Eyes On the Street: The New Western Ave. Bike Lanes

Thanks to reader Emily Jacobsen for sharing these photos of the new bike lanes on Western Avenue, where City of Boston workers have been installing new flexible-post bollards over the past week.

“It is not quite complete, but it will be a total game changer for people commuting out of Watertown/Brighton,” Jacobsen told StreetsblogMASS.

As we’ve reported previously, this is one of three bike network improvements that the City of Boston has implemented in Allston and Brighton this fall (see map at right).

The new bike lanes replace little-used curbside parking lanes along Western Avenue. They also represent the first phase in the city’s longer-range plans to transform the street into one where bikes and MBTA buses would both get physically separated, dedicated lanes.

As part of that plan, the city’s planning agency is requiring new developments along Western Avenue to reserve space for wider sidewalks, new bus stops, and more permanent, curb-protected bike lanes.

You can get a preview of what the future street will look like on the south side of Western Avenue between Riverdale and Everett Streets, where the developers of the new three-building lab complex pictured above have finished a new sidewalk with new trees and a sidewalk-level bikeway (but take note: Jacobsen reports that it still dead-ends in a construction site for now):