This summer, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) is re-striping two hectic traffic circles in Arlington and West Medford in an attempt to calm traffic and improve access to its parklands along the Mystic River.
The two traffic circles are located on either side of the Mystic River at the end of Medford Street in Arlington and High Street in Medford (see map below). Although they connect to ordinary two-lane city streets on all sides, the traffic circles themselves, and the bridge that connects them, are unusually wide.
The Medford rotary currently has only one crosswalk, across the southern leg of the traffic circle, to connect West Medford neighborhoods to the riverfront parkland along the Mystic.
The Arlington rotary has two crosswalks, on the northern and southern legs of the rotary, but no crosswalks across Medford Street on the eastern and western legs.
MassDOT's crash database records 62 crashes in the vicinity of both rotaries since the beginning of 2020.
18 of those crashes (30 percent) resulted in an injury for at least one victim, and four crashes, all of them on the eastern rotary, involved a person riding a bicycle.
The initial phase of DCR's re-striping project, underway now, will attempt to better organize the traffic circles with cross-hatching and triangular yield markings.
A second phase of the project, expected to go under construction later, will build new crosswalks to the rotary on the Medford riverbank.
"Phase 2 will include four wheelchair accessible ramps at the curbs and two crosswalks that will be associated with the rotary," a DCR spokesperson told StreetsblogMASS. "These improvements are expected to be installed by summer 2026."
Mystic to Minuteman link
The rotaries are a barrier in a proposed off-street pathway between the Minuteman Bikeway in Arlington and the Mystic River greenways network.
A 2022 feasibility study for that path recommended that the two High Street rotaries be "substantially redesigned to create modern roundabouts with safe facilities and crossings for walking and biking."
As an interim measure, the study recommended that DCR "tighten" the rotaries with quick-build materials like paint and flexible bollards, and "install crosswalks and curb ramps across legs that do not have them already."
