The presentation, dated March 11, 2019, includes slides used to present the information necessary to understand the rationale for zoning changes, the location of the zoning areas under consideration and the charts, tables and maps that help describe the situation. The proposed zoning changes, especially articles 6, 7, 8, 11 and 16, only cover changes affecting about 7% of the Town, those parts of the Town that are currently zoned R4-R7 and the B zoning districts.
Related articles
(By Vince Baudoin and James Fleming)
Could Arlington be better using its curb space? Here are some ways the curb can be used to create green infrastructure, promote public safety and accessibility, support sustainable transportation, strengthen business districts, and enable new ‘car-light’ development.
Roughly six inches high and made of concrete or granite, the curb marks the edge of the roadway, channels runoff, protects the sidewalk, and gathers stray leaves. When not assigned any other use, the space in front of the curb it usually serves as free storage for personal automobiles.
Yet the humble curb is a limited resource that can serve the community in many more ways. Have you thought about how your town budgets its curb space? For that matter, has your town thought about how it budgets its curb space?
While Arlington mostly uses its curb space for parking, some areas have other curb uses designed to achieve a specific goal. Consider the streets you use often. Have you seen an unsolved problem, or a missed opportunity, that a different use of the curb could help solve?
Create green infrastructure
The Town has miles of paved roadway. When it rains or snows, water runs into storm drains, carrying salt, oil, and other pollutants with it. The storm drains dump these pollutants directly into long-degraded waterways such as the Mill Brook, Alewife Brook, and the Mystic River. The Public Works department struggles to keep grates clear and drains from overflowing.
One solution: Use the curb for more greenery! The curb can be extended to create a rain garden or tree planting strip. The rain garden helps slow runoff and filter the water before it enters the drain, while trees benefit from additional room for the roots to grow without damaging the sidewalk. A side benefit: narrowing the street encourages drivers to slow down, making neighborhoods safer.
Promote public safety and accessibility
Often, portions of the curb are set aside for public safety purposes. For example, a fire lane provides fire department access to key buildings, such as the high school, shown below. Fire hydrants also enjoy special curb status.
Other times, no-parking zones are established to enhance the free flow of traffic, such as here at Broadway Plaza:
Where pedestrian crosswalks are present, a curb extension is a key safety enhancement. By narrowing the roadway, the curb extension encourages drivers to slow down and look for pedestrians. For pedestrians, it reduces the distance they must cross and prevents cars from parking directly next to the crosswalk and blocking visibility.
Finally, accessible parking spaces can be created along the curb. Arlington has at least 50 designated permit-only on-street parking spaces that provide convenient parking for residents with mobility issues or other disabilities.
Support sustainable transportation
When the curb is mostly used for cars, it is easy to overlook how curbside facilities can enhance other forms of transportation.
In the space of one or two parked cars, this bikeshare station offers space for 11 bikes. However, because it is installed on the roadway, it must be removed every winter so that snow can be cleared. If the curb were extended, the bikeshare station could be used year-round. Another nice feature is bicycle parking: the space to park one car can be used to park six or more bicycles.
A bus stop allows buses to pull to the curb. In some cases, it is appropriate to extend the curb so the bus would stop in the traffic lane; otherwise, it may experience delays when it merges back into traffic.
A bus priority lane provides a dedicated right of way for buses, helping to improve on-time performance. To date, these lanes extend only a few hundred feet into Arlington along Mass Ave. They have proven beneficial in many other communities.
Bike lanes, particularly if they are separated from cars by a physical buffer, greatly enhance the safety and comfort of people traveling on two wheels.
But with a limited roadway width, adding bike lanes is difficult unless the community is flexible enough to consider consolidating curb parking on one side of the street, or moving it to side streets entirely.
Finally, the Town could expand the use of on-street spaces for electric vehicle charging stations, such as this one on Park Ave:
Strengthen business districts
Nowhere is the curb more valuable than in business districts. Businesses thrive when their customers have a convenient way to reach them. Metered parking encourages people to park, do their business, and move along so another patron can take that space. Revenue from parking meters can be spent to improve the business district–for example, by planting flowers and trees.
Metered parking is not the only valuable use of curb space in a business district. Outdoor dining is a way the Town can directly support its restaurants by enabling them to serve additional customers. Here is one example in Arlington Center:
And in Arlington Heights:
Other valuable curb uses in business districts include taxi stands and loading zones. Loading zones in particular are crucial to businesses’ success and help prevent the street from being clogged by early-morning delivery trucks, late-night food-delivery vehicles, and everything in between.
Enable new ‘car-light’ development
With high housing costs and a relatively small commercial tax base, Arlington could benefit from some kinds of development. However, land is valuable and lots are small, so if new buildings are required to have large parking lots, it is very difficult to build new homes and businesses. Plus, large parking lots bring more cars and more traffic. But better curb management can help resolve this dilemma, supporting car-light development that is more sustainable and affordable.
For example, on-street permit parking can enable nearby development with few or no off-street parking spaces. New housing or businesses are a better use of land than parking and will generate more property tax revenue. When parking permits are priced appropriately, they are available to residents who need them but discourage households from adding extra cars they do not need.
Take these hillside houses: access to on-street parking made it possible to build on a steep hillside, where it would have been too expensive and difficult to blast to create off-street parking.
Conclusion
Ask your town leaders if they have a curb management strategy. Is the Town using its limited curb space in support of goals such as green infrastructure, public safety and accessibility, public transportation, local business, and car-light development?
WE HAVE WINNERS!
MIT Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning
Jay Maddox maddoxja@mit.edu; Shannon Hasenfratz shasenfr@mit.edu; Daniel Pratama danielcp@mit.edu
Title: EAST ARLINGTON COMPLETE NEIGHBORHOOD
Arlington High School CADD Program
Petru Sofio psofio2024@spyponders.com; Talia Askenazi taskenazi2025@spyponders.com
Title: ENVISION BROADWAY
Winslow Architects
John Winslow john@winslowarchitects.com; Phil Reville philip@winslowarchitects.com; Dolapo Beckley dolapo@winslowarchitects.com
Title: REDEFINING THE BROADWAY CORRIDOR: A 2040+ VISION
Contest Personnel
- Judges: Adria Arch, artist; Caroline Murray, construction project manager; Rachel Zsembery, architect
- Organizer: Barbara Thornton
- Host: Lenard Diggins, Chair, Arlington Select Board
- Sponsor: Civic Engagement Group, Envision Arlington, Town of Arlington MA
- Producer: ACMI
Special thanks
- ACMI production team: Katie Chang, James Milan, Jeff Munro, Jason Audette, Anim Osmani, Jared Sweet, Michael Armanious
- Civic Engagement Group (CEG): Greg Christiana, Len Diggins
- Jenny Raitt- Arlington DHCD Director, for laying the groundwork with the 2019 Broadway Corridor Study
- Jeffrey Levine, MIT DUSP faculty, led the original 2019 Broadway Corridor study team
- Kambiz Vatan & Cinzia Mangano, AHS CADD faculty and community volunteer
- Jane Howard, whose volunteer efforts over many years made possible Vision 2020 and Envision Arlington, leading to CEG and thus making this project possible by giving our town of Arlington the infrastructure, the “DNA”, to make this kind of civic engagement happen.
Background
The Civic Engagement Group (CEG), part of the Town of Arlington’s Envision Arlington network of organizations, is sponsoring the Broadway Corridor Design Competition. Architects, planners, designers and artists from around the region are encouraged to register by April 8, 2022.
This as an opportunity for designers and architects in the region to have some fun exercising real creativity to leapfrog into the post pandemic future and create a 2040+ VISION of what the built environment of a specific neighborhood (our Broadway Corridor area) might look like.
Although the cash prize is small, the pay off will be bragging rights, recognition and a possible opportunity to help shape the upcoming Arlington master plan revision process.
The information: flyer
The plan: Design Competition launch plan
The background data: 2019 Broadway Corridor Study
Register to enter: Sign up information
Broadway St. is a major bus route and transit corridor through Arlington to Cambridge. It is close enough to the Alewife MBTA Station to possibly be, at least partially, included in the planning for Arlington’s “transit area” status under the state Dept. of Housing and Community Development’s new guidelines.
from Karen Kelleher, Reporter
Interested in new policy developments on housing production in the Greater Boston area? The latest research from Mass Housing Partnership (MHP) is of interest. They just released (Dec. 18, 2019) in interactive map showing relative housing density around every mass transit and commuter rail station in the system, concluding that the region could add 235,000 units if every community allowed density as of right in the area around transit.
CHAPA has legislation pending that would require municipalities served by transit to allow higher density as of right within a certain distance from transit stations. You’ll see that the density around Alewife is not too bad in the context of the entire system.
This is mostly because of very high density in Cambridge near Alewife, but the density of two and three families in East Arlington shows better housing density than the sea of single family zoning around many commuter rail stops.
You can check it out here:https://www.mhp.net/news/2019/todex-research-brief
In a 2019 study, MAPC found that:
- Three out of ten spaces sit empty during peak demand
- The key factors that drive parking demand are parking supply, transit accessibility and the percentage of deed-restricted units
This study raises important questions about the wisdom of continuing to commit large sections of the land area of our municipalities to be on reserve for parking cars. Such extra space could be used to benefit the open space, environmental sustainability and the need for more housing.