Like many Cambridge residents, I have family in nearby towns. My in-laws in Belmont are active folks who envy Cambridge’s street safety infrastructure, but are one small gap shy from visiting pending grandchildren by bike: the Outer Huron Safety Improvement Project. Right now, our only option is to drive to one another, because we don’t feel safe biking on a busy road with fast-moving cars, despite the short distance.
Cambridge has already built a much-lauded off-street path that runs along Fresh Pond and Glacken Field. But just beyond the golf course parking lot, the separated lane abruptly ends, dumping people riding toward Belmont beside speeding traffic and parked vehicles. The parked vehicles here don’t require a residential permit or have meters, resulting in long-term vehicle storage (including the occasional boat trailer). This is also the route to places Cambridge and Belmont families use every day: Glacken Field and playground, the Russell Youth Community Center, Grove Street Park and the municipal golf course.
Right now, this last segment of Huron is not friendly for people walking and biking. The Department of Transportation warned “driving speeds on Huron Avenue are some of the highest in Cambridge and visibility is poor along the curve.” Electronically recorded speed data showed that half of eastbound drivers exceeded 31 mph, and 15 percent exceeded 35 mph. In other words, half of drivers are driving fast enough to kill or maim a pedestrian in half of crashes, and a large minority are going significantly faster. That is an unacceptable level of risk for a blind curve next to a youth center and recreation destinations. It is also surely why very few people feel comfortable enough to bike there today.
There’s about 1,200 feet left to connect to the end of Huron Avenue where it meets Grove Street. Completion would be like plugging in a long string of Christmas lights, illuminating the network: Belmont has drawn plans for bicycle lanes and improved crossings on Grove Street, targeted for 2028. We should not throw away this opportunity to connect our communities.
The city has designed plans that will make this road safer for everyone: improving crosswalks, finishing the bike lane and slowing dangerous speeding. After more than a year of in-person and virtual community meetings that refined these designs, curb work will begin in the next few months. Unless, that is, the Cambridge City Council votes for a policy order to delay this work for five years.
The concerns about parking loss are real and understandable; a coach bringing equipment to Glacken, a family dropping someone at the youth center or a resident who needs a car cannot be expected to solve a difficult trip simply by biking.
Those needs have helped shape the design process. Feedback prompted the city to adjust: It maintained the youth center’s loading zone and the bus stop at Parkside Place, it added accessible spaces and created nine parking spaces on the youth center side of Huron (rather than the unsafe “Frogger zone” against the golf course fence). This will leave a net reduction of roughly 44 spaces, materially less than the 60 spaces that has been cited. The transportation commissioner also pointed out that this stretch of parking currently sees a lot of inappropriate use of long-term vehicle storage. We can address the parking tradeoffs further still.
We should look more closely at parking that already exists. An audit of nearby parking took place when Parkside Place applied to convert part of its garage into an outdoor terrace. Its own traffic consultant found 86 of its 232 garage spaces vacant. As part of that application, they counted cars parked on Huron on a summer golf-season weekday, in the evening, and at a weekend midday. They found many open spaces: The unrestricted spaces ranged from 58 percent to 62 percent occupied, while the residential permit spaces were only 26 percent to 45 percent occupied. This snapshot shows that the scale of the problem is manageable, and that there is a potential opportunity to meet extra demand in an existing parking lot.
Cambridge is also changing who gets priority at the curb on Huron. The current plan reserves the remaining spaces for resident permit holders overnight while leaving them open to the public during the day. This should help, but we could also borrow a proven tool that ensures enough parking in busy areas with short-term visitor parking: meters. If golfers or visitors for events struggle to find spaces, the city should consider carefully chosen daytime meters or time limits that accommodate a round of golf or programming at the center. It should measure demand during busy events and adjust the rules accordingly.
Next, the golf course lot should be available to people playing golf. The city should help enforce that purpose (with meters or otherwise) so spaces are not taken by people leaving their cars to walk around Fresh Pond or go elsewhere. Ample free daytime parking along Grove Street, when combined with the proposed improved pedestrian infrastructure, can serve overflow demand.
Clear directions, a convenient place to drop off clubs and better club storage would make that option easier for golfers to use.
To quote a neighbor at a City Council hearing: “There are no perfect solutions – only tradeoffs.” In the case of linking up Outer Huron, we stand to gain major upgrades in safety and connection between neighborhoods and amenities with a relatively short length of streetscape changes.
There are real and specific tradeoffs with workable responses. The city has listened and improved its design; it should keep working with residents, the youth center and the golf course as the new parking rules take effect. Declaring a five-year delay at the very end of this deliberative process would be a mistake. We know we can preserve access for people who need to park while completing a safer route for everyone who wants to go to the same places, and beyond.
Just ask my in-laws.
