Eyes On the Street: Depaving Leo Birmingham Park

The state's park agency is tearing up two highway lanes' worth of asphalt to convert half of an obsolete highway back into parkland in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston.

By Christian MilNeil

6:46 AM EDT on August 25, 2025

A major construction project to reclaim public parkland from a former highway is well underway in Brighton, as workers tear up asphalt from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation's Leo Birmingham Parkway.

A highway construction site. New granite curbs have been installed in the middle of an older roadway in the center of the photo, with a packed gravel path to the right, and two car lanes to the left. An inset at lower left shows what the same scene looked like before construction, when the same view showed a wider roadway next to a dirt track on the side of the road. — New curbs have been installed to narrow the Leo Birmingham Parkway near the intersection with Market Street. The gravel path to the right will later be paved to create a shared-use bike and pedestrian path where previously there had been no sidewalks (see "before" photo at lower left, courtesy of Google Street View).

The eastern end of the project begins at Market Street, near the GBH television studios (visible in the distance in the photo above).

Workers have re-aligned that intersection to align it with the new two-lane Birmingham Parkway. The new intersection is considerably smaller, and includes new sidewalk ramps that will connect to the future off-street path.

A highway construction site. New granite curbs have been installed in the middle of an older roadway with a path of packed gravel visible in the foreground. Several orange construction barrels dot the roadway. An inset at lower right shows what the same scene looked like before construction, when the same view looked down two lanes of a four-lane divided highway. — A new shared-use path under construction along Birmingham Parkway just west of its intersection with Market Street in Boston. The inset at lower right shows how the new path is replacing the two westbound lanes of what used to be a four-lane divided highway. Photographed on August 21, 2025. Inset photo courtesy of Google Street View.

Further to the west, motorized vehicle traffic has already been shifted to the southern side of the parkway, with the former eastbound lanes converted to a two-way street.

The former westbound lanes (pictured below), where the trail will eventually go, have been closed off to traffic.

For the most part, those lanes still haven't been demolished, as construction work so far has mostly been focused on the three intersections along the length of the project.

But soon, all the asphalt on the left side of the photo above will be ripped up and replaced with a much narrower shared-use pathway for bike and pedestrian traffic.

The construction work has also made some considerable traffic-calming improvements to the sidewalks and crosswalks where Birmingham Parkway intersects with North Beacon Street, about halfway between Market Street and Soldiers Field Road.

The project will construct new crosswalks from North Beacon Street across Birmingham Parkway where none had previously existed.

Pictured below is one of the new concrete sidewalk ramps, which will eventually connect to a new trail on the right:

A highway construction site. New granite curbs have been installed in the middle of an older roadway with a run-down building with a blue-tiled roof visible in the distance to the right. Several orange construction barrels dot the roadway. An inset at lower left shows what the same scene looked like before construction, when the same view showed a wide field of asphalt connecting an otherwise divided four-lane highway. — A new ramp at the intersection of Birmingham Parkway and North Beacon Street, which is out of view on the left edge of the photo. The new ramp in the foreground will connect a crosswalk from North Beacon Street to a new shared-use path, which will replace the older asphalt roadway on the right. Photographed on August 21, 2025. Inset photo courtesy of Google Street View.

On the southern side of the North Beacon intersection, workers have installed new curbs that considerably reduce the width of the intersection and provide more space for the bike and pedestrian traffic that will eventually access the trail here.

A highway construction site under a highway overpass which looms in shadow over the top edge of the photo. New granite curbs have been installed in the middle of an older roadway in the center of the photo, curving at a road junction. An inset at lower left shows what the same scene looked like before construction, when there was a much narrower sidewalk at the corner. — A new curb extension under construction at the corner of North Beacon Street (foreground) and Birmingham Parkway (behind the stop sign). Inset image courtesy of Google Street View.

Note that this intersection work also creates a short segment of curb-protected bike lane approaching the intersection (around the orange construction barrel at right in the photo above). This will connect the new shared-use pathway to the new flexpost-separated bike lanes on North Beacon Street that Mayor Wu's administration installed last year between the Interstate 90 overpass and Union Square in Allston.

At the western end of the project area, the roadway widens again to connect motor vehicle traffic into the multi-lane rotary next to IHOP.

Plans for this project (pictured below) don't include any substantive safety improvements to the notoriously dangerous traffic circle, and there will still be no legal way for path users to cross Solider's Field Road here to access the Paul Dudley White riverfront path that's right on the other side of the highway.

An aerial view of highway plans with greyed-out satellite imagery under an illustration of new roads and a bike path that run from the right edge of the image to the center, at the edge of a large traffic circle. Above the new road drawing is a blue-roofed building labelled "IHOP"

Instead, the nearest legal crossing to the Charles riverfront will be another 1200 feet further west, at the Brooks Street traffic light.

However, the Department of Conservation and Recreation is currently conceptualizing another project to redesign this traffic circle and add additional crosswalks to connect Brighton to its riverfront.