As it enters its final phase of construction, a multi-year sewer replacement project in Somerville's Spring Hill neighborhood is rebuilding several neighborhood streets with new sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and other safety improvements – along with a big increase in curbside greenery.
Starting in 2022, workers started ripping up pavement on roughly a dozen blocks between Summer, Highland, School, and Central Streets to replace and upgrade the neighborhood's 19th-century sewer pipes.
The project was highly disruptive, and required digging up entire streets. But it afforded the opportunity for the city to re-imagine how those streets could be rebuilt from scratch.
Now that the underground work is largely complete, workers are now building new sidewalks and new traffic-calming features throughout the neighborhood.
On Summer Street, for instance, the project has upgraded what was once a paint-only bike lane with a new curb-protected design for bicycle users climbing up the hill (westbound) from Union Square.
Additionally, at numerous intersections throughout the project area, workers are moving curbs closer to the center of the street to slow down traffic, shorten crosswalk crossings, and create more space for trees and other plantings.
According to Dan Amelin, a City of Somerville Engineering Division Project Manager, these reconstructed streets will give the city about 6,750 square feet – roughly the area of a standard tennis court – of new green space.
"These spaces include, but are not limited to, a new 'pocket' park on Quincy St. at Summer Street, new bioretention basins, new planter areas, (and) new tree pits," explained Amelin in an email to StreetsblogMASS.
Additional bikeways slated for Central, Highland Aves.
Next month, the city expects to start rebuilding nearby Central Street, one of the city's few north-south streets.
As part of that work, the segment of Central St. between Highland and Summer will be restricted to one-way northbound traffic for motor vehicles.
Then, workers will rebuild the street with a single 12-foot motor vehicle lane in the middle, and new sidewalk-level bike paths along both curbs to allow for two-way bike traffic.
Along the northern edge of the sewer project area, protected bike lanes that are planned for Highland Avenue likely won't go under construction for a couple more years.
Highland is notorious for its potholes, but under the city's current capital budget, construction funding to rebuild the street with safer bike infrastructure won't be available until July 2026.
Redesigned Washington Street Also Under Construction
It's unrelated to the sewer project, but a few blocks to the southeast, Somerville is also rebuilding Washington Street west of Union Square.
The project will build physically-protected bike lanes between between Beacon (at the Cambridge city line) and Hawkins Street, one block west of Union Square. For the final block between Hawkins and the square, bikes will share a dedicated bus-and-bike lane.
The project is also installing new "floating" bus stops between the new bike lanes and the roadway, to let MBTA buses pick up and drop off passengers without needing to pull over to the curb.
The route 86 bus currently serves this segment of Washington Street, but at the end of this year that route will be replaced by the new frequent-service 109 as part of the upcoming first phase of the MBTA's bus network redesign.
