Tomorrow: 6:30 pm. Shriner’s Hospital.

Readers: If you live in America’s Walking City and want the refurbished Longfellow Bridge to better accommodate walkers and bikers, get yourself to the Shriner’s Hospital Auditorium tomorrow night at 6:30.

That’s when MassDOT will present four months’ work of the Longfellow Bridge Task Force, a group of 35 people representing interested organizations and neighborhoods.

They’ve made progress. They agree that the bridge’s downstream side can be designed with one traffic lane and wide bike and pedestrian paths. MassDOT has agreed that the bridge’s reconstruction should also provide better access to the river. MassDOT has also agreed to address traffic problems at Charles Circle as part of the redo.

But in an era when everyone is aware of the benefits of reducing auto use, sticking points exist over how to allocate space on the upstream side of the bridge. It’s not up to us to solve the problem. But it is up to us to point out what is not acceptable. And that is pedestrians and bikes getting the short end of the stick.

Here’s the problem—the 1907 bridge doesn’t have enough room for everyone else if cars are accommodated as they are now. The Red Line takes up 27 feet in the middle. That can’t be changed.

Pedestrians now have a cramped six feet of sidewalk on the bridge. Proponents whose priority is making sure “single-occupancy vehicles,” i.e., cars, flow freely, want two traffic lanes on the upstream side of the bridge.

Bicyclists get five feet, the minimum standard for bike lanes. Shoulders, barriers and two lanes for cars leaves a seven or eight-foot sidewalk, still too narrow to walk two abreast or to easily pass oncoming pedestrians.

Why is it important for bicyclists and walkers to get more space on the upstream side when they’ve lucked out downstream? Because everyone agrees that most people want to be on the upstream side where the views are splendid. In addition, even with better access at the bridge’s downstream side, the path is still tortuous.

Most participants understand this is a problem. But three of the four plans for the upstream side improve the sidewalk only marginally—to eight feet.

Some task force participants—employees of America’s Walking City’s transportation department and MassDOT engineers—believe we should build roads so that drivers sitting alone in polluting vehicles, taking up 10 times as much space as a bicycle and 20 times as much space as a person, should be rarely inconvenienced by traffic jams.

“Any changes needed to accommodate growing numbers of peds and bicycles transiting to and from the bridge could have detrimental impacts on the queuing on the Longfellow and on the Storrow ramps,” declared one Boston official.

I certainly hope it will.  But the problem isn’t as great now as it would have been ten years ago, since a third of a mile downriver from the Longfellow there exists a new bridge that has increased the number of lanes crossing the Charles from six to 14, according to Fred Salvucci, father of the new bridge.

The new bridge and other changes have decreased traffic on the Longfellow by about 16 percent since 2000. For 22 out of most 24-hour periods, there is no backup. Many days there is no back up at all. Go look for yourself.

Reducing capacity means that drivers will “seek alternate routes.” And if reducing auto capacity makes cars sit in traffic, so what? Why is it that officials in America’s Walking City believe that drivers should never be inconvenienced, but pedestrians should take it in the chin? The non-officials in the room see this attitude as out-moded.

“It’s clear that the redesign of the [upstream] platform must provide substantial space for pedestrians,” said Steve Young, the Beacon Hill Civic Association’s representative on the task force.” A clear ten feet of sidewalk was the minimum acceptable width for him.

“World class” cities have taken a different route from America’s Walking City. They inconvenience cars as much as possible. London charges cars entering its center. Paris’s mayor announced recently that more than a mile of the Pompidou Expressway, one of two fast roads along the Seine that carry about 70,000 cars a day, will be closed by 2012 and converted to pedestrian use to fight the “unacceptable hegemony of the automobile.” Then he plans to shrink the expressway on the river’s right bank into a boulevard with traffic lights. Sounds like a plan for Storrow Drive, but I digress.

If America’s Walking City wants to be “world class,” we should be reducing automobile capacity and improving other modes of transportation at every opportunity.

Two cautions: You’re going to be dazzled by a proposal to replace the pedestrian bridge between Charles Circle and the Esplanade that also significantly improves pedestrian access to the bridge. This plan should be funded, but don’t let it distract you from the fact that once you use this remarkable entrance, you’re still not going to have enough room to comfortably walk on the bridge.

Also, if you’re going to the Friends of the Public Garden’s presentation on parks, you’ll have to leave early to get to the Longfellow presentation, since MassDOT scheduled its program on the same night. It wasn’t intentional.

MassDOT must submit options to the feds to get funds to refurbish the bridge. A new federal policy statement says “Every transportation agency . . . has the responsibility to improve conditions and opportunities for walking and bicycling.” It also says cities and states should consider “walking and bicycling as equals with other transportation modes.”

The bottom line is that pedestrians and bicyclists will not enjoy improvements unless cars are inconvenienced. They should be.

One thought on “Tomorrow: 6:30 pm. Shriner’s Hospital.

  1. Brian Johnson

    Fantastic column. America’s Walking City should always put pedestrians first. I care not where the cars will drive or park. Let the autos go to the suburbs.

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