Tag Archives: Urban Planning

Proposals for taking down trolley wire system then ‘partial-build’ bike lanes nudge forward

23 Feb

Bike Lane Games

By Tom Meek Friday, February 18, 2022

A sign taped to a municipal meeting notice warns that the city plans to “give away” Porter Square with quick-build bike lanes. Unlike with many websites, the URL on the flyer works only when https:// precedes it. (Photo: Marc Levy)

Transportation officials are moving toward removing overhead trolley wires that will allow an approach to building bike lanes that keeps more parking along Massachusetts Avenue in the northern parts of the city, representatives for the city and state said in two community meetings this week.

The MBTA held an information session virtually Tuesday on bus electrification and the North Cambridge depot redesign, drawing more than 150 attendees. Scott Hamwey, the MBTA’s director of bus modernization, said the state planned to de-electrify overhead catenary wires and switch to battery electric buses beginning in mid-March, removing the wires sometime in late 2023 or 2024. The North Cambridge depot would shut down for two years as it was turned into a bus-charging station; construction would start within the next year, Hamwey said. While just 3 percent of the fleet is electric now, the agency plans to make it fully electric by 2040.

Many in the audience argued that the current, wired buses were cleaner than the BEBs, which would be equipped with a small diesel engine cycling on and off to add warmth for riders on days cold enough that the buses’ electric heat is inadequate. The rebuilt depot would include a 5,000-gallon diesel tank on the north side of the site.

Only a small amount of the bus fleet use the overhead wires, which are deployed in only a small part of MBTA territory, and the system and buses that use it are aging and will require significant cost to upgrade and maintain, said Hamwey and senior director of vehicle engineering Bill Wolfgang.

Planning for Porter

The city showed “partial” bike-lane constructions options as part of a Wednesday presentation.

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Transportation Tomorrow

5 Nov

New ways of getting around don’t get around need for laws and consensus, conference finds

 

By Tom Meek 

 

An the elevated mass transit pod proposal by TransitX drew attention at Transportation Transformation: A Conference About the New Urban Mobility, held Saturday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Photo: Tom Meek)

Hoping to explore “how people get around tomorrow,” city councillor Craig Kelley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge Innovation Center convened “Transportation Transformation: A Conference About the New Urban Mobility” on Saturday, with panel topics ranging from the future of ride-sharing to “micro-mobility” devices, the need for regulation and even whether urban gondolas seem like a good idea.

Speakers included Kent Larson, director of city science at the MIT Media Lab; Assaf Biderman, founder and chief executive of Superpedestrian, the company behind the Copenhagen Wheel device; and Joseph Barr, director of the city’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department.

Regulation for safety, space considerations and pricing on e-scooters, dockless bikes and similar alternative transportation rippled throughout the afternoon. Barr talked in detail about the complications of policy and enforcement and the search for a way to address all in a broad manner so they were not “reinventing the wheel” – so to speak – each time a new e-transit device hits the streets.

The conference drew around 150 people, many in the urban planning sector., (Photo: Tom Meek)

Audience asked whether the new urban mobility movement wasn’t something mainly initiated by and for a socioeconomic class that was educated, well-off, white and male (statistics showed women behind men in use of the alternative transportation), while panelists pitched the ergonomic and environmental benefits of people-powered transit and e-vehicles shared and unlocked by app. Barr cited a Portland, Oregon, study that claimed a 20 percent migration to alternative transportation as a reliable means for commutes, errands and leisure; Denmark was mentioned as reporting that 41 percent of all work and school trips were made by bicycle or alternative means, and Copenhagen officials hope to see that increase to 50 percent by 2025.

Many of the 150 conference attendees at the institute’s Walker Memorial Building were in the urban planning sector and liked the transportation innovations being touted apart from the panels, particularly the elevated transit pod concept by TransitX and an enclosed e-bike that, like driverless nuTonomy cars, can navigate bike lanes without anyone pedaling.

Officials acknowledged challenges ahead for Cambridge, with its growing population, need to address forms of transit as they arrive and population divided over finding space and funds for alternative infrastructure – whether it’s bike lanes now or monorails in the future.

The conference “underscored that the biggest challenge we face in transforming transportation is not technological or even infrastructure, but changing people’s mindsets, habits and behavior,” said vice mayor Jan Devereux, who attended.

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