Davis Square Streetscape Improvements: New Meeting Date/Location

[sarahsomerville.livejournal.com]

Dear Davis Square Residents, Business Owners, Visitors, and Fans:

At our August 7^th meeting on Davis Square’s streetscape, the City’s project team gave some updates on potential schemes for improving the square based on public input.  We also discussed some of the options for the aesthetics of the square, including pavements and street furniture.  The slides from this meeting are now online, available through our new blog post:

http://somervilleresistat.blogspot.com/2012/08/discussion-continues-on-davis-square.html

We have also scheduled a fifth meeting to discuss these alternatives.  We will meet on September 11^th, at 6pm at the Ciampa Manor Community Room, 27 College Avenue.

We look forward to seeing you in September.

Comments

[teko.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing! I love a lot of the alternatives and suggestions.

One thing I don't see clarified in the slides -- if the 'slip lane' in front of Mike's is removed, will motorists still be able to turn left onto Elm from Highland? I love public spaces, but I also need to be able to drive around the block.

[sarahsomerville.livejournal.com]

Hi Teko,
Yes, absolutely, the left from Elm to Highland will still be allowed, but the proposal is for it to be signalized so that the crossing is safer for pedestrians.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

I think the best thing for pedestrians *and* drivers would be giving a walk light with the parallel green (which most pedestrians already do), and getting rid of the all-way walk phase.

A new crosswalk from the Mike's area to CVS would get a walk light when cars from Highland got a green. Using such a crosswalk would be *easier* if they kept the slip ramp. Cars from Highland not using the ramp could only go to College, Holland, or Dover, so no cars would be turning across the crosswalk.

The slip ramp has very little traffic, and it moves slowly, so crossing it using the existing unsignalized crosswalk is never a problem.

[sarahsomerville.livejournal.com]

Hi boblothrope - thanks for the comment; we are indeed looking at using this kind of concurrent signal phasing (parallel green and ped on) rather than the all-way pedestrian phase.

[ceo]

One thing that really needs to happen is a marked bike route through the Square. I like the idea for a cycle track, though it would be tricky to implement safely. As far as I can tell, absolutely nobody uses the "official" route between the two sections of the bike path, and rerouting it onto a different circuitous and nonintuitive set of streets won't change that.

I wonder if it could be done by cutting a lane width off the Holland St side of the plaza and realigning that stretch of Holland so as to give room for bike lanes on both sides, with the westbound lane starting at the crosswalk from Middlesex Federal Savings and going around the plaza. The eastbound lane is trickier; it might require a marked lane that uses the crosswalk from Mr. Crepe to the plaza and then runs around to the outside of the westbound lane and again uses the crosswalk from the plaza to MFS (or perhaps mark the lanes directly to the MBTA busway, if you can strongarm the T into going along with that.)

This will become a bigger issue on that happy day when the Community Path is completed to Lechmere, which I conjecture will cause a significant increase in bike traffic through the Square.

While I'm at it, another thing that should be addressed is the turn from Highland Ave to Dover St, which is currently signaled as a left turn, but really doesn't look like one; in effect, that movement and traffic going from Holland to Elm form a right-angle intersection where both directions have a green light, which is not generally considered an ideal sort of traffic management.

[sarahsomerville.livejournal.com]

Hi Everyone,
Thanks again for your comments. The September 11th meeting is being rescheduled to the 24th. Please join us at 6pm at the TAB, in the Senior Center, 167 Holland Street. I will repost to make sure everyone sees this change.