This project aims to build on ideas generated by groups in the past like Beautiful Newtonville and the Newtonville Area Council. Residents and business owners in Newtonville have discussed enhancing and beautifying the streetscape at the heart of the village over the past five to ten years (see resource documents below).
The goals of the Walnut Street Enhancement Project include:
Improve safety for all users in one of the worst crash hotspots in the region;
Beautify Walnut Street in the heart of Newtonville Village by building on ideas from the community;
Meet the needs of people visiting the Newtonville and those passing through;
Apply a “Complete Streets” approach to the core area on Walnut Street and maximize benefits including ADA-compliant accessibility .
The project scope area, Walnut Street from Newtonville Ave. towards Elm Rd., is a crash hotspot. It has been ranked in the top 5% of the worst crash locations in the Metro Boston Region based on a combination of factors including crash incidence and severity.
The Walnut street curb and paving project is still floating around not sure on timing, their plan and marking design would keep the current purely painted bike lane with no changes, and in fact seems to reduce some of the bike lane space and reallocate to a more standard driving lane width. Last November Cambridge DPW put the design below in place on a repaving project for Webster Ave (the north part) up to the Somerville border. This street originally had no bike designation and was parking on both sides.
The reason I bring this up is this road is between 32 and 34’ wide, which is pretty much exactly the same width as Walnut. There are a couple pinch points by the library, four corners, and by the fountain at the end but they were always pinch points.
The road in Cambridge has more frequent bus service than Walnut, has truck traffic (it is an industrial area and prime connection to Cambridge st and Kendal Square) and has through traffic. We need the redesign to be better than the designs as they stand…
