Whether Cambridge city councillors will vote to keep Garden Street as it is or bring back two-way car traffic will have to wait until a April 27 meeting.
Councilor Tim Flaherty used his “charter right” on Monday to stop debate, and while use of that rule brings a one-meeting delay, there is no April 20 meeting due to observance of the Patriots’ Day holiday.
“This policy order is just procedurally misplaced and it’s disruptive to the legislative process,” Flaherty said in explaining his use of the charter right.
That meant there was less than seven minutes of business on the topic after a public comment period that drew 50 residents expressing opinions on the road. Many said Garden Street felt calmer and safer with one-way car traffic and is more navigable for bicyclists, pedestrians, the old, people with disabilities and for kids. There were also a few voices saying the problems of diverted traffic, including making side streets more dangerous, persisted.
Garden Street in West Cambridge got bidirectional bike lanes in October 2022 that would have made the roadway a tight, dangerous squeeze if two-way car traffic and parking were all kept – so the blocks from Huron Avenue down to Concord Avenue saw a change to one-way car traffic toward Harvard Square. After much unhappiness, including from residents on side streets who were suddenly seeing more traffic, councillors agreed unanimously in December 2024 to ask that staff give options to restore Garden Street’s two-way car traffic while keeping the two-way protected bike lanes and as much parking as possible. (The council wanted to see analysis and implementation options no later that April 1, 2025, but this did not happen.)
Sixteen months later, with that reversal not implemented, councillors Ayah Al-Zubi and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler asked in a policy order that any work toward undoing the Garden Street changes stop, because staff analysis continues to suggest the changes are pointless and would cause new problems. It is also perhaps too costly at a time Cambridge is trying to save money, as it “would require substantial additional capital beyond the initial estimate and operating work.”
Outreach and expense
Al-Zubi had time Monday to ask whether restoring Garden Street to two-way traffic would meaningfully reduce congestion and cut-through traffic, as well for estimated costs of the work.
While both options are safe, “our preference is to keep the current configuration,” transportation department chief Brooke McKenna said. “It operates best and offers the best kind of environment.” The expected cost of undoing that was around $250,000.
There had been “an extensive public process” in 2021-2022 that heard much from people focused on parking needs and bicycling and pedestrian safety needs. “As we got toward the end where it was becoming clear that the one-way scenario was probably the most likely outcome, we tried to broaden the engagement that we were doing, because we knew that the one-way would have broader impacts.”
“We heard a lot after that point that we did not broaden that outreach enough, and we’ve taken that to heart. So after the implementation, there was a lot of feedback, and we went back out into the community,” McKenna said.
There is a problem with restoring two-way traffic, McKenna said: the complexity it introduces at Huron Avenue and Garden Street from two-way car traffic meeting two-way bike traffic. That would call for an additional phase in traffic signals “that makes it longer and means more wait time for all users, and likely an increase in congestion” at Huron Avenue and Sherman Street.
Res judicata
That’s when Flaherty, an attorney, spoke, raising the legal principle of “res judicata.”
“That prevents parties from relitigating a claim that’s received the final judgment on the merits. The purpose of this principle is to prevent repetitive litigation. It’s to ensure finality and to conserve resources,” Flaherty said. “In my view, as an attorney who’s practiced for decades in this state, reopening this matter is bad public policy. It creates a precedent that encourages parties to continue to continue to press their claims, despite receiving an adverse judgment.”
Flaherty argued that Al-Zubi and Sobrinho-Wheeler were trying to halt a voted action simply because they disagreed, and that was “simply error, whatever anybody’s substantive view is about Garden Street. This policy order is just procedurally misplaced and it’s disruptive to the legislative process.” In using his charter right, he also suggested that the return of Garden Street to the council hadn’t been adequately publicized.
This post was updated April 15, 2026, to add that city transportation experts consider both options for Garden Street to be safe.
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