Letter from Sarah Block regarding City Manager's Agenda Item #5 in support of Option #1

1 Macomber, Jennifer From: Sarah Block <[email removed]> Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2025 9:02 PM To: City Council Cc: City Clerk; Traffic Parking and Transportation Department Subject: City Manager's Agenda Item #5" in support of Option #1 Dear City Council, Please keep Garden as is. We can't have the council deciding issues about street configurations like this. It's not fair to anyone and this is going to rip open every completed street project and everyone is a traffic engineer and has an opinion on the roads in their neighborhood, especially Neighborhood 9. It also undermines the professional staff. If there's an issue with trust or performance that should not be handled by the council writing their own solutions to traffic problems engineered by the council. Please. I plan to speak on Monday as well, so will keep this message brief. Please have a lovely weekend. Please go with the safest and easiest recommendation of the professional traffic engineers. We may all drive but we all sound like this person below when we try to design our street and traffic. Complaints about bicycles also go back more than 100 years at Garden and Concord. It's a very opinionated neighborhood and beware of throwing yourselves into the fray . Looking through the archives of the Cambridge Chronicle one could write an excellent novel about the arguments around traffic at the corner of Garden and Concord with many weighing in. Please advocate for #1 - City Manager's Agenda Item #5" in support of Option #1 The basic issue is and has always been too many cars for the capacity of the roads. Consider overall strategies to change that. Thank you! Sarah Block 24 Shepard St, Cambridge, MA 02138 Example below: The more things change the more they stay the same. 1. The Cambridge Chronicle 2. 20 March 1926 JAMES ST. WIDENING WILL HELP TRAFFIC The proposal of the planning board that Janfeft'- afreet, "running between Mason and Brattle streets, hi* increased to <lO feet in width and extended beyond Mason streetinto Phillips place and then to Garden streetwill, when adopted, provide a valuable by-pass for traffic around the congested district in Harvard

2 square. The plan has not attracted much attention as yet, although it was recently heard before the legislature when permission was asked for Cambridge to borrow $lOO,OOO outside the debt limit to carry out the project. Members of the planning board believe that the acceptance of this plan will do more to solve the traffic situation than the Church Street widening which, according to some traffic experts, is too close to the imint of traffic congestion to be very valuable. In bis address recently before the Chamber of Commerce, Chairman llarriman, of the metropolitan planning division, gave the suggestion his approval. James street is now 40 feet wide and leads from Mason street into Brattle street in the rear of Radcliffe college. The proposed extension will cross Mason street,entering Phillips place for only a short distance, and will then curve toward Gardenstreet which it will reach by crossing the property of ex-Ren. George L. Dow. It will come into Garden street just opposite Waterhouse street through which traffic will have a direct route to Massachusetts avenue. At the other end of James streettraffic will continue down Brattle street, to Brattle square and Mount Auburn street where it can either continue down Mount Auburn street to Putnam square and Massachusetts avenue or turn at Boylston street and reach Memorial drive at the Larz Anderson bridge, bridge. Although this plan is well on its legislative way and there has been little or no opposition to it so far, this can probably be laid to the fact, which a correspondent emphfmizes, that few outside of those favoring it knew what was up. The following letter recites some of the arguments against the plan which may be heard at greater length when the city council comes to consider it again: _ Sir—The reason there was no opposition to the legislative bill to allow the city of Cambridge to spend $lOO,OOO on an extension of James street to Garden street was that only those interested knew about the hearing. The proposition is a preposterous one. It adds to the dangers of what is already the most dangerous street situation in the vicinity of Harvard square. All the benefits the planning board claim and with less danger to traffic can be secured by the wise expenditure of less than $5OOO instead of $lOO,OOO. In the first place James street,which it is proposed to widen, is only about 60 yards in length. It is wide enough now for two lines of traffic. It can be made eight feet wider at practically no expense b- utilising the sidewalk on the west side of the street(which no one uses) and cutting three feet off the exceptionally wide sidewalk on the east side of the street. That would give a 48-foot wide street. In case this is not enough, it is ixissible to take a strip of land five feet wide from the Radcliffe college property, without harming the college grounds in tj/e least. That would be a 52-foot street, plenty wide enough. The street is already nearly (10 feet wide at the Brattle street entrance. The Mason street end could be further widened and an easy turn made by cutting off the sharp corner of the Radcliffe yard which juts into Mason street at the Junction. That would give a wide sweeping turn from James street into Mason. All this could be done at small expense. It would cost $30,000 to do what the planning board wants done to James street. Extending Janies streetacross Mason street would make another very dangerous corner. Then extending James street into Phillips place, back of the church, would make another sharp turn in the street. But, worst of all, the new James street would terribly complicate the trafficsituation at Waterhouse and Garden streets, one of the worst danger spots in Cambridge. Traffic coming through the new James street would clash with Garden streettraffic, and in crossing Garden into Waterhouse there would be another danger >us situation with traffic four ways on Waterhouse street. The simplest solution would be to let Janies street end where it does now. at Mason. The easy turn gained by taking a little land at tne corner from Radcliffe would help traffic. Mason street is plenty wide enough now. But the corner where it joins Garden street is bad. It is this dangerous place that the planning board wishes to get rid of. This can be done in easy and sensible fashion by taking about 15 feet of the church land at the corner. This will make that corner harmonise with the wide sweep of the turn on the Radcliffe side. Thus the street could be made at least 70 feet wide at that point. That would remove all the danger. Taking 15 feet off the corner would not harm the church> property. It would clear up the whole situation. These things could all be done for $5OOO and be a vastly better solution of the problem. Incidentally how foolish it is to spend $25,000 widening James street on the ground that a 40- feet street is too narrow and then allow a line of cars to stand parked'all _dav on James street. If the

3 street is widened the widening will only be in the interest of those whose cars are allowed to remain parked all day on James street. Ston the parking and the street is plenty wide enough. But the $lOO,OOO proposition is foolish —a sheer needless waste of money. F. C. M. The legislative committee on municipal finance on Monday' voted to rejstrt a bill to authorise the city of Cambridge to widen and extend James street to a width of 00 feet, lender the provisions of the bill the city would be permitted to borrow $130,000 outside the debt limit, subject to the approval of the ipayor and city council. The sure way to become better off Is to quit merely wishing, you were and work harder. Shut out the wind. Get.the Nu-Metat Weather Strip at Dix Lumber company. Sarah Block 24 Shepard St, Cambridge, MA 02138 -- Sarah Block (she/her) [phone removed]