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My ticket refers to the two bicycle lights. I know this intersection is still under construction, but I just wanted to point out that the two lights are adjacent, and one is red and one is green at the same time and it's not really clear what they're referring to. I don't want bike riders set up for failure - the signalization for cyclists should be more clear and accessible than regular traffic lights since it's a more equitable mode. I hope there's an improvement or clarification that can be made, especially one that doesn't require an extra sign - it's already a bit cluttered.
Thank you.

Confusing experience on bicycle here. This bike lane is somewhat plowed, but it is merged with the sidewalk. There is no entrance to this bike lane. I dismounted and crossed the snowbank to snap this photo.

Further down, In front of Novartis/Takeda, the bike lane has a plowed entrance, but is obstructed somewhere in the mid-block. Other bike lanes (e.g. Webster St. @ Camrbidge St.) are just completely unplowed.

I checked at cambridgema.gov and couldn't find any evidence of a commitment to upkeep bike lanes through the winter... So for those of us that need to bike should we:
1. Assume that Cambridge is not maintaining bike lanes and thus bike on the road, and tolerate the harassment from drivers
2. Assume that Cambridge is trying to maintain bike lanes and report each individual problem via this app?

I would really like to have this information to plan my winter cycling. Thank you.

I am embarrassed for Cambridge.

We are five full days after the snowstorm and this new bike lane only just got plowed this afternoon. Unfortunately, the city line passes right through our neighborhood, so we often find ourselves not being able to enjoy any public services properly. There is a snow barrier right at the city line, and the mound of snow continues all the way to Prospect St.

Is there a poor relationship between Cambridge the City of Somerville? Can I offer my help as a resident to improve this embarrassing oversight? Mediating or facilitating?

I'll note that somehow the the road was magically perfectly plowed without evidence of a city line from the moment the snow started falling. Biking doesn't decrease in the winter because it's dangerous, it decreases because the city isn't committed to keeping it safe.

Keep in mind the new Green Line station will soon open at the green light visible in this photo, so now seems like a great time to reach an agreement with Somerville and keep access to this critical resource open throughout the year.

Please don't respond that this is Somerville's problem. Work with them like you do for the roads! Some Cambridge residents can only access their homes via this street...and soon public transit too!

The large housing building at the corner of Cambridge and Prospect has the giant parking lot that extends through the block to Tremont St. They have a locked chain-link fence on the Tremont St. side and the sidewalk is unshoveled on the Tremont St side. Putting this ticket in now because they have never shoveled it properly in my years of living on Tremont St. Hoping that the city can encourage them to do this side as well as they salt+shovel the Prospect St side, before it turns to ice again.

The new garage at 10 Essex has an egress that requires drivers to go over the pedestrian right-of-way. The new design uses a flashing+beeping warning sound to warn people on the sidewalk that a vehicle is exiting the garage. I feel like there are two problems with the new design:

1. The warning is far too loud. It is audible well over a block away, past Bishop Allen Dr.
2. The attention-grabbing warning is falsely giving the impression that drivers driving over the sidewalk have the right-of-way and that it is the responsibility of people walking to stop and let them pass. This is the opposite of the truth. Shouldn't the only necessary warning be for exiting drivers: "Yield to people on the sidewalk"?

I worry that low-vision+hearing sidewalk users (who use this area frequently thanks to the public transit station) who pass here may have been overlooked. I worry also that the new design is promoting a false narrative of "shared responsibility" when it comes to not being hit by cars. Don't we want our children and people with different cognitive abilities to be able to use the sidewalk without an unnecessarily imposed conflict?

I got some insight this week as to why the police have not been helping to keep the #1 bus stop clear. They are themselves using it as a personal parking spot. A separate time from what's in the photo, I watched a uniformed officer loading his personal car in the bus stop. It is not a loading zone.

Police, could you please help by solving the problem rather than making it worse? The T is about to cut ~40% of its budget for 2021 and blocking that spot is costing the T money in having the bus go around obstacles rather than going up and down Mass Ave. While I was taking this picture, a bicycling mother with her child had to pass into the street to go around the bus. And many low-mobility people getting off this bus need to step onto the curb, not the street.

If this was an emergency, the lights could have been on.

My partner and I were biking toward Central Square when a driver came behind us honking and eventually screaming that we need to be in the bike lane. When I pointed out that the bike lane was for traveling in the opposite direction, she screamed expletives and drove around us THROUGH the bike lane herself to pass us, running the stop sign.

We weren't breaking any rules and we were moving in the direction of the travel lane. I am so sick of being threatened on these residential streets. Can we please have a safe route between Inman and Central Squares? Can we please have infrastructure that isn't paint on a road? Can we please regularly cite drivers who endanger people on bicycles? I don't want to become the next white bike in Cambridge. I'm sick of feeling like I might instigate someone to hurt or kill me just for existing in their way. Isn't Cambridge supposed to be different?

The driver was a woman with a green SUV and New Hampshire plates, but it doesn't matter because this isn't the first or the last time.

The MBTA is making serious cuts to service due to Covid-related budget constraints. People blocking this bus stop (basically all day) are stealing from the taxpayers and ensuring worse T service for the years to come by needlessly slowing down our buses. They're also endangering transit users and people on bicycles in their selfish behavior. This isn't hyperbole. Please intervene on a regular basis.
No, they aren't in the small loading zone. The car in front of them is.

another day, another driver endangering the lives of people on bicycles

If there are two double-parked cars blocking the bike lane, is it triple- or quadruple-parked? Like, is it additive or multiplicative?

A near-daily occurrence at the Central Square bus stop. The pictured driver prevented the bus (also pictured) from being able to use the stop. The bus driver let out passengers in the bike lane, endangering the cyclist (pictured) and bus users.

The people of Massachusetts have paid millions in operations and capital improvements for the #1 bus. Cambridge is allowing selfish drivers to steal from this public good and endanger vulnerable road users.

Please redesign this bus stop so that this can't occur; in the meantime, please proactively enforce this (by not asking me to call the non-emergency police line in response to these momentary incidents).

Another day, another driver endangering the lives of cyclists.
Please don't tell me to call the non-emergency police line. This happens all day long and just about every time I pass through.

For the long term, I'm looking forward to an actually protected bike lane. There is obviously plenty of street width and demand here.

Construction work has been going on since early March. The construction team is only two men, using mostly noisy, consumer-grade power tools. They have gutted and sanded an apartment's entire interior (with the windows open, making ridiculous dust), and have demolished and are rebuilding a 3-storey balcony from scratch; they also did major roof repairs and removed a chimney. They are bringing untreated lumber straight from Home Depot and are sawing it in the yard. Using a nail gun all day long. They play music over a portable speaker all day. The noise and dust have been crazy and I am awakened by their construction work most days of the week. I'm having trouble having my work-from-home meetings.

This is a large building (<9 units), which I'm mentioning because I know Cambridge/Mass laws are different for large buildings. Does the owner not have a responsibility to 1) any amount of prefabrication for this extensive work? 2) hiring a large enough crew to make speedy work of these changes?

With a crew of 2, I am foreseeing this going on until the snow starts, not having been able to open our windows for the whole summer.

I posted this issue previously, but the comments got out of hand.

Again, people were honking furiously at the garbage trucks on Tremont St. around noon today while the collectors were trying to do their jobs. There was more honking from a different episode at 8AM because two very large trucks were not able to pass each other on the street. The response to my last ticket was that there were no feasible actions to take. I disagree, and propose:

1) Cambridge should acknowledge that we have far more vehicles per hour than what is considered normal for a residential street (especially compared to neighboring Norfolk St., for example). I estimate over 100 vehicles per hour for a good period of the day, with a good chunk of that number being heavy trucks. Please use this information to understand why there is support from our neighbors to turn our small, traffic-burdened street into a Shared Street.
2) Install some "No honking", "No idling" signage to remind drivers to stop impacting residents with their driving behaviors.
3) Speak with some of the trash collectors and make sure they don't feel harassed. Invite them to ask if they would like a police or city escort if they have any frustrations with this aspect of the route.
4) Encourage Cambridge police to ensure residents through public channels that they are aware and taking aggressive driving seriously (including needless honking). For reference, their current Twitter has no traffic tips, but their banner photo shows an officer standing in a bike lane...Enforcement was understandably low at the height of COVID here, but traffic is back to its old rates and traffic safety metrics are grim in Massachusetts this year, so focusing enforcement on traffic again makes sense.

Thank you.

I really appreciate how well the city did here to fix the sidewalk and respect the tree.

In light of the imminent opening of the GLX at the end of our block, and in light of the need for social distancing for the foreseeable future, I don't think this sidewalk is wide enough, and there is nothing preventing the extension of this sidewalk into the street a little. There is the city line, across which no parking is allowed, a fire hydrant and then this wonderful tree. Could we please use these 10 meters to extend the sidewalk. It will help us to better prepare for the future and help protect the tree by offering it a wider, permeable base.

The current status quo: neighbors try to pass each other here, and need to step out into the street to pass. Passing (and speeding) drivers have been honking at my neighbors for taking this step to protect their safety. An extended sidewalk would also reduce the speeding on the street by narrowing the roadway.

This is Inman Square at Cambridge and Prospect. Two separate drivers were parked in the bike lane, however the forward driver was pulling away by the time I pulled out my camera.

I know the automated reply is going to say I should call the police non-emergency hotline. But can I really be calling the police every time I leave home? How are people on bicycles supposed to follow the rules that are expected of them if they are given an obstacle course?

The issues are systemic, and we need:

1) a consistent police response to the misbehaving drivers. The problem has been deadly at this intersection in the past, so it is not abstract. The increase of deliveries during COVID has increased the amount of temporary parking. However, delivery drivers are very frequently ignoring the empty parking spaces two or three car-lengths forward in the interest of a quick pick-up.

2) a temporary bicycle facility on the other side of the parking lane that allows delivery people to go in and out of traffic without crossing the bike lane. People on bicycles want their local business to survive COVID, and aren't asking the delivery drivers to disappear completely - it is the design of the street that is exacerbating the danger. Why wait for the new permanent design before making it safe?

Reminder: there is still no safe bike route to Central Square, which is our primary access point to regional public transport while we wait for the GLX.

The much anticipated Memorial Drive pedestrianization opened up thousands of acres of new parkland for Cambridge residents to enjoy this last weekend, amounting to the creation of a previously unimaginable public resource for our community. It would normally cost billions to acquire such beautiful river-side parkland, but we got it for free!

Cambridge/DCR has called this a pilot project that is subject to evaluation, but I'm afraid we are going to have the wool pulled over our eyes and lose this awesome new resource on a whim. I could imagine both realities: "It has been closed because not enough people are using it"/"It has been closed because too many people are using it." We have been told that the new space is under study, but I have been unable to find any information about metrics that will be used in the evaluation.

I would like to request that the city calculate essential health and environmental indicators that may be currently getting ignored. We will certainly see benefits in Disability-Adjusted Life Years, reduced noise levels, lower air pollution, for example, especially for the thousands to tens of thousands of people who live within ear-shot of Mem Drive. Perhaps residents along the water will have enjoyed their first week of uninterrupted sleep since moving in. Is it ethical to allow cars back on this now-public space? Do we really need 60+ MPH highways on both sides of the river (we all know how fast people actually travel on these roads)?

Please consider this a request for public information. Perhaps a website explaining the evaluation rubric?

As other posters have pointed out, the number of people driving is up this week, and so is the rule-breaking.

The driver pictured here, who was texting, was waiting in line for the Prospect Street light while it was red, and was obviously also blocking the crosswalk. As part of the same run to the store, I saw four incidents of drivers on Broadway who were not stopping for people in the crosswalks as they sped by.

Other times I've mentioned this same issue in my neighborhood on this platform, I've been directed to call the police. But the issue is systemic and should be an issue for City Hall. We are not on our way toward Vision Zero in the current climate.