Eliminating Parking on the Even Side of Beacon St

[ratheripped.livejournal.com]

**Standard not exactly Davis but close enough warning**

For those of you who live along Beacon St. in Somerville, bike commute on it, or go to any of the businesses along there this is EXTREMELY important to read:

Apparently the plan to create a bike track the whole way down Beacon St. includes getting rid of ALL the parking on the even side of Beacon St. As someone who commutes by bike and car equally to get around here, I don't think getting rid of half the parking on the street is the answer. Honestly, just a good repave job would make it a lot safer for both bikers and cars since it's a fairly wide street to begin with and dodging the pot holes made biking on it dangerous...not the absence of a bike track.

This is going to make an already not-that-great parking situation exponentially worse (especially come street cleaning days) and hurt the businesses along there (think Zoe's, Cafe Rustica, The Laundromat, Petsi's, Pho n' Rice, Thai Hut, RF's, etc.) Most of the side streets along the part of Beacon near Porter are tiny little private ways that will call up Pat in a heartbeat to tow you.

A lot of these businesses relied on the 2hr parking on Beacon and having it disappear does not spell good news. As a resident who keeps a car, I already find myself fighting for spaces thanks to never-ending construction and the influx of residents with cars and their visitors during the school year.

So if you're not cool with this or want to learn more about the plan, stop by a town meeting on Monday, Oct 29th 7:30 at Cafe Rustica with the alderman to go over the details. If you can't make the meeting and you're not in favor of this, you can sign a petition at the Cafe or one of the other business along Beacon.

Apparently the meeting is no longer open to the Public but to Beacon St. Businesses and residents only [most likely do to space limitations]  - if you disagree with the proposal you can still stop by Rustica to sign the petition during their business hours. I believe they're closed on the 26th this week, but will be open on Saturday the 27th as usual.

Updates:
View the plan for the proposed reconfiguration here: http://somervillebikes.org/documents/2011-11%20Interdepartmental%20mtg%20Nov%202011_FINAL.pdf

Approximately 75 2hr and residential parking spaces along the even side of Beacon will be eliminated because of this plan.

****IMPORTANT READ:  The owner of the Beacon Street Laundromat elaborates on how this will affect business in the neighborhood and how poorly the city and Bike Committee have been about communicating with businesses and residents about the plans for the cycle tracks: http://davis-square.livejournal.com/3035976.html?thread=33457224#t33457224 ***

Comments

[ron_newman]

The proposal is to eliminate even-side parking, and build a cycle track, only from Somerville Avenue to Washington Street -- not the entire length of Beacon Street.

(Disclaimer: I'm on the Somerville Bicycle Committee, which supports building the cycle track)

[ron_newman]

What day is the meeting at Cafe Rustica? (Please edit the post to include this information)

[ratheripped.livejournal.com]

Updated - and thanks for disclosing. Like I said, I bike and keep a car here and I'd like to see some sort of compromise or intelligent discourse on the issue. The spaces on the side of the academy of Arts and Science seems like a logical place to cut out a bunch of spaces since I don't think I've EVER seen them fully used. But the part of Beacon where most of those businesses I listed are located between the Star Market and Somerville Ave are in an extremely dense residential area where residents compete with other residents for spaces on a regular basis on top of people who drive from one part of Somerville to another and go to Porter Station.

From a Business perspective, these are businesses located in areas where this isn't any public lot or metered spaces for non-residents to go (except of course on Mass Ave in Cambridge and we all know how awesome it is to try to park there). Yes, the Star Market has a lot near some, but incase you haven't noticed the sign, that's for their customers only.

[ron_newman]

One other clarification - is this meeting at Cafe Rustica?

[42itous.livejournal.com]

That stretch is one of the bumpiest places I have the "pleasure" to bike on a regular basis, and I agree that dodging potholes is what makes it unsafe, not narrow lanes. I don't see the necessity (or even desirability) of eliminating parking spaces along there.

[littlecitynames.livejournal.com]

I feel like Somerville Ave is close enough that it's not a huge deal to bike there instead of Beacon if you're really concerned about the potholes and parked cars. Plus it's less hilly. I don't have a car and I bike down that way at least once a week, and I still wouldn't be in favor of getting rid of the parking spaces. I would love it to be paved though.

[ratheripped.livejournal.com]

yep. edited.

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

Fix the bloody potholes and keep the parking ! I've biked that stretch for 24 years and it's always felt like a wide expanse of lunar craters. the cars have never been a problem.

I'm leaving town tomorrow and won't have time to stop by and sign the petition; which aldermen should I contact ?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I used to live atop Petsi's, and this idea is ridiculous. As everyone else is saying, the problem is the potholes, not the narrowness of the street. Re-pave the street and leave the parking and bikes will be just fine!

[ratheripped.livejournal.com]

Maryann Heuston is the alderman of Ward 2 which is the area that this impacts: mheuston@hotmail.com

and here's a PDF of the proposal....not sure if this is the most up to date version, but the size of the proposed tracks are kind of ginormous: http://somervillebikes.org/documents/2011-11%20Interdepartmental%20mtg%20Nov%202011_FINAL.pdf

Here's the thing - bike traffic on that road is only heavy at morning and evening rush hour. After 6pm that side of Beacon becomes isn't heavily trafficked by bikes or cars and both sides of the street are packed bumper to bumper with resident cars. People drive in from different neighborhoods for some of those businesses between Somerville Ave and Park. I think a lot of people would hate for them to have to relocate after being neighborhood staples because it cuts down a big portion of their business. This kind of thing makes Somerville come off as insular and makes it difficult for people to visit or do business here.

If most bikers can agree that a repave job will suffice then I don't really see any "pro" of going forward with killing all the spaces on that section of the street.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Other than the obstacle course nature of that stretch of road, I've felt MUCH safer biking there than many other streets, because it's nice and wide.

[fredrickegerman.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I worry that widening the various lanes will lead to a situation like Mass Ave above Arlington center, where everything is 1 1/2 lanes wide and the bike lane gets taken as a second car lane. That's a very scary stretch of road, both on a bike and driving a car.

[ratheripped.livejournal.com]

Another point I would like to add to my argument against getting rid of this parking is that that ~350 bikes per hour number at peak was based on counting studies that were taken place during the spring and summer. Bike ridership in the area drops pretty significantly during the Winter. Having a ghostly bike highway 3 months out of the year isn't the best use of public space.

[grapefruiteater.livejournal.com]

This is insane. I'm with everyone else who says that paving Beacon Street is the real answer. It's like the surface of the moon. Parking is scarce in that neighborhood, and it's further limited by the Cambridge border that cuts right behind Beacon Street. When I lived in Porter Square, enforcement was lax in the areas that directly border Cambridge—in contrast to complaints about excessive ticketing around Davis Square, I wanted MORE ticketing in my neighborhood because it seemed like regulations weren't being enforced at all and people were taking advantage of that. I felt lucky to have a driveway.

I also felt that Porter Square got the short end of the stick from the city a lot of the time, and in particular, everyone seemed to forget that it's a residential area as well as a business district. \Yes, the Somerville Ave. reconstruction project has improved the area in real ways, but it was a major disruption while it was going on, and communication from the city about important things ("Hey, we're going to be digging a massive hole that will block your driveway, and next week we'll need to shut off your gas, and GOD KNOWS about the week after that...") was practically nonexistent after the first few months. Parking was lost on Somerville Ave. during that project, and major changes to the other big thoroughfare in the neighborhood that will further reduce parking aren't going to make things better.

[grapefruiteater.livejournal.com]

Ward 3 borders that area too. When I lived on Somerville Ave., I was in Ward 3, and my friends who lived on Beacon between Oxford St. and Star Market were in Ward 2. It's one neighborhood in two Somerville wards and, in fact, two cities, since the Cambridge border is right there too.

[dibalh.livejournal.com]

I feel like ron_newman might be proactively choosing not to weigh in on why he supports, because of the conflict of being a mod here and being on the SBC/in support. For the record, I'd like to hear from supporters too if there are any here, even if they're Ron. ;)

[nonnihil.livejournal.com]

Adding my voice to the throng: I've biked that approximately a billion times (well, okay, more like a few hundred) over the last decade and a half and I have never thought that what it needs is an enormous bike lane and less parking. Not that we cyclists aren't great and all, but this tradeoff seems almost malicious toward the drivers who are, after all, the majority users of the road at nearly every hour.

I do wonder what the impediment is to repaving the road. It seems like the parts that are potholed today are the same ones that were potholed twelve years ago. It's certainly always been in much more urgent need of renovation than Somerville ave., which seems to always be under one sort of construction or another. Is the road so badly constructed that it will pothole right back up again even after a resurface? Is the truck traffic more than the roadbed can handle?

One positive effect that removing parking would have is to increase visibility around some of the side streets and driveways on that side (which do pose a more-than-occasional surprise for a cyclist at speed if an opaque van or SUV is parked blocking the sight lines), but it seems like that justifies removing a space on each side of the danger points, not removing parking entirely.

[ratheripped.livejournal.com]

Probably because he doesn't live on the stretch that's affected by the parking cuts or frequent those businesses that often so he's keeping his mouth shut and listening respectively to our concerns ;-)

I bike that street pretty often and commuted up and down it daily last year and when the initial idea surfaced to create a cycle track all the way down was proposed I was in favor. It was safe to assumed when they said get rid of the "underused" parking on Beacon between Washington and Somerville ave they were talking about the metered spaces near the academy of science where no one parked to begin with because there's no residences on that side of Beacon and it's a bit of a dead stretch.

I didn't think they were going to put in a crazy 7' wide bike lane and basically eliminate half the parking for residents and businesses on the densely populated stretch that's closer to Somerville Ave where most of the businesses are...because that's a pretty nutty thing to do.

[gmg-1.livejournal.com]

Well, I think this would probably make the street safer, so I'm in favor of it.

Obviously the potholes are the biggest concern, but I think the cycle track would probably help with the following two issues:

-as nonnihil mentioned, visibility of auto traffic entering from driveways/sidestreets can be a problem. There was a guy this morning who pulled out while looking to his right the entire time. The parked cars can make it tough to identify people like that who are driving dangerously.

-The street is wide enough so that some drivers will treat the bike lane as their own personal right turn/"zoom around someone taking a left" lane. If the cycle track is more clearly divided from the road, it might cut down on that.

That seems like a fair tradeoff to mildly inconvenience a few residents.

[ratheripped.livejournal.com]

"That seems like a fair tradeoff to mildly inconvenience a few residents."

It's not just a "few" residents and it's not a "mild" inconvenience...go check out the petition at the Cafe - this easily impacts a couple hundred or more residents and quite a few businesses that have been there for years. It's not a "fair trade off" when most of the cyclists are fine with the amount of space already on Beacon St for them to bike on.

" -as nonnihil mentioned, visibility of auto traffic entering from driveways/sidestreets can be a problem.."

Which will still happen on the side of the street where parking will remain on the proposed plan...this is also a problem on ANY street in Somerville. This issue has to do with people who break the parking rule about being at least 2ft from a drive away entrance and 10ft from an intersection...not the bike lanes or lack thereof.

[ron_newman]

I'm mostly trying to listen here rather than speak.

When the city presented this plan, they said that a parking study showed that less than 50% of the spaces on both sides of this part of Beacon Street were in use. The study showed that more than 50% of the spaces were in use from Washington Street to Inman Square, which is why the city isn't proposing to remove parking and build a cycle track there.

[ceo]

As one who frequently bike commutes on Beacon Street, the more I think about this proposal the less I like it, purely from a bicycling perspective. One of the ramifications of it being a heavily-used cycling route is that there's a huge speed variation among cyclists, probably from about 8 to 20 mph. With the cycletrack design, it's going to be a lot harder for cyclists to pass each other, particularly on the side that still has parking so the passing cyclist can't bail into the street. And, the travel lanes being narrower will make it less safe to ride in the street.

The other problem with cycletracks is that cars on side streets will tend to pull up across the cycletrack in order to turn because (again, especially on the parking side) they won't have enough visibility otherwise, and because it looks like an extra-wide sidewalk. The same is true with driveways, and it will be extremely hazardous to any cyclist going faster than a running pace.

And, the cycletracks on Concord Ave west of the Rotaries of Death bump up and down between road and sidewalk level as they cross streets and driveways, making them annoying to ride.

So, give Beacon St the full-depth repave it desperately needs, and paint in wide bike lanes that are set out a bit from the parking lane, to reduce the dooring hazard.

[ceo]

As I noted below, the cycletrack design would make the side-street visibility issue worse, not better.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

How many parking spaces are we talking about losing, and what's the immediately affected population?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

AIUI separated cycle tracks are state of the art for bicycle safety in cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen. And note the PDF describes a 7' wide track. vs. the 5' wide lanes today.