Boston Will Start Building Dartmouth Street Protected Bikeway This Fall

Within the next few weeks, the City of Boston will start work on another link in its growing network of protected bike routes with a new two-way on-street bikeway on Dartmouth Street in the Back Bay neighborhood.

The new Dartmouth Street will feature a two-way bikeway along its eastern curb. North of Commonwealth Avenue, flexible-post bollards will separate the bike lane from the adjacent moving vehicle lanes.

South of Commonwealth Avenue, an on-street parking lane will separate the bikeway from moving traffic, and the design will preserve space for popular on-street dining patios.

The first phase of the project will repave and reconfigure lanes on the northern segment of Dartmouth Street, from the Commonwealth Avenue mall to the Charles River esplanade.

“We can repave Dartmouth Street, install the bike lane pavement markings, and the traffic signal timing changes, between Back Street and Comm. Ave. this fall,” said Nathaniel Fink, a Boston Transportation Department planner, in a Zoom public meeting last night.

The second phase of work, which will extend the new bikeway to Copley Square to connect with the new Boylston Street bike lane, will follow soon after. But its schedule is still uncertain, as the city needs to coordinate work on this segment with National Grid, which plans to replace its methane gas pipelines under the street.

As a two-way facility, the new Dartmouth Street bikeway will connect the Dr. Paul Dudley White Bike Path along the Charles River to the new Boylston Street protected bike lane, which was installed earlier this summer.