Outside seating, product outside for boutiques, etc, etc, etc. : )Īny pilot project that would help the restaurants and business, yes. Just not a pilot project that puts bike lanes on Charles Street right now……. In another email message, Ringenburg pushed back against Starr’s request for a pilot program on Charles Street, and specifically objected to any plans that might create a bike lane: “The words ‘expedited bike projects’ make me nervous, especially in relation to Charles Street,” wrote Ringenburg. The next day (May 13), Ali Ringenburg, a Charles Street gallery owner who serves on the board of both the BHCA and the Beacon Hill Business Association (BHBA), emailed Boston Transportation Department Director of Planning Vineet Gupta with a link to a May 12 StreetsblogMASS story about the city’s new “healthy streets” initiative. Several other BHCA board members replied to Starr’s message thread to chime in with their support, and in a May 12 reply to the same thread, Starr asked city staff to “keep us in mind as a guinea pig for any pilot programs.” On – a time when cities in the region were just beginning to consider how to use streets to create space for safe social distancing – Ben Starr, a realtor and the Chair of Traffic and Parking Committee for the Beacon Hill Civic Association (BHCA), emailed City Hall to ask about “how we create space for our restaurants” on Charles Street. Those emails reveal that city staff and a number of neighborhood residents were eager to improve safety for pedestrians and bikes on Charles Street in the midst of the pandemic.īut intense disagreements over the details from a handful of neighborhood residents and business owners blocked anything from changing. To find out why, StreetsblogMASS filed a public records request earlier this year with Boston City Hall for emails related to Charles Street and the Connect Downtown project. And in early 2020, when the city was beginning its outreach to plan the new “Connect Downtown” network of protected bike lanes, Charles Street was on the map as a key link to the Longfellow Bridge.īut while parts of Columbus Avenue, Tremont, Boylston, and the section of Charles Street south of Beacon Hill all got significant upgrades for bike and foot traffic last summer – on a trial basis at first, and later with more permanent materials – Beacon Hill’s main street has remained stuck in its pre-pandemic, car-choked configuration. Charles Street was identified as a priority for better bike facilities in the city’s GoBoston 2030 plan. That goal is also enshrined in official plans at Boston’s City Hall. Bike transportation advocates have long been eager to reconfigure the street to provide a dedicated, two-way bikeway between the Common and Charles Circle. There’s little debate over the fact that Charles Street does not need to have five lanes for cars. “It’s very difficult to try and get around on Beacon Hill… I’m 80 years old and I hope it’s not going to take 4 to 10 years to get this damn bike lane.” “For 40 to 50 years, I have gone the wrong way on Charles Street,” Doucette told city councilors. Here’s longtime Beacon Hill resident Joan Doucette testifying in favor of a Charles Street bike lane in a May 2018 Boston City Council budget hearing: “We usually just take our chances riding the wrong way on Brimmer” to get back home, Schmitt says. “You can’t bike into Beacon Hill from downtown at all: Charles is one-way toward the garden, Brimmer is one-way toward the garden, River is one-way toward the garden,” says Steven Schmitt, a Beacon Hill resident who lives in a car-free household. Pedestrians crowd relatively narrow sidewalks that are cluttered with parking meters, signs, and trash cans with the sole exception of a Bluebikes dock, there’s no dedicated space for bikes.Įven worse, there’s currently no legal way for bike riders to enter Beacon Hill from the south: most of the neighborhood’s streets are designated for one-way traffic, with “do not enter” signs facing Boston Common and the Public Garden. Its current layout features three lanes for motor vehicles, plus two curbside lanes for parked cars. Charles Street through Beacon Hill is one of the city’s busiest bike routes: in the morning rush hours, when commuters pour into the city from the Longfellow Bridge, nearly one out of every three vehicles on Charles Street is a bicycle, according to official city traffic counts.Īs the neighborhood’s primary route to and from the busy Charles/MGH Red Line station, it’s also a heavily-used walking route, with dozens of small businesses lining its sidewalks.īut the allocation of public space on Charles Street doesn’t reflect who’s actually using it.
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