Washington St. Pilot (road diet)

Washington St. is one of the busiest roads in Newton and is one of a few (including Rte 9, Beacon St., Commonwealth Ave) that run through the entirety of Newton from east-west.

The city intends to run a long-term pilot (3 years) to “Create a more safe, attractive, friendly, and welcoming environment for residents, visitors, and businesses”. This is a $3.2MM pilot (including both design and build-out) that will run between Lowell Ave and Chestnut St, and

• Create an entirely new traffic pattern including reducing traffic lanes to one lane in each direction, plus a ‘turn lane’ to reverse direction

• Add a two-way buffered shared use lane (bicycles and pedestrians) on the South side of the street

• Accommodate estimated parking requirements for existing businesses along Washington St.

The traffic planning department has a dedicated page to this project - with a lot of information, including a comprehensive presentation from the consultant (HSH) hired to design the changes to Washington St.

I was one of only a few councilors who did not vote for this project. Again, while I support improving the safety of our roads, I believe that too many questions are unanswered. These include how much traffic do we think will be displaced onto side streets (eg., Watertown St.), how are we measuring the pilot, what does success (or failure) look like.

The 75% complete design is being shared at a Public Meeting on April 11th. No location for this meeting has been announced, but there is a Zoom Link available already.

I will be looking forward to the further definition of the program details, which, in my opinion should have been defined BEFORE spending the time and resources we already have.