An Outer Huron Avenue cycling infrastructure plan – a main connections between Cambridge and Belmont south of Fresh Pond is set to go, with implementation in the spring, but not everyone is happy with the plan. A motion to delay it for five years, until 2031, was introduced at this week’s meeting of the City Council and returns for a vote Monday.
Bikers say getting to area can be tough today, especially from the Belmont side, which is unfortunate considering its community spaces: the Fresh Pond Golf Course, Glacken Field, the Russell Youth Center, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8818 and Parkside Place apartments.
In adding quick-build bike lanes, the plan replaces 79 mostly unregulated on-street spaces with 35 overnight-permit, daytime-unregulated spaces, a net loss of 44. That loss of parking drove 1,510 people to sign a petition to suspend the project, inspiring the motion by councillors Cathie Zusy, E. Denise Simmons and Tim Flaherty.
Several people spoke about the order Monday, part of more than 150 public commenters with concerns about zoning, paying educators a living wage and decriminalizing sex work.
Many noted the importance of a connected network. The project is only a quarter-mile, but if delayed would leave a gap that discourages people from riding. Others said the new infrastructure would be an unreasonable burden to put on the people who live and use the area’s amenities, mainly because of the loss of parking.
Beyond what was said at the council meeting, 574 people responded to a city survey about the Outer Huron design. Of those opposed to changes in on-street parking, the primary worry was about a loss of access to the golf course. The course has a small off-street parking lot, but people said it’s not big enough to handle today’s parking volume. Simmons noted that there’s also already not enough parking for the VFW’s 200-person capacity.
Zusy said she had talked to Belmont and Parkside Place about using parking spaces there, but each was uninterested. Flaherty questioned whether the stretch truly applied under the 2020 city law requiring installation of approximately 25 miles of separated bike lanes within seven years. “Connectivity is defined in the cycling safety ordinance as connecting a place of origin to a place of destination within the city. This stretch of Huron Avenue doesn’t meet that criteria,” said Flaherty, at attorney.
His objection wasn’t addressed immediately; more attention was paid to parking issues, with deputy city manager Kathy Watkins noting that parking in the area is not used effectively, with many vehicles stored for long periods of time and getting low turnover. The city had wanted to install parking meters to incentivize people to park only when actively using the area, but decided not to after community pushback.
Councillor Patty Nolan said that although she wished other, more impactful sections were prioritized instead, but city staff had completed Outer Huron planning and the project was ready to install – and should continue as scheduled.
Councillor Marc McGovern, just returned from a transportation conference in the Netherlands, spoke about the adjustment period that country went through as they rebuilt its infrastructure.
McGovern and mayor Sumbul Siddiqui submitted a substitute policy order to complete the Outer Huron project and support neighborhood access by identifying ways to better use parking, for example by encouraging nonresidents to carpool, walk, bike or take transit where feasible, changing the number or timing of resident permit parking spaces, daytime meter requirements with time limits suited to golf and community programming, and enabling the golf course to manage its parking.
A look at Outer Huron
I visited for myself to see how things will change.
The upcoming project is for the final quarter-mile of Huron Avenue before the Belmont border at Grove Street.
Starting at the intersection of Huron Avenue and Fresh Pond Parkway and heading west, the first section has a two-way bike lane completed in 2024.
The upcoming project starts at its intersection at Fresh Pond Place and extends a quarter-mile to the Belmont border at Grove Street. On this section today, the bike infrastructure is a mix of painted lanes and sharrows, a term for shared lanes. Car parking is on one or both sides of the street.
It will extend the two-way bike lane from the existing section to the Belmont border as a quick-build project, connecting to a Belmont bike network project scheduled for 2028. It removes car parking from the north side of Huron Avenue in the new section.
Since the new lane would be similar to what exists today on the same street, I thought it would be appropriate to visit and compare experiences across various transit modes.
By bike
I visited on a Tuesday in the early afternoon. Heading west on a bike, the initial two-way bike lane felt comfortable to ride. Debris had blown in from the recent nor’easter and one part had a big puddle, but it was great otherwise.
After Fresh Pond Place, the bike lane moves between the parking lane and travel lane. Given the proximity to traveling cars and parked cars sticking partially into the bike lane with the risk of dooring if drivers stepped out suddenly, it was much less comfortable.
The painted lane becomes a sharrow, forcing me to get directly behind a car, vehicular-cycling style. I felt lucky there wasn’t a traveling car coming at the forced merge when the painted lane ended. To take a left at Grove Street, the lack of dedicated bike infrastructure meant I had to get into the left turn lane with cars.
The city measured speeds on the final part of Huron (the final quarter-mile without the two-way bike lane) and found that 50 percent of drivers drove 31 mph or faster, above the 25 mph speed limit. Fifteen percent of drivers exceeded 35 mph eastbound (those headed westbound were 2 mph slower). The city contextualized this with the statistic that at 30 mph, five out of 10 pedestrians would not survive a crash; nine out of 10 would survive if the vehicle were traveling at 20 mph.
Heading east was similar, with the added step of crossing the street at the Fresh Pond Place intersection to get on the two-way bike lane.
Installing a bike lane would make it easier for people on bikes to get to Belmont or to Cambridge’s public uses in the area. To preserve and maximize access to these spaces for everyone else, the city’s plan maintains loading zones for the Youth Center and the bus stop in front of Parkside Place, adds accessible spots and reclassifies spots to permit-only overnight but unregulated during the day, avoiding metered parking.
By bus
The timing of my visit didn’t work out for me to ride the route 75 bus on Huron Avenue between Fresh Pond Parkway and Grove Street., but I looked at the three outbound stops and four inbound.
The outbound Huron Avenue by Larchwood Drive is a floating stop, between the car lane and bike lane. It lacked shelter and a bench, which affected the experience of waiting there. It felt like a missed opportunity for infrastructure to protect people waiting for the bus. If there’s not enough room at the stop, a bench should be added to the park.
For the inbound direction, I waited at 700 Huron Ave., directly in front of the Parkside Place apartments. The location is nice, and I waited under the apartment’s front awning, which would be especially useful in worse weather. A move was considered for this stop but canceled after resident feedback.
By foot
One of the main changes for pedestrians is at the Grove Street intersection at the western end of Huron. Today, pedestrians crossing Huron move through three travel lanes and a turn buffer, a continuous 23 meters.
The plan reduces the number of car lanes a pedestrian needs to cross to two at the intersection, and it adds a refuge island between the car lanes and bike lanes, which should make it more comfortable. Belmont plans to signalize the intersection as part of its project.
On the section of Huron with the two-way bike lane, there are well-marked pedestrian crossings with flashing lights and buffer zones between the car travel lanes and the bike lane.
There are no current and no new planned midstreet crossings in the upcoming project, but most of the immediately adjacent area is the fenced-off sections of Fresh Pond Golf Course and Belmont Cemetery. There are crossings near the entrances of both.
The project area today lacks a sidewalk on the north side. It wasn’t clear how someone parked there should start their walk to their destination. The options are to either squeeze between moving traffic and parked cars in the painted bike lane, between parked cars and vegetation, or cross the street without a crosswalk to the south side.
Bike activities calendar
E-Bike Adventure Rides with Casa Bikes (recurring). Every other Thursday and Saturday, bring your own e-bike or borrow one of Casa’s. The next ride is at 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Free, but register.
Cargo Bike Test Drive. Rescheduled because of rain, Family Bike Ride’s recurring crowdsourced event benefits parents looking for information on cargo bikes by connecting them with parent owners that live in their community and inviting test drives of the bikes. At 10 a.m. Sunday in the picnic grove of the Cambridge Crossing development in Cambridge’s North Point neighborhood, though it may be pushed to a rain date.
For more Boston bike events, see bostonbikeevents.net. (No affiliation with The Independent.)