General Overview

The main purpose of the Blue Hill Ave project is to install center-running bus lanes in this corridor, which was developed around center-running streetcars that were abandoned in the 1950s. Widely supported community goals include preserving mature trees and preserving parking, considered vital to the health of retail businesses along the corridor. Thankfully, the City has also made it a priority to provide for safe bicycling within the community.

For the most part, the project has bike paths (cycle tracks, protected bike lanes) at sidewalk level throughout. South of American Legion Highway, there are unidirectional bike paths on either side of the road; north of American Legion, there is a bidirectional path on the west side (the Franklin Park side). These sidewalk-level bike paths are not inserted into the existing sidewalk; rather, the sidewalk area is widened to make space for the bike paths. That way, existing trees in the sidewalk area will be unaffected. Together with new trees that will be planted, a row of trees will separate the walking area from the new bike paths. There will be a small hardscape buffer between the bike paths and the relocated curb.

In much of the corridor, the wide median that once held streetcar tracks will now hold bus lanes. However, several blocks of median have been preserved where they hold more than just a few trees.

The number of travel lanes has been reduced by 1 per direction throughout the corridor – from 2 per direction to 1, and in the busiest stretches, from 3 per direction to 2. Drivers will have to adjust to the lowered capacity. With vastly improved bus service and bike lanes, people will have good alternatives if they’re willing to change mode; if they continue to drive, they have the whole auto network to use as alternative routes. For example, commuters from towns south of Route 128 who now drive into Boston on Rt 138 and Blue Hill Ave can switch to using the Southeast Expressway.

Overall, in finding space for bus lanes, top priority has been given to preserving mature trees and preserving parking. The next priority has been to ensure that the neighborhood has safe bicycling by converting the existing in-street bike lanes to protected bike lanes. Last in priority, and therefore losing the most, is vehicular capacity. Combining better bus and bike service with reduced capacity for autos is a nice stick-and-carrot approach to a sustainable transportation future in which people drive less and use transit and bikes a lot more.

Where protected bike lanes are missing or unusually narrow

There are few spots where protected bike lanes are missing. These compromises seem reasonable considering the contextual constraints.

The southernmost 1.5 to 2 blocks of the corridor, in the northbound direction:  Heading northbound from River Street, the first block and a half (620 ft) of Blue Hill Ave has no bike lane; bikes will be in mixed traffic. (Southbound, there is a southbound protected bike lane.) And because there is no ramp connection from the street where the bike path begins midblock, northbound cyclists will have to ride 2 full blocks (780 ft) north of River Street until they can join the bike path at the Babson Street intersection, or else walk 620 ft on the sidewalk (in a commercial district, riding on the sidewalk is neither legal nor advisable).

This section currently has no bike lane. This lack of bike lane, present and future, is a compromise that preserves diagonal parking on the east side of BHA in the Mattapan Square commercial district. (On the west side of BHA, diagonal parking will be converted to parallel parking, creating space for bus lanes and for the southbound protected bike lane.) Traffic in this section is slow due to the diagonal parking, with a speed limit of 20 mph.

Interestingly, the starting place for the northbound bike path is where a narrow, closed alley between two buildings meets BHA. This suggests that there may be a plan in the works to create a bike path around the back side of Mattapan Sq buildings, using this alley as the final connector. I would expect that it is a high priority to connect the BHA bike paths to the Neponset River bike path at Mattapan Square. The new protected bike lanes built alongside the new building at 466 River Street (“The Loop at Mattapan Square”) may be part of that plan.

Bewteen Rhoades and Morton Street, southbound: At the police station, the southbound bike path becomes an unprotected bike lane for one short block abutting the police station. But parking there is only for police and is back-in angle parking, so it should be safe for bikes.

Between Charlotte and Esmond St, the bidirectional bike path along the Franklin Park stone wall becomes quite narrow in order to make space for a left turn lane. The design needs to ensure that there is no pinch point between the face of curb and a utility pole less than 10 ft wide – otherwise a southbound cyclist, going fast down the hill and shying away from pole, could force a northbound cyclist into the street, where an active (and fast!) travel lane abuts the curb. This could require relocating utility poles to the back of sidewalk, next to the wall.

In Grove Hall, the northernmost section of the corridor, there are no bike lanes at all from Warren St to Washington St, and for the block from Washington to Schuyler / Castlegate, there is only a southbound, conventional bike lane (in t he street, next to a parking lane).

This block from Schuyler / Castlegate to Washington is only one where bikes will actually lose a bike lane, since they now have a bike lane in each direction. However, this compromise saves a block of median that has 10 existing trees. (South of Schuyler / Castlegate, the median is eliminated, because in those blocks, most of the trees in the medians have died.)

For northbound bikes, the options are:

• Turn left onto Schuyler St and use neighborhood streets (Schuyler and Elm Hill Ave) to get to Warren Street, where there may be bike lanes in the future.
• Turn left earlier at Seaver Street and use the bike lanes there (unprotected but buffered) to get to Walnut Street.
• Turn left still earlier into Franklin Park and use the paths there, along with quiet street routes via Rossmore Street or via School / Atherton (this latter route is being planned) to get to the SW Corridor path.

In the long term, there should be bike lanes through Grove Hall, both for cyclists passing through and for those going to the shopping center there. Not in this project, however.

Intersection Issues

Design details at intersection need to be reconsidered to ensure bike safety..

Mattapan Sq looks good, with good connections between the Neponset River trail and Cummins Highway, whose bike paths are currently under construction. A missing crosswalk across the southern leg of Blue Hill Ave. has been added, and with it a bidrectional bike crossing.  

At Morton Street, the plan shows a bike box across the full northbound half of the roadway (including across the northbound bus lane); likewise for southbound. Get rid of those bike boxes; we don’t want to normalize this kind of left turn. Instead, make provisions to facilitate 2-stage left turns, with protected corners. This means adding a corner island in the SE corner (which will also result in a shorter pedestrian crossing). Add unidirectional bike crossings across BHA for bikes turning left from BHA; they will also serve bikes riding along Morton Street. The current absence of bike lanes on Morton Street is regrettable, but it shouldn’t stop the BHA project from providing bike crossings here.

At American Legion Highway, the transition from unidirectional paths to a bidirectional path forces northbound bikes to cross the street. Physically, the crossbike provided is as direct as can be, routing bikes around the intersection counterclockwise. However, that crossbike will get a short phase in a long cycle, forcing a long wait on cyclists who will be tempted to instead continue on the same side of the street by riding in the sidewalk. Therefore, in keeping with best practice from the Netherlands, add a bike crossings across BHA’s southern leg and make the crossing across American Legion bidirectional. That will enable bikes to go around the intersection clockwise as well as counterclockwise, depending on when in the signal cycle a cyclist arrives, substantially reducing the delay involved in getting to the other side of the street.

At Glenway Street / Franklin Park Road, add a bike crossing across the southern leg of Blue Hill Ave. It will serve northbound bikes headed to Columbia Road via Old Street; it will also serve bikes coming out of the park on Franklin Park Road. At the same time, on Franklin Park Road, change the pocket bike lane to a right-side, flexpost-protected bike lane and make the SW corner of BHA and Franklin Park Rd a protected corner where bikes can queue. Finally, provide an 80-ft stretch of protected bike lane along Glenway southbound, from BHA to the crosswalk leading to Old Street (where Glenway northbound has a Stop sign), for bikes that cross Blue Hill and are headed to Columbia Road via Old Street.

At Seaver Street, adjust the bike paths within the NW corner so that NB bikes turning left get a smooth turning radius instead of a corner hook.

Unsignalized driveway and side street crossings need side street crossing tables with steep ramps. The bike paths in this project face a lot of driveway and side street crossings – perhaps 100 of them. For cyclist safety, they should all have side street crossing tables with the kind of steep ramps that force crossing drivers to go very slow. We can expect that the City will provide SSCTs as they did when protected bike lanes were built on Tremont Street in the South End. However, the Tremont Street SSCTs lack the sharp slope characteristic of Dutch and Swedish SSCTs that are the key to bike safety, forcing cars to slow to less than 5 mph as they cross the bike path. The City needs to ensure that those SSCTs have a slope of 1:6, which is 17%, like those in Europe. To that end, the City should consider using precast concrete blocks for the SSCT ramps, as they do in Europe. Precast blocks ensure the desired slope and serve as anchors that help preserve the shape of the ramp, much like granite curbing used in some crossing tables in the U.S.