A Tale of Three Cities

Welcome to Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville for the  NACTO Designing Cities Conference . Your visit is a great opportunity to walk, bike, scoot, or take transit to explore the transformative projects that are helping create safer, more equitable, accessible, and sustainable communities.  Toole Design  is proud to have played a significant role in many of the projects in these three cities.

As recently as 2007, Boston was listed as one of the worst cities for cycling in North America by Bicycling Magazine. Today, a flourishing network of protected bike lanes is transforming the city. Fifteen years ago, Cambridge was pioneering the use of innovative bikeway design and implementing progressive pedestrian policies and plans… and continues that leadership today. During this same period, Somerville has emerged as a leader by consistently putting people at the center of a successful growth strategy. Read on to learn about some of the key projects in each city’s journey, where they’re located, and how they came about—and experience some of them for yourself by participating in our  conference walkshops !

We start our Tale of Three Cities in Boston, where a little historical context is important to appreciate just how much progress has been made. In 2007, when it was listed as one of the lowest-rated bicycling cities in North America, Boston had literally 200 feet of striped bike lanes. This lack of facilities was the result of a deliberate approach to accommodate bicyclists as part of the general traffic mix, known as “vehicular cycling.” The City’s bike plan at that time had no dedicated bike infrastructure, and local bike advocacy was focused on education, enforcement, bike parking, road maintenance, and making sure traffic signals detected bikes (not a bad thing, by the way). Not surprisingly, very few people braved Boston’s streets on a bicycle back then.

Everything changed in the summer of 2007 when the then Mayor, Thomas Menino, hired Nicole Freedman to be Boston’s new bike czar and challenged her to make Boston the best biking city in North America. One of her first calls was to the League of American Bicyclists and together they organized the Boston Bike Summit. The Summit featured  Jennifer Toole ,  Jeff Rosenblum  (Livable Streets Alliance),  Nick Jackson  (Chicagoland Bicycle Federation), and  Andy Clarke  (League of American Bicyclists)—now all at Toole Design. Working with City staff and a new generation of community advocates, the Summit created a blueprint for Boston to become one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country.

In 2007, on north banks of the Charles River, the City of Cambridge demonstrated leadership and willingness to innovate in promoting active transportation.  Vasser Street  was one of the first separated bike lanes/cycle tracks in the country, and the City was already using raised crosswalks and intersections, bike boxes, and other international best practices to calm traffic and promote walking and biking. 

The City of Somerville embarked on its own journey in defining the shared values of the community and long-term goals by launching  SomerVision  (2019), the City’s first-ever comprehensive plan, and subsequent tailored neighborhood plans that build on SomerVision’s framework. These plans have kept the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users in focus as Somerville experiences some of the most pronounced development pressures in the region.

The backdrop to much of these forward strides in bike and pedestrian infrastructure across Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville is State policy and guidance, which we’ve also had a hand in shaping. Toole Design led the development of the statewide pedestrian plan and bicycle transportation plan. The visionary bike plan was specifically cited by the League of American bicyclists as justification for Massachusetts jumping to number one on the 2022 Bicycle Friendly States report card.

Toole Design has been fortunate to have such a great partner in MassDOT, an agency that is eager to be a leader in the design of active transportation systems. We partnered with MassDOT to produce the award-winning Separated Bike Lane Planning and Design Guide, the first of its kind in the United States to provide detailed design guidance on constructing separated bike lanes and engineering protected intersections. (Stop by our conference booth to enter to win a copy of the hardbound design guide!) The Guide was developed at the same time that Toole Design was leading the engineering of separated bike lanes for Commonwealth Avenue in the City of Boston, and this became one of the first corridor projects to include fully protected intersections for people walking and taking transit.

The bridge that carries Mass Ave between Boston and Cambridge is also a big part of the story here—and it happens to be the jurisdiction of MassDOT, the State's department of transportation. In 2021, in response to advocates pushing for better bike facilities, MassDOT piloted a road diet on the bridge. After a successful pilot, now Toole Design, MassDOT, City of Boston, City of Cambridge, and partners are working together to implement a permanent reconfiguration of the roadway space.