42°21'21.6"N 71°06'49.6"W
Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
Look at how far a pedestrian has to walk, just to cross a 4-lane street, to get to the park. And close to half the walk is uphill, just to elevate over the street.
Every time I see it, it makes me angry. (Partly because this ridiculous imposition of a pedestrian bridge is emblematic of the area's crazy emphasis on cars. When Boston or Cambridge gets a little strip of park green space, they somehow tend to end up with a freeway of angry cars right up alongside it.)
That bridge also took over 2 years to complete at an absurd cost after the one it replaced was damaged. While it was under construction, there was a temporary red light installed at the intersection of Magazine St. which was far better all around as it allowed pedestrians to just cross the street much closer to the only real stores in the immediate area (and a Starbucks, now closed.)
While the bridge is well-built and provides wheelchair and bike access, its location is inconvenient. It’s so far away from any of the few available amenities that many people just try to dart across the road from the park and community pool. Two people have been struck in killed trying to cross in the past few years.
Other than a single water bubbler at the BU boathouse, that only went in a couple of years ago, there isn’t a single place to get a drink (let alone buy one or get a snack) the entire 4+ mile length of the river in Cambridge from the Museum of Science to the Elliot St. Bridge, without crossing Memorial Drive. It’s unclear to me why they just don’t take down the footbridge and make the stop light with crosswalk permanent. There seems to be some issue with the fact that Cambridge itself doesn’t really have control over the road itself or the land along the River as it’s controlled by the Department of Conservation & Recreation (the “dcr”) which is a State agency.
The footbridge that I find oddest is the one across Rt. 2 past Alewife just over the Cambridge line in Arlington.
According to this reddit comment[1] that I didn't dive farther into, the Rt. 2 bridge used to allow access from a westbound bus stop before Alewife station was built. Makes reference to the now closed Lanes & Games. Looking at MBTA bus maps I don't see any stop there now but I could be wrong.
Of course you can. Just design the area for walking and biking and let the motor vehicle traffic flow around that.
A car driver is not nearly as inconvenienced by an incline as a pedestrian or cyclist would be. If we don't want to do more in depth changes, then at least we could just let motor vehicle traffic tunnel under or bridge over foot and bicycle paths instead of the other way around.
Tunnels and bridges are expensive. If there's a choice between a pedestrian bridge and a car bridge, the pedestrian bridge will be less expensive. And vastly more people drive than walk. It's pretty obvious how we end up with the infrasructure we have.
Ugh, there is so much to be angry about when it comes to Boston area parkways. First and foremost, they are maintained by the MA Dept of Conservation and Recreation under the guise that their purpose is to provide access to the river parks (rather than their real puprose, providing drivers access to downtown Boston/Cambridge). And among MA agencies, DCR is paradoxically backwards when it comes to providing bike- and ped-friendly improvements. The DOTs of MA, Boston and Cambridge are somehow way more progressive when it comes to these things. Just compare the Somerville/Cambridge community paths and new Boston core cycletracks with the stupid little "bike paths" on either side of the Charles.
My favorite un-fun fact was that James Storrow was an ardent advocate for the public parkland along the river, and opposed building a highway on the land. After his death, MA thanked him for his service by... building a highway through the park and naming it Storrow Drive.
Author of the original article here. I actually remember that bridge! It's such a huge mass of concrete. For me it is memorable because it's right next to the only Microcenter in Cambridge. If I wanted to buy a Raspberry Pi while in law school (more common of an occurrence than I care to admit), that's where I'd go.
City planners in Warsaw, Poland have apparently noticed that underground passages are actually an inconvenience to pedestrians and now I'm seeing a trend where such crossings are starting to get surface-level crosswalks as well, such as at Rondo Dmowskiego[0], a principal public transport hub. Such changes are a life quality improvement to people with disabilities - elevators are breaking left and right, cutting off people who rely on them. Right now I live in Berlin and the public transport notification page is always filled with reports of broken elevators all around the city.
That bridge is clearly designed in that way to comply with the ADA.
Injecting my personal politics: I've always thought the ADA was a somewhat misguided initiative when it comes to wheelchair accessibility. Seems like if we had taken all the money we spent trying to make places accessible by wheelchair and had instead directed it towards R&D for better modes of assistance for the disabled, we might've solved the problem instead of just slapping a bandaid on it.
Plus we wouldn't have bridges like this, which are worse for the non-disabled.
I've done that a lot actually? Regardless, I don't think our society should be specifically structured around certain use-cases, and I think it is wildly impractical to try to cater to all of them in all scenarios.
This bridge has elements that make me think it's beyond ADA. The bridge could have been closer to the intersection. It could have both stairs and a ramp.
Mine is right across the river [1]... There are (or were) old 1930s stairs from the deck of the BU bridge across the river to ... nothing. Access to the pedestrian path on the south side of the river requires backtracking a quarter mile to a pedestrian bridge.
I don't know this area, so I don't know how good it is there, but these are pretty nice if you're cycling. I imagine if one's in a (motorized) wheelchair it's a fair option as well. But it sure seems like there should also be a set of steps cutting off much of the distance for those who can/want to use steps instead. Maybe even with a bike gutter along the steps like so many transit systems have in their stations.
Ha! I moved out of Cambridge in 2011 to CA and as soon as I read "Memorial Drive, Cambridge" I immediately thought "that's going to be the one by Microcenter." Thanks for posting, brought back some memories :)
Any ramp style bridges that are U shaped annoy me. I much prefer ramp style bridges that are H or Z shaped so you can make productive walking in your goal direction for both the up and down legs of the trip.
https://goo.gl/maps/dJZew2G2EJJcEgvP9
Look at how far a pedestrian has to walk, just to cross a 4-lane street, to get to the park. And close to half the walk is uphill, just to elevate over the street.Every time I see it, it makes me angry. (Partly because this ridiculous imposition of a pedestrian bridge is emblematic of the area's crazy emphasis on cars. When Boston or Cambridge gets a little strip of park green space, they somehow tend to end up with a freeway of angry cars right up alongside it.)