City of Boston Will Add Modest Traffic-Calming Measures For Columbia Road

The city is hosting another open house for its Columbia Road Action Plan tonight at the Strand Theater.

8:27 AM EDT on October 30, 2024

A wide five-lane street with a concrete median in the middle that's lined with tall street lamps. Either side of the broad street is lined with triple-decker apartment houses. Most of the picture is empty asphalt, but there are a few large trees scattered along the street's sidewalks in the distance. — Columbia Road just south of Edward Everett Square in Dorchester, looking southwest towards Uphams Corner.

Map of Boston highlighting the location of Columbia Road, which runs in a NE-SW direction from Moakley Park on the shore of Dorchester Bay to Franklin Park in the lower left corner of the map.

Over the next few months, the Boston Transportation Department will start installing some small-scale traffic-calming interventions to Columbia Road in Dorchester and Grove Hall – an initial step in its efforts to plan a more comprehensive, greener redesign for a missing link in Boston's Emerald Necklace.

The city is hosting its second open house for the project this evening from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Strand Theater at 534 Columbia Road (a few blocks from the Uphams Corner Fairmount Line stop).

Quick-build project will test ideas for bigger redesign

The city is still hosting conversations about what a more comprehensively redesigned Columbia Road might look like.

That planning effort will continue through the next 6 to 8 months, and city officials say they want to continue to do more outreach before they propose any specific concepts.

In the shorter term, though, the Boston Transportation Department will install some smaller-scale safety improvements with temporary materials, like flexible-post bollards, so that the neighborhood can get a sense of what their options are.

"The intent is for this to jump-start a conversation about a larger, long-term project. These are temporary interventions, but if they're well-received, we could install a more permanent solution," explained Xavier Lopez, the City of Boston's project manager.

An overhead view of a broad intersection where five streets converge in a star pattern. The largest street in the center, running left to right, is labelled "Columbia Road." A smaller 3-lane street labelled Geneva Ave. runs diagonally from upper left to lower right. An even smaller street labeled Binsley Street enters from the bottom corner and ends at the intersection. Dotted lines drawn on the overhead image indicate new temporary delineators that will make the corners tighter and somewhat separate the Binsley Street intersection from the southern Geneva Ave. intersection.

The "early action" project focuses on four intersections along Columbia Road, at Massachusetts Avenue/Boston Street, Dudley/Stoughton Streets, Geneva Avenue/Brinsley Street, and at Washington Street.

At each of these intersections, the city plans to add flexible-post bollards near crosswalk ramps and median islands to improve visibility for pedestrians and to slow down cars that are making turns to and from side streets.

The city will also issue a call for local artists later this winter to paint murals on the pavement inside those new temporary curb extensions and on nearby utility boxes.

Most of Columbia Road is designated as a "high-crash" street under the City of Boston's Vision Zero plan, which means it ranks among the city's most dangerous streets for violent driving incidents.