Garden Street Updates
A third virtual listening session was held Wednesday January 4th 2023. The city has made certain changes to the Garden Street project based on residents concerns expressed during the first two listening sessions. At the December 19, 2022, TPT submitted a memorandum in response to the Cambridge City Council's Awaiting Report Item AR-22-79. The memo discusses data collected in and around the project area before and after project installation, outreach before and after project installation, and changes since installation to respond to residents' concerns and staff observations. The consistent complaint from all listening sessions remains the increased cut through traffic on side streets which is a direct result of the one way conversion making side streets less safe. This problem is particularly acute on Raymond street where there has been increased accidents. Speeding on many side streets has increased since the installation including on Garden Street. Many residents have pointed out that TPT underestimated the size of the impact area and as a result did a poor job of communicating with residents before the project was installed. There was no promise to resolve some of the more significant complaints raised by residents during listen session 3. One option raised by residents is to allow the return of two way traffic on the section of Garden from Huron to Linnaean St. which TPT is reluctant to consider until spring 2023.
In addition to the changes listed in the report, the city is planning to conduct post installation studies to further information changes to the project. The plans include will:
Conducting a parking study within the next few months. You can learn more about informal observations in the FAQ section of the project page. It is unclear what benefit will come from an parking impact analysis completed after the installation already removed over 50% (112 spaces reduced to 59) of the on street parking.
Conducting additional traffic count in March or April of 2023 (depending on weather) to compare counts taken in September 2022, before the project was installed. Click here to view count locations.