Centre Street redesign still a tangle
Traffic calming is the key issue
By Joe Heisler, Globe Correspondent, 11/2/2003

With four lanes of traffic and about 21,000 vehicles a day coursing up and down its winding commercial strip, Centre Street is a nightmare most days for both drivers and pedestrians. Stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic alternates with cars racing from one light to the next, all while changing lanes to avoid double-parked or left-turning vehicles.

Long-simmering neighborhood anger about the situation, coupled with growing dismay over the street's stagnant business environment, is threatening to derail the city's plans to reconstruct a key stretch of the artery in the heart of the commercial district.

City officials have been forced to postpone their plans for the $2.8 million project while they tackle the contentious issue of traffic-calming measures being demanded by a chorus of neighborhood groups.

Last year, officials rejected a proposal to change the roadway back to two lanes of traffic, as it was before 1978, contending it could result in traffic gridlock and the clogging of side roads.

But that was before Decelle's department store, a Centre Street retail anchor, suddenly closed its doors in June, heightening concerns about the health of the business district -- and before several powerful neighborhood organizations and politicians took up the cause, suggesting a new and more radical cure for what ails the street.

The city has completed the first phase of the project -- sidewalks, repaving, new street lights, traffic signals, and pedestrian markings on Centre from Mount Vernon to Spring Street near the Dedham line -- at a cost of more than $1 million.

Construction of the next phase -- Centre from Mount Vernon (the West Roxbury Post Office) to the Holy Name Rotary (Area E-5 Police Station) -- is scheduled to start next spring -- if the community can come to an agreement on design, according to Jay Walsh, a spokesman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

Walsh voiced optimism, but, nearly two years and more than a half-dozen community meetings into the planning process, he acknowledged that agreement has proved elusive.

Proponents of lane reduction, led by local activist Gwynne Morgan, say it will slow traffic and provide a safer, more attractive environment for pedestrian shoppers. ''We believe that the future prosperity of the business district, and of West Roxbury itself, is inextricably linked to restoring a sense of pedestrian and vehicular safety on Centre Street," Morgan said.

She and her supporters offered a glimpse of their vision at a recent meeting at the Temple Hillel B'Nai Torah, where more than 150 local residents and merchants turned out for a ''Community Conversation on the Design of Centre Street," organized by nearly a dozen local civic and neighborhood associations.

They heard Dorothea Hass, co-founder of WalkBoston, extol the virtues of lane reduction and the positive impact it has had on busy Harvard Street in Brookline and Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. They saw design sketches by noted traffic engineer Cranston ''Chan" Rogers showing the flow of traffic on Centre Street if it were redesigned to include three lanes -- two for through traffic and one for left turns -- and also wider sidewalks and more ''storage area" for parking, bicyclists, and deliveries.

Jim Hickey, a local resident and former Newton Department of Public Works commissioner, piqued audience interest with slides of elaborate traffic-calming measures the city has taken in other Boston neighborhoods.

''This is tough stuff," said state Senator Marian Walsh (D-West Roxbury), one of those in attendance. ''A lot of us are concerned about safety and the impact of traffic on the health of the business district. . . . This is the first of several discussions that we hope will help put West Roxbury back on top where it belongs."

City Transportation Commissioner Andrea D'Amato said the city has already incorporated numerous traffic-calming measures, including signal synchronization, into its design plan.

But she said her engineers have determined that lane reduction will not work because of the short distance between intersections and the unusually high number of curb cuts along Centre Street. The curb cuts, she said, would create dangerous turning situations for cars exiting and entering a two-lane roadway.

D'Amato said the community supported keeping Centre Street at four lanes during a similar meeting held in June. But she said Mayor Thomas M. Menino is ''adamant" about getting the project done and that she and her staff will continue working to reconcile disagreements. The city has scheduled a community meeting for Nov. 13 at 6:30 p.m. in the Area E-5 Police community room to go through the city's design plan ''block by block."

''It's the same in every neighborhood we go to -- there are a lot of requests for unique treatment," D'Amato added. ''We accommodate them the best we can, but we are also honest about what we can and cannot do."

City Councilor John Tobin said it is ''too late" to consider lane reduction because it won't jibe with work already completed in the project's first phase. He doesn't have illusions, though, that the disagreement will be ironed out anytime soon. ''This is West Roxbury," he said. ''Everything is political here."