MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE BETTER BIKE PROJECT
Improving safety between Columbia Road and Melnea Cass Boulevard.
WHY THIS PROJECT?
Massachusetts Avenue is a road to opportunity, connecting people in Dorchester and Roxbury to jobs, schools, and resources. It's also a backbone of economic activity for the region. And yet, this stretch of Massachusetts Avenue is not a safe road to travel.
Our project focuses on Massachusetts Avenue between Columbia Road and Melnea Cass Boulevard.
It's not safe for people driving and it's particularly unsafe for people biking and walking. Vision Zero Boston analysis identified Massachusetts Avenue as among the 7% of streets with the highest density of crashes resulting in injury between 2015 and 2017.
You can explore our Vision Zero interactive injury crash map. Or, click here to load the map in a new window.
Despite less-than-ideal bike conditions, between 300 and 400 people ride in the street each weekday — and that doesn’t include the many people riding on the sidewalks.
You identified Massachusetts Avenue as a priority Better Bike Corridor through the Go Boston 2030 process. We listened and prioritized safety improvements on the corridor.
A full reconstruction of the corridor takes years of planning and engineering. Our aim is to make Massachusetts Avenue safer for everyone using it within the next year.
WHAT WE'VE DONE
We began the project by involving the general public, property owners, businesses, and workers—before developing any designs. We needed to understand your concerns and needs first. We gathered your comments between September 2019 and January 2020.
Photo credit: Lee Toma
We advertised a series of walks and bike rides of the corridor. At each event, we asked people to share their experiences traveling along the corridor.
We visited the Newmarket Business Association and all nearby civic associations. We met one-on-one with abutting businesses and property owners to understand how they use the corridor.
We also collected comments via phone, email, and an online form. In total, we heard from over 200 people who live, work, and travel along Massachusetts Avenue.
WHAT WE'VE HEARD
You want to feel safer biking and walking.
Biking, you are too close to moving traffic and exposed to high volumes of turning vehicles. Walking, you don't have enough opportunities to safely cross Massachusetts Avenue.
Our design provides a protected lane for people biking, keeps people safe at intersections, improves most curb ramps, and introduces new, safe crosswalks.
You want buses, trucks, and cars to flow along Massachusetts Avenue.
In particular, you are frustrated with delay at intersections. Backups lead to long lines at signals and unreliable bus service.
Our design manages the flow of buses, trucks, and cars by:
- Introducing new turning lanes,
- Modifying signal timing,
- Prohibiting turns to and from some smaller streets,
- Restricting parking during peak traffic in areas needed for queuing.
You want to retain important curbside uses, including:
- Business that load and unload from the curb,
- Customers, employees, and visitors who need street parking.
Our design preserves access to curbside loading and parking where it is most needed.
You want us to plan not just for present needs, but also for the future:
- Reconstruction of critical sidewalks currently in poor condition,
- Support for travel needs related to new residential development along the corridor, and
- Integration into PLAN Newmarket , the planning initiative led by the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) to support a 21st century economy.
Our design is based on close coordination with our colleagues at the Public Works Department, the BPDA, and the Newmarket Business Association.
OUR OPTIONS
There are three ways we can add bike lanes to Massachusetts Avenue:
- A pair of one-way, separated bike lanes,
- A two-way, separated bike lane along the eastern curb,
- A two-way, separated bike lane along the western curb.
Option A, a two-way bike lane on the eastern curb, creates severe safety issues for people biking due to high volumes of turning vehicles and expansive driveways. It would also introduce significant delays for motor vehicles and eliminate too much curbside access. We eliminated this from further consideration.
Option B, a pair of one-way separated bike lanes, presented some of the same challenges managing safety with high turning volumes. In addition, the connection northbound between Theo Glynn and Melnea Cass Boulevard was difficult to achieve without fully reconstructing multiple intersections.
Option C, a two-way separated bike lane on the western curb best accomplished the design priorities you voiced:
- Safety for people biking and walking,
- Decent flow of buses, trucks, and cars,
- Access to the curbside, and,
- A design compatible with the future of the area.
OUR DESIGN
Our design provides a two-way separated bike facility on the west side of Massachusetts Avenue.
We propose using precast concrete curbs to separate the bike lane from parking or general travel lanes. We're designing them carefully to allow for drainage.
The bike lane will be wide enough for the City's street sweepers and snow plows.
And research shows that protected bike lanes improve safety for everyone, including people driving and people walking, in addition to people bicycling.
We are making some changes to bus stops on Massachusetts Avenue:
- We're adding new bus stops that are much closer to the Stop & Shop.
- Where we can, we're moving stops from the near to the far side of intersections to improve travel time and reliability.
- For the southbound bus stops, we're designing bus boarding islands.
Many bus stops are too short for buses to pull to the curb. People exiting through the back doors must step down onto the road. Often, they have to walk between parked cars.
People using assistive devices like wheelchairs may struggle to get on and off the bus.
To address these issues, we're designing bus boarding islands for most bus stops on Massachusetts Avenue.
Here's how bus boarding islands work.
The bike lane runs between the sidewalk and the boarding island.
This photo shows a bus boarding island in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Bus passengers cross the bike lane to get to or from the bus stop. Approaching bicyclists yield to people crossing.
This photo shows a bus boarding island on Commonwealth Avenue at University Road in Boston.
Buses stay in the travel lane and bike riders stay out of the way. Other drivers wait behind the bus. Boarding islands can reduce bus delay by 5 to 20 seconds per stop.
Clear landing space is available at the front and back doors. The bus ramp can easily deploy from the front door.
Our design changes how you access the curb in some sections of Massachusetts Avenue.
These changes make room for the bike facility, while allowing commercial loading and retaining essential employee and customer parking.
Trucks and cars will pull to the curb to access businesses on the east side of the roadway.
On the west side, they will park against the bike lane buffer.
This photo shows cars parked against the bike lane buffer on Massachusetts Avenue in the Back Bay.
In certain places, we're restricting parking during peak traffic to prevent backups from compounding along the corridor.
You can explore how we balance reliability for bus riders with parking for businesses. Click here to download a PDF (5 MB).
We are making changes to the intersections between Melnea Cass Boulevard and Columbia Road to improve pedestrian safety and keep vehicle traffic moving.
We analyzed traffic data from every intersection along the corridor, informing the following changes:
We're introducing new turning lanes at three intersections:
- Magazine Street,
- Newmarket Square/Shirley Street, and
- Clapp Street.
We're introducing new turning lanes at three intersections:
- Magazine Street,
- Newmarket Square/Shirley Street, and
- Clapp Street.
We're introducing new turning lanes at three intersections:
- Magazine Street,
- Newmarket Square/Shirley Street, and
- Clapp Street.
We're making changes to signal phasing and timing to optimize vehicle movement along the corridor.
We're restricting left turns to and from some side streets to improve flow and safety, including:
- Proctor Street and
- The north South Bay Shopping Center driveway at Stop & Shop.
We're restricting left turns to and from some side streets to improve flow and safety, including:
- Proctor Street and
- The north South Bay Shopping Center driveway at Stop & Shop.
We're adding two crosswalks across Massachusetts Avenue to serve:
- A new pair of bus stops at the South Bay Shopping Center by Stop and Shop
- The existing pair of bus stops at Clapp Street.
We're adding two new crosswalks across Massachusetts Avenue at:
- A new pair of bus stops at the South Bay Shopping Center by Stop and Shop
- The existing pair of bus stops at Clapp Street.
We're adding and reconstructing some pedestrian curb ramps so they're fully accessible to people using assistive devices like wheelchairs or walkers.
You can explore the design in further detail.
Click here to download a PDF (13 MB)
Thank you for attending our Virtual Open House!
To share ideas or ask questions, fill out our feedback form . Over the coming months, we will advance our engineering plans. We are funded for construction to begin in 2021.
