[This page is a verbatim cut/paste of several pages on a wiki written between 2008-2009; updating and revising the wiki was difficult, so it has been disabled, but we didn't want to lose the information, even if it is interesting only for archival purposes. We take no responsibility for links or email addresses on this page, as they may be out of date.]
Bike Paths
As of February, 2009, there are no destination-oriented bike paths in Newton.
Pieces of the Charles River Path pass through Nonantum on the Newton side of the Charles; however, much of these sections are either too narrow to facilitate much more than recreational biking, or in poor repair, or both. Many bikers have said that the section along Nonantum Rd. is dangerous: too close to high-speed traffic, in disrepair, and narrow. Road crossings are poorly marked.
There are the old aqueduct trails (occasionally interrupted walking paths that follows the old aqueducts from the Charles River to Newton Center), but apparently some abutters have objected to the occasional biker using the paths, in spite of some Newton Conservators documents that list bikes as potential users. You can find a map here.
There is at least one initiative to start a rail-trail project in Newton Lower Falls here that would ultimately connect a business district in Wellesley (via an old rail bridge, slated to be repaired) to Newton Lower Falls and possibly the Riverside T station. There is some local community pressure against this plan, as there often is with rail-trail plans. However, the plan is a good one, and has backing from Bike Newton, the Newton Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force, Newton Conservators, Wellesley Trails, CRWA, and the DCR (who owns the bridge and the land on which the trail would go.) In fact, if a Wellesley Trails plan to connect the Charles with Medfield gets beyond the planning stage, this rail-trail project could be a key connection.
Alderman Amy Sangiolo is working on an alternative proposal, that would focus on linking various pieces of DCR land along the Charles River, with the ultimate aim of linking to the Charles River path. [Link to map]
There is another initiative in Nonantum to link the Albemarle Park with the Charles River Path. Contact: info@
Bike Lanes
As of February, 2009, there are no bike lanes in Newton.
The roads dept. has begun, starting in late fall '08, to erect a number of "Share the Road" signs on Walnut Street, Beacon Street, Winchester Street, Nahanton St. and Parker St.
Credit goes to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Task force for getting that project rolling. A number of these streets have also seen the addition of somewhat wider shoulder-striping, though a series of winter storms ('08-'09) has begun to wipe out a lot of that striping. In a number of locations (Walnut between Homer and Commonwealth, Beacon just east of Newton Center) the shoulder-striping is so wide that it causes confusion for drivers: they often think the shoulder is another travel lane. Caution is advised.
None of these wide shoulders have painted markings indicating their use, other than as shoulders. In fact, many of the shoulder stripes curve into side-streets, making their use as a bike travel lane seem entirely accidental. The very wide shoulders on Beacon east of Newton Center have recently been outfitted with striping and signs that prohibit driving on the shoulder; drivers, however, still seem to use the lanes, especially eastbound after the light at Hammond Pond Parkway.
The Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) guidelines on bike lanes) discourages the use of shoulders as bike lanes, and encourages less ambiguous signage, such as pavement markings and signs that clearly indicate a bikes-only travel lane.
The long-standing problem in Newton has been on-street parking. Put simply, parking has a voice in Newton government, and biking doesn't. The width of roadways in Newton does not allow for both on-street parking on both sides and bike-only lanes. So far, parking concerns have won out over biking safety concerns. There was a particularly disappointing outcome in Newton Highlands in 2007, when a waiver to the Paulsen Bill was granted for road repairs in order to preserve on-street parking on Walnut St. at the expense of a bike lane. (The Paulsen Bill mandates that state-funded road construction and repair must provide bicycle facilities; however, waivers to this law seem to be granted with some regularity.)
The difficulty with parking is that we need to change people's mentality. People share the common misconception that the answer to insufficient parking is to add parking spaces. However, what usually happens when more parking spaces are added is that more people drive. The real answer lies in making existing spaces more useful to more people by encouraging turnover. How to encourage turnover? Variable pricing. Calibrate the price of parking on each street or area to achieve a 15% vacancy rate. In high demand areas, parking will be more expensive than in low-demand areas. This way, a certain number of spaces will always be available for people who need them. This theory, developed by UCLA researcher Donald Shoup, has been tested in some areas (San Francisco is currently redesigning its entire parking policies around and are quite successful. The cost of does not need to be raised very high.
Because parking is free on many city streets, many streets become parking lots, with cars staying all day. For instance, Walnut Street from Lake St. to Hillside Rd. is often parked in by commuters who have parked for the day to take the T, making biking along that stretch of Walnut difficult and dangerous. There has been a lot of wrangling between cyclists and the Highland businesses over that stretch of road. The missing information, though, is where these drivers are coming from, and why they are driving to this particular T station. If they are coming from a particular neighborhood or area, perhaps the city could offer a shuttle service. It would be interesting to add these commuters' needs to the mix, to see if there are viable alternatives to on-street parking. Is anyone interested in surveying them?
There is a lot at the Eliot station that holds about 75-100 cars. The per-day charge for parking there is $5.50. It seems reasonable to charge people parking along Walnut Street near Highlands a similar rate, which amounts to about 50 cents an hour. It wouldn't eliminate cars on that stretch of Walnut, but at least it would generate revenue, which could be used to improve bike facilities in other ways
Bike Sharing
Bike Newton has short- and long-term visions for bike and bike-accessory sharing, in Newton. In the short-term, these include a virtual bike exchange, where community members may contact each other on-line to loan/borrow bikes and gear to/from each other. In the longer-term, our vision is to have a physical headquarters, with a modest inventory of bikes and bike accessories (trail-a-bikes, burley-style trailers, rack seats, bike tools, bike repair books, etc.). Elsewhere, this kind of facility has been called a "bike library".
Bike Parking
Many racks in Newton are insufficient, at best. The one at the Newton Center T station is, on clement days, regularly quite overcrowded. The small rack at the Newton Free Library is being swallowed by shrubbery. The old "wheelbender" rack at the Crystal Lake bathhouse can hold 20 bicycles, but that number is regularly exceeded on sunny days in the summer. Many other locations (schools, T-stations, business centers) are in dire need of more bike racks.
David Koses, Newton's Transportation Planner, has been taking advantage of the MAPC free bike rack program to install bike racks around Newton. (The program is actually not free: they reimburse the cost of the rack itself, but do not pay for shipping or installation.) Some have been installed at Newton South. Photos show that they were installed too close to a wall to be very useful. We have assurances that the new Newton North High School building will include sufficient & well-placed racks.
The Newton Bike Rack Map is done! Many thanks to all participants, and especially to Steve Heinrichs, who organized the whole thing, and Bev Droz (organizer of Newton Serves), who saw the virtue of the project and took it on.
One alternative to the classic placement of bike racks is to put racks in on-street car spaces. Bike Newton is looking into testing this possibility.
Traffic Calming
Traffic Calming is the use of a road's structure to slow traffic. Traffic calming strategies are based on years of data showing that drivers respond more consistently to the appearance of a road than to speed limit signs. In car-pedestrian impacts, speeds of 20mph or less dramatically reduce the chance of fatality. At 40 mph, the chance of fatality verges on 90%. At 20 mph, the chance of fatality is below 15%. In general, these numbers also likely apply to cyclists, so traffic-calming in a general sense benefits bicyclists as well, with some possible exceptions (see below).
The basic principle of traffic calming is to force drivers to use their judgment to slow down to negotiate visible road obstacles. One can add curves to a straight road, narrow the roadway (with neck-downs or bump-outs, or simply narrowing the apparent roadway with a shoulder-stripe) raise sections of roadway (with speed tables or humps or raised crosswalks), add visible markers to pedestrian crossings (signage in the roadway, changes in pavement texture, pedestrian-activated signals), install roundabouts at intersections, or change angled intersections to right-angle intersections.
Newton apparently banned speed humps in 1999, because of the fire department's concern that speed humps would damage or slow down rescue vehicles [need verification]. It is unclear whether there is any actual cause for concern, such as a demonstrated history of such problems in communities with speed humps. [Need more research on this point.]
Clint Schuckel, Newton's traffic engineer, subscribes to the wisdom of traffic-calming, and has been installing traffic-calming devices around Newton. Some examples:
Bicyclists also sometimes object to some traffic calming measures, especially bump-outs, since they run the risk of forcing bicyclists into traffic. A number of bikers have found the bump-outs on Fuller St. a problem. An alternative view is to think of a bump-out as a permanently parked car that can't "door" you. There are also techniques for engineering bump-outs to make them negotiable for bikes. Newton's road's department should be encouraged to explore these options.
Many of Newton's main roads could use some traffic calming of some kind; drivers rarely drive as low as the posted speed limits. Example: Parker Street between Cypress and Route 9. Driving from Newton Center toward route 9, from the crest of the hill to Route 9 there is only one visible impediment to the downhill straightaway: a crosswalk. Much of the year, the crosswalk itself is obscured by salt and sand, and the movable crosswalk sign is missing. The crossing guard stationed there morning and afternoon for students walking to and from the Bowen School regularly sees cars go through the intersection at high speed, ignoring her signals, or screeching to a stop. If the only apparent impediment to a driver is one crosswalk on a long, straight downhill slope, the likelihood of an accident is high, especially with commuting drivers intent on a destination. A series of bump-outs, raised or textured crosswalks, narrowed travel lanes, or other calming devices on that downhill slope would reduce speeds and raise drivers' awareness of the potential for pedestrians.
Biking and Development
The way a community regulates its growth is inextricably linked with bicycle access. (Imagine how different Newton would be if Route 9 didn't cut such a bike-unfriendly swath through it, or if Chestnut Hill Mall were genuinely bike and pedestrian accessible, or if Needham Street were a tree-lined boulevard with a green-line spur!)
Bike-friendly is community friendly.
A number of current and pending projects offer opportunities (or, if we ignore them, barriers) to bike-friendly development:
The Comprehensive Plan suggests a development planning process in which Newton would set the rules of development, and developers' plans would need to be transparent, instead of the current process, where meetings that are convened by aldermen for public "input," are controlled by developers. Residents and abutters attend a meeting hoping to hear development plans, and what they get instead is vague development marketing, without any pushback from elected officials. The message is clear: developers run development in Newton. Residents have little input, and elected officials seem to take a passive role. A much better process is outlined in the Comprehensive Plan, but so far, nobody with any power or vision has tried to make that process into a set of policies.
Traffic Calming is the use of a road's structure to slow traffic. Traffic calming strategies are based on years of data showing that drivers respond more consistently to the appearance of a road than to speed limit signs. In car-pedestrian impacts, speeds of 20mph or less dramatically reduce the chance of fatality. At 40 mph, the chance of fatality verges on 90%. At 20 mph, the chance of fatality is below 15%. In general, these numbers also likely apply to cyclists, so traffic-calming in a general sense benefits bicyclists as well, with some possible exceptions (see below).
The basic principle of traffic calming is to force drivers to use their judgment to slow down to negotiate visible road obstacles. One can add curves to a straight road, narrow the roadway (with neck-downs or bump-outs, or simply narrowing the apparent roadway with a shoulder-stripe) raise sections of roadway (with speed tables or humps or raised crosswalks), add visible markers to pedestrian crossings (signage in the roadway, changes in pavement texture, pedestrian-activated signals), install roundabouts at intersections, or change angled intersections to right-angle intersections.
Newton apparently banned speed humps in 1999, because of the fire department's concern that speed humps would damage or slow down rescue vehicles [need verification]. It is unclear whether there is any actual cause for concern, such as a demonstrated history of such problems in communities with speed humps. [Need more research on this point.]
Clint Schuckel, Newton's traffic engineer, subscribes to the wisdom of traffic-calming, and has been installing traffic-calming devices around Newton. Some examples:
• Bulb-out/right-angle intersection at Jackson St. and Daniel St. (under testing in '08-'09) near Bowen School
• Closing of angled access road at Walnut St. and Watertown St. to make a right-angle only turn
• Raised crosswalk on Woodland Road (installed because of an outcry after the death of a pedestrian)
• Series of bump-outs on Fuller St. near Chestnut St.
Some residents near the Jackson/Daniel bump-out have signed a petition to halt it, though the project will go ahead, according to the Newton TAB, if testing confirms its success. [4/30/09 Update: I've received an email from Victoria Danberg and Dan Parker saying that construction will start soon.]Bicyclists also sometimes object to some traffic calming measures, especially bump-outs, since they run the risk of forcing bicyclists into traffic. A number of bikers have found the bump-outs on Fuller St. a problem. An alternative view is to think of a bump-out as a permanently parked car that can't "door" you. There are also techniques for engineering bump-outs to make them negotiable for bikes. Newton's road's department should be encouraged to explore these options.
Many of Newton's main roads could use some traffic calming of some kind; drivers rarely drive as low as the posted speed limits. Example: Parker Street between Cypress and Route 9. Driving from Newton Center toward route 9, from the crest of the hill to Route 9 there is only one visible impediment to the downhill straightaway: a crosswalk. Much of the year, the crosswalk itself is obscured by salt and sand, and the movable crosswalk sign is missing. The crossing guard stationed there morning and afternoon for students walking to and from the Bowen School regularly sees cars go through the intersection at high speed, ignoring her signals, or screeching to a stop. If the only apparent impediment to a driver is one crosswalk on a long, straight downhill slope, the likelihood of an accident is high, especially with commuting drivers intent on a destination. A series of bump-outs, raised or textured crosswalks, narrowed travel lanes, or other calming devices on that downhill slope would reduce speeds and raise drivers' awareness of the potential for pedestrians.
Biking and Development
The way a community regulates its growth is inextricably linked with bicycle access. (Imagine how different Newton would be if Route 9 didn't cut such a bike-unfriendly swath through it, or if Chestnut Hill Mall were genuinely bike and pedestrian accessible, or if Needham Street were a tree-lined boulevard with a green-line spur!)
Bike-friendly is community friendly.
A number of current and pending projects offer opportunities (or, if we ignore them, barriers) to bike-friendly development:
• Chestnut Hill Square
• Riverside
• Needham Street
Guidance on good planning (pretty close to Complete Streets, pedestrian and bike-friendly, public-transportation-The Comprehensive Plan suggests a development planning process in which Newton would set the rules of development, and developers' plans would need to be transparent, instead of the current process, where meetings that are convened by aldermen for public "input," are controlled by developers. Residents and abutters attend a meeting hoping to hear development plans, and what they get instead is vague development marketing, without any pushback from elected officials. The message is clear: developers run development in Newton. Residents have little input, and elected officials seem to take a passive role. A much better process is outlined in the Comprehensive Plan, but so far, nobody with any power or vision has tried to make that process into a set of policies.
