meetings
on the project, and expressed in a petition against losing the parking
spaces that attracted over 700 signatures.
Adjustments are being
made to the plan, including changing the area where parking spaces
would be removed from a commercial-heavy area of the street to a more
residential section. The city is also looking into leasing 30 spaces to
be used as metered public parking, Morrison said.
Improving
intersections for pedestrian safety and beautification elements also are
being implemented into the plans, Morrison said. The plan will continue
to be tweaked, but a cycle track will remain part it. The roadway has
seen a steady increase in bicycle traffic over the last 10 years, and
those numbers are only expected to go up, Morrison said. As that has
happened, vehicle traffic has declined, falling 13 percent from 1999 to
2012, she said.
“We can’t find any other roadway in the
Commonwealth that’s more suitable for a cycle track, based on who is
using the roadway,” Morrison said.
The track would be the first of its kind in Somerville and the sixth in the Greater Boston area, according to Morrison.
Some residents want to put the brakes on the plans for a cycle track entirely.
Dave
Olmsted, who lives at 312 Beacon St., thinks it would be more prudent
to narrow the sidewalk on Beacon Street from 10 feet to 7 feet, and use
the additional space to widen the bike lanes. He even went as far as
coming up with his own plan for the street, which he presented to the
city and the Department of Transportation.
Olmsted said he is
primarily concerned about the loss of parking spaces, and the road can
be improved for cyclists without impacting parking.
“I have to
believe the way they are putting this in, this permanent change isn’t
right,” he said. “It hurts the parking and it doesn’t help the bikers
any.”
Olmsted’s plan would take away from one of the benefits of
the current plans, which is to slow down traffic, Morrison said. Wider
streets — even with bike lanes — encourage drivers to go faster, she
said.
Maryann Heuston, the alderwoman representing Ward 2 where
the project is located, said she was convinced parking issues could be
addressed through “block-by-block decision-making,” including tailoring
parking space restrictions and loading zones to specific business needs,
and by auiring additional spaces for metered use.
“We’re doing
something a little unique here that this city hasn’t done before,” she
said. “I think there has to be a way to try this.”
Reconstructing
Beacon Street has been in the works since at least 1997, said Heuston, a
lifetime resident of the street, but has frequently taken a back seat
to other city projects, such as redeveloping Somerville Avenue and work
in Magoun Square.
“This street is in such disrepair,” she said.
“It’s difficult to walk it, drive it, bicycle it; you can’t cross it
safely . . . this has been labeled a project for cyclists, and it will
make it safer for them, but it’s going to make it a better street for
everybody.”
The current reconstruction does not address any
issues after Beacon Street becomes Hampshire Street when it crosses the
Cambridge line, but Morrison said Somerville has been in constant
contact with Cambridge City Hall, and she expected Hampshire Street to
be addressed sometime in the future.
A sixth public meeting will
be held March 5 at the Dr. Albert F. Argenziano School, 290 Washington
St. Somerville planners and representatives from the state’s Department
of Transportation will be on hand to discuss the most recent changes to
the project and respond to concerns.
While there are hopes the
project can be completed by 2015, Morrison said the city will hold as
many public meetings as it takes to settle issues with residents and
business owners.
“I sincerely doubt this is the last meeting,” she said.
Jarret Bencks can be reached at bencks.globe@gmail.com. Follow him on twitter @JarretBencks.
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