MEMORANDUM
To:
Michael Trepanier
DATE:
May 8, 2015
FROM:
Nick Gross
HSH PROJECT NO.:
2013061.03
Nathaniel Cabral-Curtis
SUBJECT:
MassDOT Highway Division
McGrath Boulevard Project Development
Working Group Session 3
Meeting Notes of April 16, 2015
Overview
On April 16, 2015 the McGrath Boulevard Project Development project team held its third working
group meeting. The working group is composed of local residents, business owners, transportation,
and green space advocates, as well as representatives of local, State, and Federal Governments. The
purpose of the working group is, through the application of its members’ in depth local knowledge, to
assist and advise MassDOT in developing an implementable design that will ultimately transform
the McGrath Highway into an at-grade urban boulevard. MassDOT sees the project not only as an
opportunity to address the structurally deficient McCarthy viaduct but also to improve safety and
connections for all modes of transportation in the project area, specifically at the intersection of
Washington Street and McGrath Highway.
The meeting summarized herein kicked off with a discussion of the projects measures of effectiveness
(MOE) guiding principles composed during the projects initial planning phase often referred to as
the Grounding McGrath Study. In order to better align with the current environmental phase, the
project team revised the original MOEs to parallel the working groups shared priorities. The goals of
the MOEs are to improve access and mobility, promote connectivity, improve and balance
functionality, and provide accountability. These guiding principles will be carried in alignment with
the working groups shared priorities throughout the projects entirety.
Subsequent of the MOE discussion, Frank Suszynski of MassDOT’s District 4 office discussed the
ongoing work along McGrath Highway and brought working group members up to speed with the
interim improvements anticipated to be implemented during the 2015 construction season. The
interim improvements include the implementation of temporary bicycle lanes, traffic signal
modifications at both Washington Street and Somerville Avenue, resurfacing of Medford Street, and
11 BEACON STREET, SUITE 1010 | BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02108 | 617.482.7080
MEMORANDUM
the closure of the Somerville Avenue off-ramp. These improvements are expected to take place in
the construction season of 2015.
The chief purpose of the meeting took place during the breakout exercises where working group
members were split into four groups to determine the pedestrian, bicycle, and vehicular desire lines
across the McGrath corridor as well as the configuration of the future at-grade boulevard crosssection. During the connectivity exercise, working group members used three colored markers
representing the different modes listed above to show their desired crossings in addition to filling
some of the missing links in the overall regional transportation network. The cross-section exercise
used a number varying width “puzzle pieces” representing travel lanes, bicycle lanes, parking lanes,
sidewalks, planting strips, and green buffers to determine the future at-grade McGrath Boulevard
roadway configuration. The outcome of the cross-section exercise was three potential themes for
roadway cross sections. These themes included a Rose Kennedy Greenway configuration, an
“Arborway” configuration, and the Commonwealth Avenue configuration. Both exercises were
received extremely well by working group members and were considered a useful and for some
enjoyable hands-on experiment depicting the visual appearance of an at-grade McGrath Highway.
Detailed Meeting Minutes1
C: Michael Trepanier (MT): Good evening everyone and welcome to the third working group session
for the McGrath Boulevard Project. I’m sure most of you know me but for those of you who don’t,
my name is Michael Trepanier. I am the project manager with the Department of
Transportation (DOT) Highway Division. We have a full agenda tonight so we may go a bit later
than we had originally planned. With that said, I hope you will find that this meeting will be
more fun than some of the previous sessions. Tonight will be much more interactive and we hope
to receive some one-on-one input from all of you.
We want to start by doing a quick review of the February meeting for those of you who may have
missed it. We discussed the shared priorities that we developed from both the Grounding
McGrath Planning Study and what we’ve heard from this group. We developed this into a very
similar matrix of what we are calling measures of effectiveness (MOEs). These are similar to the
Herein “C” stands for comment, “Q” for question and “A” for answer. For a list of attendees, please
see Appendix 1. For copies of meeting flipcharts, please see Appendix 2.
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measures that we had in the planning study but they have been refined to better reflect this
stage of the environmental development.
Once we get through that discussion we’ll have Frank Suszynski from MassDOT District 4 come
up to discuss the interim improvements that he’s been working to get on McGrath Highway to
improve bicycle and pedestrian connectivity. We’ll hear from Frank and he’ll talk in more detail
about the schedule and implementation of the improvements. As part of that discussion we’re
going to talk about implementing a temporary bicycle lane over the Squires Bridge to connect to
the improvements at Lechmere and NorthPoint.
Then we’re going to shift gears to discuss bicycle and pedestrian connectivity for the final
condition that we are working towards. We’ll continue the discussion we had in February about
vehicular diversions and we’ll then move onto discussing the preliminary build analysis. As
some of you may recall, the modeling effort that the Central Transportation Planning Staff
(CTPS) had conducted for us got to the edge of the map. We had to add more intersections that
needed to be analyzed in order for us to gain a better understanding of where the traffic is going
and what the impacts to the intersections will be from a traffic perspective.
We’ve also prepared some sample configurations for what the boulevard may end up looking like.
As part of that we wanted to get your creative juices flowing and do some breakout exercises.
You’ll see on your agenda that it has been numbered 1, 2, 3, or 4. I’ll defer to Bob Smith who is
here with us from McMahon Associates to go through a couple of exercises. First we want to talk
about major desire lines of connectivity. We think we know where people want to go but we want
to hear from you, especially those of you who live here. For the second exercise we’re going to
give you a blank slate of the corridor right-of-way (ROW) and have you fill in the configuration
between the curbs.
You’ll receive a number of travel lanes, medians, landscaping strips, and bicycle lanes puzzle
pieces to place on the cross-section in order to figure out what the corridor can look like. Once
you reach a cross-section that your group agrees upon, we will return and report back to the
larger group. Once we wrap up the breakout groups we’ll have a quick discussion of what our
next steps will be and we’ll adjourn after that. At this point I’m going to hand it over to Nate to
provide a brief overview of our previous session.
Discussion of the Shared Values
C: Nathaniel Cabral-Curtis (NCC): Good evening everybody. At the last working group meeting we
discussed the project’s shared values. A few of you sent us some really great comments and I
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would like to call out Alyson Schultz specifically, for providing us with some great thoughts. We
also had a big dose of traffic data and the reason for that is not because we love cars but because
it helps to inform the transit, walking, and cycling discussion. We introduced the CTPS travel
demand model (TDM) and looked at some projections for 2040. One of the things that Gary
made very clear is that the TDM is a strong model and widely considered to be quite good but it’s
not absolute. There are other inputs required which include professional engineering judgment
and of course the community reality check. Alyson gave us a couple of specific comments and we
incorporated those so thank you. We looked at build alternatives that projected and diverted
traffic volumes including a 6-lane cross-section with and without Rutherford improvements as
well as 4-lane cross-section with and without Rutherford Improvements. We learned that the
McGrath and Rutherford corridors are connected. We learned that capacity reductions on one
side shifts traffic to the other. Capacity reductions on both sides squeeze vehicles into adjoining
streets. That’s as far as we went and now we’re heading to look at the local street impacts, what
those impacts mean for the corridor configurations, and what do those impacts mean for all
modes.
I want to also talk about the MOEs. These are the shared priorities and I would like to draw
special attention to this. We asked for your comments and a two items to discuss with you. One
of the things that was talked about at the last working group session was the idea of green space
spread throughout the corridor rather than having a clump of green space in one or two
locations. We also want to separate the active transportation and the vehicles to the fullest
extent practical. I don’t want to spend too much time on these because I want to get you to your
breakout groups.
These are the MOEs. You should have all received a copy of the MOEs and we feel quite good
that the MOEs and shared values align with each other. There’s nothing in the shared values
that I looked with the MOEs and thought was missing. The MOEs are from the old planning
study and we have since added the measure and data source examples. Essentially this
represents a way that we could measure if what we are doing is working well. I’m not going to
spend a lot of time on these tonight but I do want to everyone to feel the same what you did
about the shared values. If you feel like you would like to contribute something to the MOEs,
send it to me or send it to Nick. We’ll figure out a way to work it in and capture it. The last
thing I want to say is that we are still in the project development stage. There is plenty of room
for community input and there will continue to be as the project progresses. With that I would
like to bring up Frank Suszynski to talk about the interim improvements.
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Discussion of the Short-term Improvements
C: Frank Syszynski (FS): Good evening. The last time I was before you all was at the initial public
information kickoff meeting. I think most of you are familiar with the interim improvements but
tonight I want to discuss them in further detail. We started a few years ago working with the
project manager of the Grounding McGrath Study to develop some short term improvements. At
that time we had the plans developed for 100% and we were trying to find a construction
contractor. The contractor who is Barletta Heavy Division and we have successfully discussed
the extra work of the interim improvements. In the middle of May you’ll start to see some
activity out there which will be the start of the interim improvements. The contractor is
currently in the construction submittal stage. With the current conditions, it’s going to be
reduced to two lanes between Medford Street and Broadway. There currently in stage 1 and
stage 2 should be starting within a month or so.
C: MT: We wanted to make a note not just of what’s happening but as you can see in the
photographs the queues are up to Broadway and beyond. We were asked the question by one or
two community members, what’s happening and does this provide an analog for two lanes going
over Gilman Street? I think the short answer is no because the conditions at this section of the
roadway are different than what they would be like at the overpass. Maybe they provide a nice
analog for what this section of the roadway might look like in the future independent from the
overpass. What we were finding was queuing all the way back to Mystic Avenue along with
gridlock at Broadway. I was out there around 8:30am Wednesday morning making observation.
What I concluded is that the Pearl Street intersection is the limiting factor. We definitely want
to have a conversation with the District on what we can do to improve that intersection. All and
all I timed it and it look about 4:30 minutes to get through from Broadway up onto the overpass.
C: Ellin Reisner (ER): I would just like to make one comment since I go through there all the time.
During rush hour, it may be useful to have a police detail monitor the intersection to prevent
people from blocking the box.
A: MT: I totally agree.
C: ER: People block the intersection and then it just gets worse and worse. There’s often a police
officer on the bridge and he doesn’t do anything.
C: Wig Zamore (WZ): Before construction there were three lanes of stuck traffic instead of four.
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C: Alyson Schultz (AS): At Pearl Street and Medford Street about two blocks over it is now down to
a single lane which has really skewed traffic patterns because you can’t go up Medford Street
anymore.
A: MT: I just wanted the group to know that we’re looking at this and we’ve taken counts during
construction. It was something we heard as far back as July that we should use this as an
opportunity to see what happens to traffic.
Q: David Loutzenheiser (DL): What’s your average vehicle occupancy in the area?
A:
MT: I don’t know.
C:
FS: This next slide shows the Somerville punch through which is the majority of the work that’s going to be
done as part of the interim improvements. There will be some new mast arms where the down ramp comes
in. The curve-line will also be moved out and there will be a large bump out area here as well. We met two
weeks ago with the City of Somerville and we will meet with them every two weeks moving forward to
coordinate all the work that is going on around this area. The construction schedule we lay out will
certainly be subject to modifications and changes. In general the Somerville Avenue down ramp closure is
going to be one of the last things that happens. As part of the Ground McGrath Study we were asked to
look at closing the down ramp and to add a modified connection from Somerville Avenue. CTPS did a link
analysis showing where we thought the punch through was going to go. The timeframe for our work is
sometime in October and that’s when we think we’ll be able to open it. There’s lots of surface work and
restriping. We’re not going to close it down and open up the tunnel until the punch through is completed.
Q: ER: Are you going to re-signalize the lights first?
A:
All of that will be done. All of the controllers will be updated as well as the pedestrian push buttons and
electrical conduits associated with those units. There’s plenty of pavement to establish a temporary work
zone and you’ll start to see some of the physical work occurring over the next few months.
Q: ER: What about the signalization at Washington Street?
A:
FS: Yes, that will be done as well. It will be less complicated because we’re not going to have the traffic
coming out of the tunnel.
C:
NCC: If folks have additional questions about the interim improvements I would suggest speaking with
Frank after the meeting or during the breakout groups. I want to make sure we are progressing through
the meeting so we have enough time for the breakout groups.
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Discussion of Elements from the Previous Meeting
C:
Maureen Chlebek (MC): The next couple of slides show responses to questions that we heard at previous
working group meetings. If you were here last time we met the Wynn Casino kept coming up in the traffic
discussion. At that point the casino information had not been released publicly so we really couldn’t
address how it was going to affect our project. Since then the information has become public and we
received the Environmental Impact Report (EIR). We’ve looked at the document and we’ve related it to the
McGrath corridor. In a nut shell we found that they’re not projecting traffic up and down McGrath. There
is a 4% increase of traffic going across Washington Street. The short answer to everything is that there is a
small amount of casino traffic in our corridor and it’s not going to inform out decisions on McGrath.
C:
MT: Maureen, I’m sorry to interrupt but I wanted to acknowledge State Representative Tim Toomey for
joining us tonight. Thank you so much for being here.
Q: WZ: What about the I-93 ramp at Sullivan? The 4% is west of that. How many people are coming off of I93 from the Sullivan area?
A:
MC: I’m not sure off the top of my head; we have those numbers at the office.
C:
WZ: I-93 is to the right of your 4%.
C:
MC: The traffic from the Wynn Casino is superimposed onto our traffic network.
C:
WZ: If you’re going to get stuck on Washington Street it’s going to be from the off ramp at Sullivan.
C:
MC: My point is that we have the traffic numbers in our network and as we look at diverted routes we are
accounting for the Wynn Casino traffic.
Q: Scott Peterson (SP): I have a question about satellite parking. All of the employees of the Wynn Casino are
not going to be parking onsite. They are going to be parking in neighborhood communities and shuttle
buses will be serving them to their work. Will there be any parking for the Wynn Casino employees in this
area of Somerville?
A:
MC: I’m not sure but we’ll investigate that can get back to you.
C:
Gary McNaughton (GM): We’ll certainly get back to you. The take away point of this slide is that we’ve
taken the available casino data and we’re incorporating it into our work. Last time we were a little less
certain as to how things would play out. We now have all the information that was released in the EIR
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document and we’re incorporating into our analysis for this project. We’ll have the combined impact when
we start talking in greater detail about the various alternatives and how they operate.
C:
MC: It was suggested to us to try to include the connectivity for bicycles over the Squires Bridge. This is a
work in progress but we wanted to give you an update as to where we are with this. As you move up and
down the corridor in relation to the Squires Bridge you notice that there are always two or three lanes.
NorthPoint plays a component in all of this because they are proposing bicycle lanes at the southern
locations. We started thinking what if we could simply continue the bicycle lanes further north and
reallocate some of the street space to accommodate bicycles. There are some tight troublesome spots. One
example is at Third Street. We’re also seeing an increase in delay at Rufo Road. We’ll continue to analyze
this and report back again. I wanted to touch on this because it was raised to us and we have not forgotten
about it.
Q: ER: Where is Rufo Road?
A:
GM: It’s the shopping center driveway, next to Shaw’s Supermarket.
C:
Jason Stockman (JS): Naturally I think it’s a fantastic idea. In the short term I see a major improvement
to the livability of the community. I think it will have effects beyond the corridor and help calm traffic.
Outside of peak hours this area can become somewhat of a drag racing strip.
Discussion of Bicycle Connectivity and Ongoing Traffic Data Development
C:
MC: There will be more to come on this. While we’re on the topic of bicycles I want to prepare everyone for
the breakout groups. I want to refresh your memory on some of the bicycle and pedestrian amenities that
will be in this project and the surrounding area. If you were here two meetings ago you’ll recall that we
showed the bicycle network map for the City of Somerville. You gave us some input regarding updates and
we’ve made those changes. What we mentioned before and what we’ve found interesting is that when you
get to the McGrath corridor you can see the potential to add to that space. There are a lot of facilities
around it, some of which are in the ground today and some of which are planned for the future. There is a
great potential to make some connections in every direction from our corridor.
On a similar note, we also looked at the pedestrian network. We took this map from Shape-Up Somerville.
Essentially this map highlights some of the major walking routes and provides times for how long it takes
to go from one place to another. You’ll see most of them begin at a square such as Porter Square. It’s a nice
network but when you zoom into the McGrath corridor it’s really interesting to note that there’s only one
recommended crossing for pedestrians. This crossing is on Washington Street. I wanted to show this map
because I felt like it represented how the corridor is really a barrier for pedestrians.
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C:
AS: I know the sidewalks haven’t been redone in probably the last 30 years. I walk on the pedestrian
bridges and they are falling apart. There’s been a systematic neglect of the existing sidewalks. If you’re on
the bridge right now there are areas where the sidewalks are completely done.
C:
MC: At this point I’m going to hand it over to Gary to weigh in on some of the traffic discussions.
C:
GM: I don’t think a meeting can go by where I don’t talk about traffic. I’m not going to spend a lot of time
talking about traffic tonight because it’s really a work in progress. When we were starting to develop the
alternatives, refine them, and brainstorm ideas of how we could modify the plans we had to take a step
back because we realized we needed more information. The information we want is from you. We didn’t
want to continue moving forward with a concept that we liked that doesn’t work for all of you. If you recall,
last time we talked lot of traffic diversions. Since then we’ve been assessing some of those diversions,
analyzing how they work in future years, and documenting some of those impacts. Under all of the
scenarios there are a few intersections that are impacted by diversions. We’ve identified those locations
and we’re now looking at potential mitigation measures that could go along with offsetting some of those
impacts. When you look at some of the impacts with the Rutherford improvement in place you see a couple
more intersections pop-up. You’ll recall we added additional intersections based on diversion patterns that
we had not originally anticipated. We’ll certainly have a meeting in the future where we talk a lot more
about traffic in much greater detail.
When you look at the impacts along the corridor comparing the 4 and 6 lane alternatives you can see that
the largest impacts are in the middle. The middle has the most significant modifications while the northern
and southern limits don’t change much. You may recall our discussion from last time regarding the
Rutherford improvements. If Rutherford stays as it is, it becomes an alternate route to divert onto
Rutherford. If Rutherford gets modified more folks stay in the McGrath corridor. There’s more to come on
that. We really want to start digging into the concepts and alternatives. You’ll recall the boulevard concept
that had traditional intersections. In order to get those to work we eliminated north and south left-turns so
that we could eliminate those phases and conflicts from the intersection. We have pedestrian crossings
across the corridor at three locations and those are the details we want to get into tonight with our
breakout exercise.
The original alternative has a fairly wide and complicated intersection with two signals closely spaced. We
started thinking about a 5 lane intersection but again, we didn’t want to go too far. We thought it would be
a good idea to stop and hold a meeting to hear from you. This will be the start of the break out discussions
and I’m going to have Bob come up and talk about how that is going to work.
Q: DL: Could I ask a quick question about the casino traffic. What is the peak hour for the casino and how is
the casinos behavior different from a standard morning peak hour?
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A:
GM: The peak hours tend to be Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. The peaks don’t coincide with
the traditional commuter peaks. The other thing about casino traffic is that it is not a defined peak. It’s
not an office building that dumps out at 5pm. The traffic is really spread out. Some people may choose to
go to the casino for dinner while others are showing up at 11pm.
Q: DL: How late is the Wynn Casino open?
A:
GM: It’s 24 hours.
C:
DL: Okay, thank you.
C:
Bob Smith (BS): Hi everyone, I’m Bob Smith. I’m going to walk you through what we are going to do in the
breakout discussions. As Gary mentioned, we’re going to look into restricting some turns but we really
want to know what connections are most important to you. We have two exercises. The first is a
connectivity exercise and the second is a cross-section exercise. In the first exercise we’re going to look at
all of the different types of connections that could be made with vehicles, pedestrians, and bicycles across
the corridor. The second exercise will be cross-sections. We’ll get into that a little more in-depth but
basically each group will be assigned a slice of the corridor to configure between the right-of-way.
For the connectivity exercise there will be four groups. All of the groups will use the same sheet and you’ll
get three markers each representing a mode of transportation. Black will be for cars, blue for bicycles, and
gray for pedestrians. You’ll take the aerial image we’ve printed and you’ll draw the desired connections
across the corridor that are most important to you. The cross-section exercise is a little bit more
complicated. If you didn’t get an agenda at the door please grab one. Each agenda has a number on it and
that will tell you which group you are in. Group 1 will work on cross-section A which is just south of
Medford Street. Group 2 will work on cross-section B which is just north of Washington Street. Group 3
will work on cross-section C which is just south of Washington Street and group 4 will work on cross-section
D which is just south of Poplar Street. You’ll notice that each section has different widths so each group
will have different configurations. The way this is going to work is by using puzzle pieces. We have puzzle
pieces of driveways, sidewalks, bike lanes, bike facilities, and planting strips; all have varying widths. We’d
like you to do the 6 lane alternative first because it is a little bit more challenging. Once you finish the 6
lane alternative you can move to the 4 lane alternative. At the end we’ll report out on each cross-section.
Q: JS: Are there turning lanes?
A:
BS: Yes. We having tiles for turning lanes and buffer strips.
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Q: AS: Do we need to pay attention to the maintenance of the grass strips? Grass strips often get covered with
sand and no one clears them.
Q: Brad Rawson (BR): I have a methodology question. Do you expect our groups to report out? Should we ask
members of the groups to shoot photos with iPhones?
A:
BS: You can certainly take photos with your phones but we will be coming around with cameras to
document the cross-sections. Are there any other questions before we start?
Reports from Breakout Exercise2
C:
Group 3: We looked at two basic concepts. The first concept was symmetric. We put all the traffic in the
middle for both the 4 lane and 6 lane options. We focused on 4 lanes. We then had a frontage road with
cycle tracks a parking lane. In our configuration we have five different rows of trees along the cross-section.
We had one row of trees in the middle, one row on either side separating the travel lanes from the frontage
road, and one row on either side separating the frontage road from the sidewalks.
C:
MT: We’ll call this one the Commonwealth Avenue approach.
C:
Group 3: Our second alternative we didn’t flush completely. The idea is to move the traffic mostly to one
side helping to create a wide green buffer space particularly on the south side of the corridor. This would
allow a connection to the Grand Junction Path. The Grand Junction would be accessed from the greenway
on the south side.
C:
MT: We’ll call that one the greenway concept.
C:
Group 2: We did the 6 lane cross-section first which we think is easier for cars and the more challenging
option for all other modes. We created a two-way cycle track on both sides of the street. We have a 12 foot
cycle track on one side with a tree buffer and on the other side we have a six foot sidewalk with a 10 foot
cycle track. It is very symmetrical. We have wider sidewalks on the Prospect Hill side. We did this
because there is a lot of development on that side. Our take away point was the two-way cycle tracks. We
also included on street parking on one side.
C:
2
MT: I think we’ll call this one the Arborway concept.
Photographs captured during the breakout exercise will be displayed in appendix 3.
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C:
Group 2: The more exciting option we did was the 4 lane alternate. We moved the alignment to one side
which gave us the opportunity to create a 36 foot wide park. We preferred it to one side because there was
already green space on the other.
C:
MT: This is back to the greenway alternative.
C:
Group 1: Our section was at the top near Highland Avenue. We felt that we didn’t near two lanes to go to
the Highland and Medford Street intersection. Our 4 lane alternative is symmetrical and a little bit tight.
We have narrow sidewalks and the point was that the bridge already has narrow sidewalks. We thought
going up Highland Avenue would be a more popular place for people to be walking. In the area between
Washington Street we added space for a park. We wanted to see lots of trees. Our idea rather than a cycle
track was to create a wider buffer between the road and the cyclist which we would call an off road path.
Our discussion also surrounded the ideas of specific lanes for transit vehicles and where transit stops may
be located.
C:
MT: Those are definitely elements we need to keep in mind.
C:
Group 4: Our section is on McGrath where the existing Squires Bridge is located. The immediate
conversation we had was that if there are going to be bicycle lanes on the Squires Bridge we want to keep
our cycle tracks on the perimeter. We considered a median bicycle accommodation too. We also put in
parking on both sides because we had some concerns about bus routes. There are currently three bus
routes that use this corridor. We thought if we had parked cars there would be two benefits. The first is
that they serve as a traffic calming measure and the second is that it allows us to clear spaces where we can
provide bus stops. Another feature of our design is that it’s A-symmetrical. On one side we have a 54 foot
green space with a sidewalk and bicycle lane. We did this to create a greenway experience away from
traffic. On the other side it is a more modest design with two tree buffers and a narrower greenway design.
There are no turning lanes here because there wouldn’t be any need. On the right hand side we have the
potential for the development which would be the Brickbottom area.
C:
MT: This is great. It’s funny. You’re the first person who mentioned a median bicycle accommodation.
You ruled it out, but we haven’t heard in any of the discussions tonight to put bicycles down the middle.
C:
WG: It’s the worst place you can put it.
C:
MT: I’ve been thinking that all along but in other projects we have considered doing that. I think one of
the big take away is that we got rid of something. I’m hearing a strong theme regarding the greenway
concept and the idea of preserving as much green space as possible for one side or the other. Thematically,
it sounds like we are all on the same page to either push it all to one side or the other. Alyson, I thought
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you provided some great input up at the northern end. We’re going to write this all up and add the photos
into our meeting notes. I think this was a great exercise.
C:
NCC: I have a couple more pieces and then I’ll let Michael wrap up with our next steps. One thing I’m
looking at is that most people came always with something symmetrical and traditional. The other thing
that seems to be a take away is to push it all to one side to create a large green corridor. One of the ideas I
overheard in conversation was this becoming a commuting bicycle way where the sidewalks would be more
for people around the neighborhood.
C:
WZ: If this is going to end up as a gorgeous urban boulevard there is a benefit to having a buffer on both
sides. It may be useful to have the mindset to think of a more formal landscape. If you think of the great
urban boulevards of the world they tend to be symmetrical.
C:
MT: Any other thoughts before we wrap up?
C:
AS: In terms of maintenance, the massive green would probably give the plants the best chance of survival.
C:
MT: We have experts who consider that and have been working on a similar project in Forest Hills. In
terms of our next steps we are going to continue to develop our traffic analysis and fully analyze the build
scenario. It’s my hope in the near future we can start to eliminate some of those scenarios based on the
long range planning that is happening at the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) level. That will
include a full analysis of bicycle and pedestrian operations as well as vehicle operations. We’re going to
continue to look at the diversions and put a solid number on the impacts. Probably not level of service
(LOS) but something that may have some sort of meaningful metric. Depending on how that works out,
we’ll figure out the best way to present that information. We’re at a point now that I would like to go back
to the public at large and share what we know and where we’ve come from. We should know a little bit
more concretely over the next months what is happening on Rutherford. As of today, it looks like
Rutherford will proceed before this project so we need to plan for that. In terms of the next working group
meeting we expect to meet with you all in June. As always, if you have questions or comments for us you
can reach out to Nate.
C:
BR: I have a quick housekeeping item. If you’re interesting in staying plugged into some of the
interdisciplinary, multimodal, transportation solutions on the corridor and around it, you may be interested
in participating in the Somerville By Design work shops. Many of you have been participating in the City
of Somerville by Design neighborhood planning process for Union Square. Our study area includes this
portion of the McGrath corridor. When we think about private property locations and public investment it
is a useful way to stay plugged in. We are having a meeting this Wednesday night in Union Square.
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MEMORANDUM
Somervillebydesign.com is the website. The City of Somerville has hired Gehl Architects who have recently
been made famous by the recent the documentary The Human Scale.
C:
Jennifer Molina (JM): I have a quick update. Most of you know there have been some transitions at the
City of Somerville. I know there was a website up that had the McGrath Grounding Study on it.
C:
MT: The Grounding McGrath website has been taken down but we do have a website for this phase of the
project.
C:
JM: It would be useful to have a quick link from the old website to the new website.
C:
NCC: All of the information from the Grounding McGrath website has been moved to our new website. 3
C:
WZ: It would be helpful if you went to the old website and it shot you over to the new website or at least
provided a link.
C:
MT: Just to finish up. Nate had written it up in the ground rules but you have all had a lot more
interaction with us than the general public. For our public information meetings I want to rely on the
working group members to spread the word of the meeting. We’ll be pushing our advertisements and
announcing it but I hope you all spread the word as well. You’ll be the first to find out once we have the
meeting scheduled but I would like to rely on this group as a resource to publicize it as well. If people have
questions, send them to us, that way we aren’t answering old questions during the question and answer
period. Thank you all for coming out tonight.
The web address is
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/highway/HighlightedProjects/McCarthyOverpassMcGrathHighway.
aspx.
3
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MEMORANDUM
Appendix 1: Meeting Attendees
First Name
Last Name
Affiliation
George
Batchelor
MassDOT
Tegin
Bennett
City of Cambridge
Joel
Bennett
Working Group Member
Robbin
Bergfors
MassDOT
Nathaniel
Cabral-Curtis
Howard Stein Hudson
Ken
Carlson
Somerville Bicycle Committee
Mark
Chase
Working Group Member
Maureen
Chlebek
McMahon Associates
Bill
Conroy
Working Group Member
George
Durante
Working Group Member
James
Gillooly
Working Group Member
Nick
Gross
Howard Stein Hudson
Philip
Groth
MBTA
Daniel
LeBlanc
Working Group Member
David
Loutzenheiser
Working Group Member
Gary
McNaughton
McMahon Associates
Jennifer
Molina
Working Group Member
Alan
Moore
Somerville Bicycle Committee
Scott
Peterson
Working Group Member
Brad
Rawson
City of Somerville
Brad
Rawson
Working Group Member
Ellin
Reisner
Working Group Member
Margaret
Round
Working Group Member
Alyson
Shultz
Working Group Member
Bob
Smith
McMahon Associates
Jason
Stockmann
Working Group Member
Frank
Suszynski
MassDOT
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MEMORANDUM
Timothy
Toomey
Working Group Member
Michael
Trepanier
MassDOT
Wiz
Zamore
Working Group Member
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MEMORANDUM
Appendix 2: Meeting Flipchart Notes4
Flipchart 1
C: At Gilman Street might be helpful to get State out to stop box blocking.
A: Will ring back to construction section.
C: Pearl Street is down tone lane which skews traffic patterns.
Q: What’s your average vehicle occupancy in the area? Look at as people flow, not car flow.
C: Not sure, don’t want to guess. We can get it for you.
Q: Will you re-signalize the lights at punch-through first?
A: Yes, doing load-lead traffic signal items now – Washington Street too.
Flipchart 2
Q: What about I-93 ramp northbound at Sullivan?
A: We have that at the office and we have captured Wynn Casino in our numbers.
Q: What about satellite parking?
A: Not immediately in limits of work. The takeaway is that the impacts are combined.
Q: Where’s Rufo Road?
A: Driveway to Shaw’s.
C: Think bike lane extensions are great for calming traffic.
Flipchart 3
C: McGrath sidewalks are in awful shape. That fix alone would help. Bridge sidewalks are awful.
To increase accessibility to this document for the visually impaired, transcriptions of the meeting
flipcharts have been presented rather than photographs of the charts produced at the meeting.
Images of these charts have been made and may be had upon request.
4
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MEMORANDUM
Q: What is peak hour for casinos?
A: Friday night, Saturday evening. Spread out traffic, not office style peaks.
Q: Do you have turn lanes in your puzzle pieces?
A: Yes and you’ll need them.
Q: Do we have to pay attention to O and M?
A: Have the discussion. Blue = Bike | Gray = Pedestrian | Black = Pedestrian |Dash Black = Bus
Flipchart 4
C: Words from Breakouts:
-
Barriers, lack of access
-
Union Square to Sullivan Square
-
Bicycle access to Prospect Hill Park
-
Linwood = long exit ramp
-
Attractive or useful to pedestrians
-
Calm traffic without killing capacity
-
Local access across McGrath
-
Narrower medians where there is less space
-
Ease getting in and out of cycle tracks – how do they connect at the ends?
-
On street parking calms traffic
Flipchart 5
-
Trees to buffer the neighborhood, but also like them down the middle
-
Can a single turn lane from McGrath to Highland/Medford split work?
-
Push roadway to one side to create green reservation on opposite side
-
Meander for walkers, straighter travel path for cyclist
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MEMORANDUM
Flipchart 6
Reports:
Group 1:
2 Basic concepts, central medians with traffic frontage roads with parking, 5 rows of
trees, Arborway style. Or shift traffic to one side and make one large reservation with
eventual access to Green Junction Path – Greenway
Group 3:
6 lane first, easier for cars, not other modes, dual 2-way cycle tracks, tree buffers, tree
wall in center, symmetrical, wider sidewalks on Prospect Hill side, on-street parking
with development for traffic calming. Casey Arbor way approach. 4 lanes with
alignment shift for large reservation, huge swatch of green.
Flipchart 7
Group 2:
Need 2 lanes to Highland, Medford. 4 lanes/6 lanes symmetrical sidewalks get pinched
near Gilman Street, wider elsewhere. Greenway approach. Get lots of trees to buffer
cycle track need to reserve space for transit stops.
Group 4:
Connect cycle tracks to connect to lanes on Squires Bridge. Parking for traffic calming
and allows bus stops. Asymmetrical wide greenway on one side more modest on opposite
side. Right hand side allows for Brickbottom Plaza.
No Center Bicycle Lane
-
Benefits to buffer on both sides
-
Massing green can help with maintenance
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MEMORANDUM
Appendix 3: Breakout Exercise Photographs
Group A
Connectivity Exercise
Cross-Section Exercise
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Group B
Connectivity Exercise
Cross-Section Exercise
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MEMORANDUM
Group C
Connectivity Exercise
Cross-Section Exercise
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MEMORANDUM
Group D
Connectivity Exercise
Cross-Section Exercise
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