What Will Brookline Do About The Traffic On Babcock Street?

BROOKLINE, MA — The town has seen yet another setback in traffic calming efforts on Babcock Street. Residents of the Coolidge Corner area say Babcock Street is a mess and are arguing for something - anything - to be done to make the area safer for pedestrians, bikers and everyone else. But they can't quite agree on what that will look like.

Earlier this year the traffic board together with community members sat down to hammer out a plan to calm the traffic there. Feelings were mixed about whether to get rid of parking and install a protected bike lane or use speed humps or raised crosswalks or a combination. Ultimately the board settled on 10 raised elements along the stretch from Harvard Street nearly to Comm Ave.

Town officials heard the presentation on the calming efforts and then heard from the public at a meeting in April. And then a group of residents who said the combination of speed humps and raised crosswalks wasn't the right approach. And the message from the Fire Department was clear: Do what you need to do to help calm the traffic in the area, but don't slow us down, and don't wreck our trucks.

Now, three months after the feedback has come in, the Board of Selectmen have decided to send the proposal back to the drawing board, in part because of the feedback and in part because there are some items the selectmen feel were missing from the plans.

"The scheme had 10 raised elements. That's a lot. The street isn't that long," said Chairman of the Board Neil Wishinsky. "We're asking them to take another look and come up with something else."

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Between 2009 and 2013 there were 12 crashes, according to the MassDOT Crash Database and the Brookline Police Department activity log shows 42 traffic accidents along Babcock Street, according to Transportation Administrator Todd Kirrane in April.

″The existing conditions on Babcock Street warrant the use of traffic calming measures to address the existing safety concerns which currently exist on the public way,” Kirrane told selectmen in a memo.

During a hearing on April 25, Ward asked the Board to send the project back to the Transportation Board with the requirement that the board utilizes traffic calming measures other than raised crosswalks and speed humps.

At the close of the hearing the selectmen voted to support the project as is with the instruction that the Transportation Board work with the Fire Department to determine an appropriate height for the raised crosswalks and speed humps.

In addition, Wishinsky said the board had received 35 emails, 27 requesting to deny the appeal, 8 for overturning the Transportation Board’s decision.

Bicycle activist supporting safe streets and Town Meeting Member Andrew Fischer was one of those residents who sent comments to the board about revamping the plan.

"It's a prime opportunity to put in protected bike lanes," he later told Patch in an interview. "The amount of parking on that street is really minimal, and they're underutilized."

Not to mention, there's parking available on the side streets.

And then there's the matter of the future, he said.

"Babcock is going to be a corridor to the new MBTA station [in Brighton]. Babcock is going to cut through the campus and in anticipation of that, it just makes sense in terms of long term planning," he said.

Tuesday the Board of Selectmen voted to reconsider its prior decision to sustain the appeal of the Transportation Board’s decision on traffic calming on Babcock Street as long as it considered lowering the height of the humps, because it said the Transportation Board did not fully consider the intent and letter of the National Fire Protection Association standards that have become incorporated into state regulations.

The selectmen asked the transportation board to consider the following when working out a new plan:

• - consider the implications to fire and emergency medical services and to the impacts on fire department apparatus and personnel, whose location on Babcock Street subject it to continual travel over the area.
• - consider the Town’s Complete Streets Policy, but also whether exceptions to some aspects of the policy are appropriate under the circumstances.
• - consider the impacts on existing parking, but do not take the loss of some parking spaces off the table in order to help facilitate an improved plan
• - protect existing handicapped parking along Babcock Street
• - consider bicycle and pedestrian accommodations including possible alternative bicycle routes adjacent to Babcock Street (e.g. Naples Road)
• - consider the impacts of the new legislative authorization to establish lower speed limits
• - consider various measures to control speed, but do not use physical barriers solely to achieve speed limit conformance.

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Transportation Director Todd Kirrane did not return request for comment.

Image of the Fire car by Jenna Fisher/ Patch