A redesign for a nearly 90-year-old traffic overpass in Cambridgeport has come down to two options since January, when state transportation planners had four that were universally disliked.
In the designs for a William J. Reid Overpass replacement presented Thursday, neighbors, drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians could see the complex structure linking Memorial Drive, Brookline Street and the BU Bridge brought down to be an entirely surface-level intersection, or include a two-lane, east-west bridge just for Memorial Drive traffic.
The version with a bridge was the more popular among the audience nearly filling an in-person-only meeting held at the Morse School auditorium.
The state is collecting comments on the designs for the next couple of weeks by email, said Nate Cabral-Curtis, one of the presenters for the state. “Our goal is to decide which way we’re going between these two probably by the end of the year, so we can move into a formal design process,” Cabral-Curtis said.
The number of traffic lanes needed without a bridge seemed unsafe for pedestrians to cross, residents at the meeting told planners, and it would stop all car traffic – an estimated 15,000 cars daily just on Memorial Drive – to idle at signals, adding to air pollution for the neighborhood and school.
“To a lot of us, that’s a nonstarter because of the number of lanes,” said Ken Carlson, a founder of the BU Bridge Safety Alliance and member of Cambridge Bike Safety, referring to the four-way intersection version without a bridge. “In terms of the second alternative, a lot of us like it because of the simpler intersection,” though there would need to be traffic calming measures to discourage speeding.
“I was just utterly horrified to see what you thought pedestrians would be able to get across,” former city councillor and mayor Henrietta Davis told state planners, referring to the no-bridge version. “Right now it’s very safe for pedestrians because there are a lot of gaps. There’s a lot of opportunity to cross without conflict, and I challenge the designers to make this not less safe for pedestrians than it is today.”
Not everyone agreed the current rotary was safe for pedestrians, but the proposed version without a bridge was seen as dangerous despite planners’ assurances that lights would be timed to give time to get all the way across the street in one stage, rather than leave people stranded on medians waiting for a second walk signal.
Bike, bus and pedestrian paths
There are six east-west car lanes crossing the intersection in the design without a bridge, and from five to six heading north-south. The version that includes a bridge raises two of those east-west lanes away from pedestrians and bike riders completely, leaving three at ground level. The north-south lanes on one side of the intersection goes to four from six.
In each of the designs, pedestrian and bike lanes are kept separate from car traffic, and there are two bike rotaries, one on each side of the north-south lanes from Brookline Street to the Boston University bridge. Each version also has a dedicated lane for the Route 47 bus. The same lane might be used for the 85 bus, a planner said. Neither version precludes future transit or trail connections, including for the Grand Junction path, planners said. A need to go over train tracks means it’s impossible to send traffic through a tunnel instead of a bridge.
The bridge version – called the “tight diamond intersection with bridge” also includes more green space, but on either design “we’ll try to fine tune that to maximize the amount of space that you can actually sit in and enjoy,” Cabral-Curtis said. “The road we’re on today. It’s not a picnic spot, right?”
Listening and coordinating
State representatives Mike Connolly and Will Brownsberger spoke from the audience to express gratitude at the progress and public process. “Coming out of that January meeting, there were a lot of frustrations,” Connolly said. “We still have a long way to go with this design. I think it can keep getting better as we go.”
Charles River Conservancy representative Christine Liu urged designers to look ahead to a “road diet” that allows for the elimination of car traffic lanes, like what is underway farther west on Memorial Drive. To resident concerns about cars backing up deep into Cambridgeport from jams in the rotary, transportation planner Erin Fredette could offer assurance that the new intersection was being designed with signalization in mind to work on traffic problems.
Cambridge’s transportation department and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation also were represented at the meeting to coordinate the rotary work to Cambridgeport in the north and Charles River parkland to the south.
Unprepared to talk cost and time
The state’s five-person team came unprepared to engage with questions about project cost or how long construction affecting neighbors would last. The project is unlikely to begin work soon enough to be caught in the White House’s throttling of support in states that didn’t vote for Donald Trump as president, and planners said Thursday that whatever design is chosen, the project will use federal money in a typical 80-20 split with the state.
Detailed cost estimates haven’t been run on either version, but project manager Joshua Bartus aid they would take $50 million each to start – despite the drawings presented to the public already saying that the version without a bridge would be less expensive.
Nor was the team prepared to discuss a construction timeline or duration. A request to compare and assess cost and duration of the versions was responded to with an inanity by Anthony Timperio of engineering consultant company Benesch: “It’s going to vary between options.” Planners admitted that the bridge would take longer.
Asked about managing traffic between when the overpass comes down and an east-west bridge is built – essentially creating the conditions that the audience felt was unsafe and unhealthy – the state team ignored the question.
A project of this scale might take three years, Bartus said after the meeting. The version without the bridge “might be less,” he said. “I don’t know how much less. I’ve had simple roundabouts that might take a year or less, and I’ve had simple roundabouts that might take three years.”
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