The Boston Transportation Department (BTD) is finalizing a plan to fix the long-standing street safety concerns in the East Fenway by slowing vehicles.
The city’s proposed plan aims to address the issues by adding speed humps to several streets in the neighborhood and also including crosswalks and more biking lanes.
“Streets, where we install a speed hump, will have a speed limit of 20 mph,” said Hannah Fong, a transportation planner with the Boston Transportation Department. “We are very methodical about how we install them.”
According to Fong, each speed hump will be 150 to 250 feet apart to maintain the 20-mph speed and will not impact parking, snow clearance, and drainage. The planning for the location of the speed humps will factor in the emergency response by law enforcement and emergency medical services.
The BTD officials shared these plans with the members of the East Fenway community during a meeting arranged by the Neighborhood Improvement Committee (NIC), an all-volunteer group facilitated by the Berklee College of Music and consisting of Fenway residents, businesses, and organizations.
The proposed plan also includes a contraflow biking lane (a two-way biking lane) on Hemenway Street between Boylston Street and Westland Avenue. The street, however, will remain one-way for drivers.
Senior transportation planner, Charlotte Fleetwood, also acknowledged the concerns about the lack of pedestrian crossings along Hemenway Street.
“We will soon share the new crosswalk locations as well as ramp upgrades,” said Fleetwood. “We will be doing that in the stretch where we are doing the contraflow biking lane.”
John Monacelli, the senior transportation engineer with the BTD, noted that, for now, “speed humps are the priority.”
The proposed plan is in line with Mayor Wu’s announcement last September about plans for a 9.4-mile expansion of the city’s separated bike lanes and increasing speed humps and raised crosswalks across the city to ensure safer streets and accommodating different modes of transportation.
The next step for the BTD is to notify residents of this plan and begin the engineering review process to identify ideal locations for installing the speed humps. The department is also planning to host events to further inform the public about the agenda and its advantages. The construction is expected to start later in 2023.
Also discussed at the meeting was a plan by Berklee College to increase on-campus housing which includes the acquisition of 12 Hemenway Street, a private rental dormitory. Students living in the neighboring areas often struggle with late-night public transportation and are keen to find alternate housing options near campus.
The institution currently has 25% of its undergraduate students on campus and aims to increase that number to 50% as it deals with long waiting lists of students.
