City of Cambridge Begins Hampshire Street Protected Bike Lane Installation

3:03 PM EDT on August 1, 2023

A photo-illustration rendering shows families with strollers on the sidewalk on the left, a parent and child riding bikes through a crosswalk in a bike lane next to a tan-painted island, and an MBTA bus in the distance. — A rendering of new flexpost-protected bike lanes planned for Hampshire Street between Inman and Kendall Squares. Courtesy of the City of Cambridge.

The City of Cambridge will repave Hampshire Street between Inman and Kendall Squares this week in preparation for new protected bike lanes through of the region's busiest bike-commuting corridors.

Map showing the location of Hampshire Street in Cambridge. Hampshire runs in a northwest-southeast direction between Inman Sq., in the upper left (northwest) corner of the map, to Kendall Square, in the center of the map. The Charles River and Back Bay neighborhood of Boston are in the lower-right (southeast) corner of the map.

The quick-build project will also connect several other bike infrastructure projects to provide a near-continuous protected bikeway between the Charles riverfront in Boston and Porter Square in Somerville.

According to a City of Cambridge project update that the city emailed to stakeholders on Monday, workers will start removing the top layer of old pavement from the street over the next few days, then lay a fresh coat of asphalt in segments on Saturday and next Monday (weather permitting).

The city expects to begin installing new lane markings and flexible-post bollards later in August, after the paving work is complete.

According to pre-pandemic traffic counts from the City of Cambridge data, nearly half of the people traveling on Hampshire Street during rush hours are riding bikes, one-third are riding in cars, and the remainder are transit riders.

As we reported last fall, the city's updated Cambridge Cycling Safety Ordinance specifies Hampshire Street as one of four protected bike routes that the city must complete by April 30, 2026 (the other three are Cambridge St. between Inman Square and Lechmere, Broadway between Harvard and Hampshire St., and Garden Street between Huron Ave. and Cambridge Common – a project that was installed last fall).