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Eyes On the Street: Posts Replace Cones on Mass. Ave. Bridge

9:19 AM EDT on October 26, 2023

A photograph of a bridge with a bike lane at left, and a man riding a bike toward the camera, and two car lanes to the right. A column of white flexible-post bollards with a handful of orange construction cones occupies the buffer zone between the bike lane and the car lanes. In the distance, at the end of the bridge, are some trees and the tall buildings of the Boston skyline.

New flexible-post bollards being installed on the Mass. Ave. Bridge near the Boston bank of the Charles River.

It's been almost two years since MassDOT widened the busy bike lanes on the Harvard Bridge (also known as the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge) with orange construction cones.

MassDOT made the new lane configuration permanent last year, with new stripes on the roadway.

But, aside from the notorious interlude when vandals tossed them into the Charles River, the orange construction cones remained as the only physical barrier between the bike lane and motor vehicles – until today.

On Thursday morning, a MassDOT crew was working in those bike lanes to replace those cones with new, more permanent flexible-post bollards to help keep cars out of the bike lanes.

Here are a few photos of the work in progress:

A photograph of a bridge with a bike lane and wide sidewalk at right, and two MassDOT vehicles in the buffer zone between the car lane and the bike lane. A cluster of white flexible-post bollards is bundled between the two vehicles. In the distance, at the end of the bridge, is the Cambridge skyline.
A stack of new flexible-post bollards await installation on the Mass. Ave. Bridge on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023.
A bicyclist rides past a flatbed truck where two workers are unloading white flexible-post bollards onto the bridge deck.
Workers unload flexible-post bollards for installation on the Mass. Ave. Bridge on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023.

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