Cambridge Announces Bike Lane Design Plans for Main Street Safety Improvement Project

The City of Cambridge announced design plans for the Main Street Safety Improvement Project at a virtual community meeting Tuesday evening.

A section of Main Street between Massachusetts Ave. and Portland St. will undergo construction beginning this month to implement the project, with a set completion date in June. Originally planned for fall 2023, the project was rescheduled out of the City’s desire “to do some more outreach and get some more feedback from the community.”

The Cambridge Department of Transportation will install separate bike lanes in both directions, and the new lanes will be marked by flexible posts. Further, slight bends in the roadway — called “chicanes” — will be clearly designated near crosswalks to slow traffic speeds.

Jeffrey Parenti, the City of Cambridge Department of Transportation’s assistant commissioner for street management, called Main Street “an outstanding place for these facilities,” noting its central location to Longfellow Bridge, downtown Boston, the Charles River Reservation, MIT, and the residences that surround them.

“With the thousands of jobs and residences in this corridor and the origin and destinations that go along with them, this is a corridor that’s very important to make sure that it provides safe travel — and convenient travel — for bicyclists.”

The project’s implementation means progress towards Cambridge’s goal of 25 new miles of separated bike lanes city-wide by November 2026, as required by the city’s Cycling Safety Ordinance, passed originally in 2019 and amended at later dates.

The meeting, which outlined the planned design and concluded with an opportunity for public comment, marks the final stages of a long period of project design and public consultation that began in early 2023. One public survey of design options received nearly 1600 responses.

“I can’t emphasize enough how many comments we received about apartment parking and the desire to keep as much private parking as possible. People want to be able to park near their homes, and many need cars to be able to drive and have access to jobs, appointments, child care and other activities that are not optional for them, ” Stephen Meuse, supervising engineer at the City of Cambridge, said.

“We heard this, and our preferred design accommodates that as best we can,” he continued.

Permit parking will be prioritized over metered parking, in accordance with popular opinion. Near Newtowne Court, home to eight three-story apartment buildings, all of the Main Street parking will be designated as apartment parking.

The separated bike lanes will also allow the city to use smaller street-sweeping equipment so that residents will “no longer have to move their cars to have Main Street swept.”

The City will host two in-person, drop-in open houses to further discuss the project, one this evening in the Pisani Center, and a following meeting next Tuesday at the small park on the corner of Main St. and Bishop Allen Drive.