Don't Improve Traffic Signals on Beacon Hill?

Beacon Hill Times
Neighborhood leaders reject city’s argument for new traffic signals on Charles St. by Karen Cord Taylor


City transportation officials have a plan to install new traffic equipment at four Charles Street intersections, saying the intersections will be safer, the lights will be easier to repair and the change will bring the neighborhood into compliance with federal regulations.

But neighborhood leaders say the metal boxes that would control the equipment are too large, too ugly, and inappropriate for the oldest historic district in the commonwealth.

They also question the need for new signals, since they say they’ve never seen evidence that there is a safety or maintenance problem with the traffic lights along Charles Street.

“In the absence of data that show this is a safety issue or that the [current] lights are deficient, our committee will oppose this proposal,” said Steve Young of Chestnut Street, the chair of the traffic and parking committee for the Beacon Hill Civic Association, at last week’s hearing before the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission.

The city’s proposal involves replacing the traffic lights at the intersections of Chestnut, Mount Vernon, Pinckney and Revere streets with larger and brighter lenses run by computerized equipment that connects to city hall where transportation department officials can monitor traffic and control the timing of the lights, said John DeBenedictis, the Boston Transportation Department’s director of engineering.
The city would have to dig trenches across three streets at each intersection and another trench to the box at each intersection. The work would begin about a month after the city receives the go-ahead from the commission, if they are successful in obtaining that permission.

The new signals would replace outdated red and yellow combination walk signals with the new international standard that includes a countdown so pedestrians know how much time they have left in which to cross. At this point Boston has only 10 traffic signals remaining out of 800 that employ the red and yellow pedestrian signal, said Jim Gillooly, BTD’s deputy commissioner.

Charles Street’s traffic signals, which date from 1931 and 1952, according to city reports, are prone to breaking down, said DeBenedictis, and parts are increasingly hard to find. In addition, he said, the city must conform to federal standards that the old signals can’t meet.

Beacon Hill leaders don’t have problems with the larger traffic heads with bigger and brighter lenses nor with the concept of replacing the old electro-mechanical systems with newer computerized equipment.

It’s the system’s control boxes—42 inches tall, by 28 inches wide by 15 inches deep sitting on a 4-inch concrete base, according to DeBenedictis—that the civic association objects to, and the large boxes presented a problem for the commissioners as well at last week’s hearing.

“If you plant one of these on Charles Street, it’s going to come as a big surprise to everyone,” said Commissioner Ken Taylor. “These are crude artifacts.”
He also said something like this would never be allowed in a city like Paris, where leaders protected the city’s look as an important part of attracting tourists. “We can do better than this,” he said.

The chair of the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission was unimpressed with the city’s argument that maintaining the old traffic signal system in a way different from the rest of the city was a hardship. “The city accommodates the historic district in other ways,” said Joel Pierce of Garden Street. “For example, they maintain gas lights here that don’t exist in other neighborhoods.”

Steve Young disputed that the new traffic signals would contribute to safety. He said the new signals could have the opposite effect on Charles Street.

“Someone at city hall who wants to run a few more cars down Charles Street could make it less safe for pedestrians,” he said. “The potential for decreasing safety is significant. Retooling the electro-mechanical systems or replacing them with stop signs may well produce safer intersections.”

Moreover, he said, the large size of the boxes, which would be located on sidewalks, could create a hazard for the elderly or handicapped people.
Peter Thomson, who lives on Bellingham Place, said this proposal was no different from one that included large control boxes that was rejected by the architecture commission and the civic association in the late 1980s. Gillooly said there was a difference, in that this proposal has technology that wasn’t available 20 years ago.
Neighborhood leaders wondered why the boxes were so large. “In all other phases of modern society everything is growing smaller, but it traffic it seems that everything is getting bigger,” said Young.

“There is an awful lot of cable in there,” Gillooly explained. “Reducing the box in size isn’t as easy as you might think.”

The matter has yet to be concluded. The commissioners asked BTD officials to create a cardboard mockup of the boxes that could be taken around to each proposed location at each intersection so they could see how much of an intrusion the boxes would actually make.

Even if the city can show that the current lights cause problems of safety or maintenance, neighborhood leaders urged the city to go back to the drawing board. “In a historic district, there are different criteria,” said Thomson. “This plan shouldn’t get off the ground.”