On Monday evening, Somerville will host a public hearing at City Hall to discuss early traffic and transit data from the city's new bus and bike lanes on on Broadway in Winter Hill.
The meeting will be hosted by the City Council's Traffic and Parking Committee and the city's Traffic Commission. Following a presentation of the project's history and the early results of post-implementation traffic analysis, members of the public will have an opportunity to sound off in public testimony.
The project has generated a modest amount of ire from motor vehicle drivers, who have circulated an online petition to eliminate the new bus lanes.
However, it's not clear how many of those online petitioners actually live in Somerville. In the city's recent election, voters from neighborhoods adjacent to the new bus lanes backed Mayor Joe Curtatone, one of the project's most vocal proponents.
Broadway’s two major bus routes – the 101, which connects downtown Medford to Sullivan Square, and the 89, which links West Somerville to Charlestown and downtown Boston – together carry over 7,700 riders over the course of a typical weekday. During weekday morning rush hours, those bus routes carried more than a quarter of the people traveling on Broadway even before the new bus lanes were installed.
Meeting details:
Public hearing on the new Winter Hill bus lanes
When: Monday, December 9, 2019, 6:00pm
Where: Somerville City Hall, 93 Highland Ave. (take MBTA Route 88 from Lechmere or Davis Sq.)
Or submit written testimony before Dec. 13 to both citycouncil@somervillema.gov and traffic@somervillema.gov.
