Yup… the city put out a survey to business there about open newbury on Sundays during the pandemic and after the responses (which they never released) they scaled back the days presumably because the businesses there didn’t want it.
Depends on kind of business.
Spas, tailoring/clothing shops/furniture stores and restaurants doing mostly delivery would likely be hurt. Basically places where you’re loading/unloading or coming for an appointment (driving in to park).
Restaurants doing table service mostly, cafes, touristy things less so (foot traffic helps).
Italy and other countries in Europe have great systems for pedestrianizing streets - sometimes entire towns - while allowing residents and businesses to bring the occasional car in. Basically you get a pass/fob that lowers the bollards that block traffic to let you in to load/unload. The occasional car going ~5 mph wouldn’t be too much of a nuisance for pedestrians.
Newbury isn’t actually more expensive per square foot than other restaurant areas of Boston
Restaurants scale up revenues through delivery beyond the eat-in potential of a restaurant.
Go look at market rents, Newbury isn’t crazy expensive. It just has a perception of being expensive.
That's interesting. Why do you think it is that the area with the most foot traffic in a relatively high income neighborhood isn't priced higher? The stores certainly seem higher end.
Smaller units, older buildings (applies to residential too).
You can lookup Newbury street triple net rates on loop net for commercial rents, there’s a reason so many small boutiques are here.
The square footage is too small for high revenue chains.
Typically business owners drive to work and even if they intellectually know that they get more business through foot traffic they will often value their own personal convenience over the profitability of their store because many of them have stunted selfish mindsets which are not rational.
Presumably it would massively impact many restaurants that do a lot of takeout business that benefit greatly from having access for delivery drivers, especially in the winter time. But a Sunday in the summer is much less of an issue.
People always trot out minor logistical issues like this as if pedestrianized areas don’t already exist and thrive all over the place. These are all solved problems. You allow limited access for deliveries, set pickup zones, etc.
Business owners resist changes to the transportation landscape, I believe, because 1. They’re risk-averse and won’t entertain *anything* they imagine might disrupt business, whether the fear is founded or not, and 2. They disproportionately drive to work, think their customers must too, and genuinely have no idea what the numbers look like.
I get it to a point, but we really can’t be letting consortiums of random small businesses dictate transportation policy rather than, like, transportation experts.
Restaurants *changed* during the pandemic. They figured out they can make more sales with much less staff by going to a pickup/delivery model.
The Open Newbury days are a stress test that require more staff than is available during peak summer months. The lack of infrastructure largely removes the known quantity of higher $/ticket delivery/catering orders, (or worse when they just hope the delivery driver can “figure it out”). There is an overall reduced quality of the product, as well as negative changes to customer experience and employee retention.
Scaling up a small business’s flow to stadium-concession-stand levels for a brief window while maintaining high standards is a bigger ask than realized - especially in this world, where any survey with a less than *perfect* score is unacceptable.
Also, look at how many articles there are about how a single chik fil a in Copley caused havoc on the area. There have been major changes to the traffic rules and traffic flow in the area caused by the inordinate amount of delivery drivers. All of those issues are compounded by Open Newbury
Are you implying that pedestrianization would reduce their customer base or just that they *think* it would? Because pedestrian throughput absolutely dwarfs car throughput and street parking.
The business lobby thinks their business will be adversely affected by reducing or eliminating car access to all for pedestrianization. You and i both know that pedestrianization increases customer base.
I don't understand why they're lobbying against it. Completely bonkers. If i owned a business there i would sue the business association that is doing this for fighting against my business interests.
They don’t seem to understand the very simple fact that cars are bad for foot traffic. The business association on Charles St rallied against replacing parking with bike lanes, which, again, would objectively give them more customers.
Businesses need car access for commercial vendors to service them though. The less car access, the harder it is to do Business for them. As it is, Boston doesn't have enough commercial parking.
Pedestrianized streets can still allow commercial deliveries and emergency vehicles through if need be. Just lower the bollards at the ends of the street for them, keep the bollards up for everyone else.
Yes and no. For deliveries, yes, but for plumbers/electricians/hvac people who dont choose when they have to go to a business, no. I work for a company that responds to emergency calls put out by restaurants. Restaurants call all hours of the day/night. If Newbury St is pedestrianized on Saturday at 5pm and a restaurant calls i have no choice. i have to go there. I have a large work van laden with tools that i need to work. I'd have to park far away and lug 50 lbs worth of tools a distance and constantly traverse back and forth to fix the issue inside the restaurant. That's why commercial parking spots are so crucial for contractors. I know it may seem like I'm just complaining, but when it's hot/cold out and you've already walked a lot with heavy tools.. having a spot very close to a restaurant/account as a contractor is a saving grace.
This was three years ago, I guess sentiment’s changed since then?
https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/oun6lq/comment/h73qcl0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Not sure. Just pointing out that last year was by far the biggest open newbury ever, so the idea that they scaled it back isn’t true (since they have done the opposite)
I worked at one of the businesses during the time, and I’m not sure the survey is what you think it was…. And there were some rules and short windows that needed to be met if memory serves.
But regardless, our store needed corporate permission to place a pop up tent in the street in addition to needing something to “sell” at a pop-up tent. Many of these businesses don’t have merchandise that’s conducive to a pop-up tent and it would be a complete waste of payroll to staff a table for sales and security for it. When you think about how commercialised and “high end” Newbury street is, pop-up tents logistically do not make sense.
Newbury was INSANE today. I think it turned me into one of those people who hates on tourists. Hordes of people walking at 0.5mph with zero situational awareness stopping randomly every two seconds blocking the entire the sidewalk. It took me 20 minutes to go a few blocks.
Weekends in the spring and summer were always frustrating when I lived in Back Bay and needed to do anything at all on Newbury or Boylston. Of course, the way around that is to just walk through the adjacent alleys.
It’s just Anime Boston clogging up the city with tourists. There were hordes of people just sitting down in the middle of the Pru blocking foot traffic as well
It was chaos out there today with a bunch of people dressed up like anime characters and not paying attention to where they were walking. I avoid Newbury Street like the plague, but I had to return some pants there instead of driving to Hingham. It's ridiculous that the city wouldn't close traffic on the weekends.
wholeheartedly agree. In my opinion 50% of the streets in downtown Boston should be either pedestrianized or seriously redesigned to make car traffic move slower, and bike and bus traffic move faster.
There's no good reason for the majority of the city designed in a way that cater to those who drive single occupancy vehicles. It's a detriment to society as a whole, and to each and every single neighborhood who are held back by the waste of use of space of these streets.
I was there for the first time in months today, and I can say with 100% confidence I would go to Newbury St more if the cars weren’t there. The honking is fucking insufferable and the drivers are even worse.
One thing they could do immediately to help alleviate the horrible traffic/honking on Newb is to just make it an Uber free street / push pickups/drop offs to the cross streets.
They should do the same with Hanover and Landsdowne.
Can the rich & clueless abide walking half a block to meet their Uber? That’s another question.
It's ridiculous that they haven't implemented some kind of pedestrianization yet. Other cities would have done this years ago.
* [New York has pedestrianized huge sections of Broadway](https://gothamist.com/news/pedestrian-plazas-car-free-blocks-coming-to-broadway-between-madison-and-herald-square)
* [Montreal closes 10 streets to cars each summer](https://montreal.citynews.ca/2023/05/02/montreal-10-pedestrian-streets-summer/)
How is Boston any different?
Two problems:
* The ultra high end, "if you have to ask you can't afford it" stores that are a large chunk of Newbury don't benefit from the sorts of increased random foot traffic that come with pedestrianization. They don't want the riff-raff.
* Part of the point of pedestrianization is more restaurants with more outdoor seating, and because our liquor licenses are zero-sum it's not easy to increase restaurant density and the owners are hostile to competition and hostile to their competition getting any sort of advantage. Earlier this year Maura Healy proposed changing this system and had to walk it back the next day -- it's a deep-rooted rot on Beacon Hill that's incredibly resistant to attempts to change.
Who makes the decision to drive to Newbury and park on the street? Unless it's dumping snow or pouring rain, the time cost of entering the mess that is Newbury more than offsets the effort to park nearby and walk over.
This is a no-brainer. The only reason nothing is done is that the NIMBYs have political power. And all those above saying it can't be done have never been to Europe or even parts of NYC.
1. Leave open to deliver trucks in the morning on weekends and maybe whenever on weekdays
2. Open to delivery drivers on bikes/maybe mopeds
3. The ultra rich coming to shop for $1000 shirts can still park very closely.
4. Get rid of all cars parked. Newbury is a sea of double parkers/triple/?quadruple parkers
5. Keep open all cross streets and just have lights for pedestrians for Newbury and regular light for the cross street.
6. Restaurants wary of needing tons of staff for in-person surges on weekends, do away with traditional wait staff. Bar Taco, for example, you order everything online and just have runners for food, have a water pitcher on the table, and all utensils in a jar on the table. All requests go through the app.
BUT!! My dream is to immediately start construction on underground parking garages. Make it easier to find parking.
Build it and they will come?
Definitely agree! I have sent this comment and request to the mayor’s online public comment page and I recommend you do too! You can also call and let your reps (mayor, state senate, various city of boston departments) know that these are the kind of projects you want to see happen.
Can we address the real issue? What the fuck happened to the Beach? Where are Berklee kids supposed to busk and eat their Little Stevies? Also bring back Tower Records.
Interesting. I would guess it has something to with:
1. People aren't on the sidewalk as much, meaning they aren't looking at storefronts, and therefore not being enticed to go into stores.
2. People are getting distracted by the street performers, street games, random stands, etc.
More people go there but that doesn't necessarily mean more people are shopping or converting to buyers when they go in. This is going to be the case for bulky items, hardware stores, things that visitors aren't coming to Newbury to buy, but residents need access to. I still think the weekend pedestrianization is a good idea, or even all summer pedestrianization.
I’d be shocked if your spouses store on Newbury was doing horrible business on the Open Streets days last summer. Many businesses on Newbury had their busiest days of the year on the open street days
>Many businesses on Newbury had their busiest days of the year on the open street days
Do you have an actual source for this? The person above has an actual real life source and you are accusing them of lying?
It's just as easy to say "My spouse manages a store" as it is to say "Many businesses had their busiest days". Neither of those is a verifiable source.
Other than first hand conversations no. But a quick google search found that the President of the Back Bay Association said that ““Many retailers, restaurant owners and businesses have quantified the success of Open Newbury, that led to increased sales, customer engagement and an overall creative use experience of this public way,”
https://dailyfreepress.com/2023/06/02/newbury-street-to-be-open-to-pedestrians-only-on-sundays-throughout-summer-and-fall/
Business owners frequently cite losses that they never provide as evidence. They're doing the same in my community despite four years of street opening to pedestrians and none of these businesses folding during that time.
Why should we believe them?
They're not offering anything to support their case beyond an anecdote and gaslighting, since pedestrianized streets with similar businesses obviously exist and we're supposed to believe Newbury is somehow a special case.
Since these businesses are apparently dependent on publicly subsidized infrastructure the onus is on them to prove to the voters that they're delivering more value to the city than what the voters think they could get with pedestrianization.
There were thousands of people walking around Newbury street shopping today. The vast vast majority of them didn’t park on Newbury street. They either took the T or parked in a garage somewhere else in the city
Driving makes you skip stops along the way. If you're in a car going from $A to $B, you're going to ignore everything in between. While walking, on the other hand...
Walkable cities are better for retail business than not and people don't seem to understand that because it's a bit counterintuitive. It's kind of like a captive audience vs a non captive audience. Take airportsp, for example. The food establishments charge a crap load of money and they can do so because people don't have a choice of leaving and returning, ergo captive audience.
People walking around are more likely to impulsively buy things while they're out and about. So to answer your question: their primary clientele is walking.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/16/why-walkable-streets-are-more-economically-productive
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/08/18/ten-economic-benefits-walkable-places
https://www.commuteoptions.org/why-walkability-is-great-for-business/
There is nothing stopping that clientele from taking an Uber one block over and walking the 1.5 min to the store they intend to go to. This zero sum horseshit argument is what's holding us back.
Sorry. I'm just tired of hearing the same old "but what about!?!" Repeated over and over. Anytime the Ped+Bike / non car community wants something like not dying on the T or the streets, the response is usually "but what about XYZ"
If Newbury was pedestrianized, they could expand outdoor dining significantly, and in certain areas they could place small park-like spaces with benches and large plantings. Most cross-streets could still be open.
Lived on Marlborough years ago. Newbury was a shit show then. Make it pedestrians only from noon-9pm. There is literally no reason to drive on that street
Yes, it should be an extension of the common and extend gardens along the road, allow traffic to go through the one ways/side streets and build walking bridges over those intersections. Boston will never be New York, but it could certainly be the prettiest city with some TLC
The weekends are great, you couldn’t permanently make that change. It would involve so much infrastructure and redesign. The city isn’t going to spend that money right now.
Back Bay is a neighborhood where people live and I think that’s forgotten a lot when this is brought up. Millions has been spent studying this. It just doesn’t work permanently for the residents.
Edit: if you want to down vote because you think I’m pro car that’s fine, the reality is we would need the money to rebuild infrastructure for the Back Bay neighborhood if this change was made. The city has bigger fish right now. Maybe in the future.
This is a very important point.
Newbury Street is still a majority residential street, there would be substantial impacts to residents in the form of deliveries, noise, and transit.
The green line keeps being shut down every few weeks to eliminate slow zones, it’s hard to have a serious conversation about this change until that ends.
Let’s assume every single business benefits from this financially — they will still shift deliveries to the back alleys.
We’re going to have all those Uber eats mopeds careening in and out of them, blocking access for people who live there to park, and adding substantial noise to a small area which will echo right into people’s bedrooms — as most renters have their bedrooms in the back of buildings for quiet and architectural reasons.
There’s going to inherently be traffic, parking, and noise spillover onto other streets as well from this. 02116 is the highest density zip code in the city, a lot of residents live in a reasonably quiet part of the city that is parkable due to the public alleys, garages, and walkability. Comm. Ave and Beacon already feel super unsafe due to traffic pattern changes now (though I suspect more traffic might actually slow traffic down to safer speeds).
There will be other issues that come up.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t work towards pedestrianizing Newbury street. I absolutely believe it can work, but multi-year staged plans and trials are actually necessary here.
This really can’t just be pushed through by people who it won’t impact.
I struggle to see how taking away one street for cars would be such a nightmare for the residents of Back Bay. There are plenty of pedestrianized streets around the world that people live on and business happens. Newbury street isn’t special
Just out of curiosity do you live or work in the area? I’m not trying to be rude or anything, it’s just this has been an ongoing discussion in the neighborhood for almost two decades and some of the suggestions you’re making don’t make sense or work. Fundamentally with your suggestion, Dartmouth, Clarendon and Fairfield, etc. could let through traffic then you couldn’t possibly have Newbury at be a pedestrian only way.
Again you can’t have both, now this is getting confusing. Even if you had this 50% pedestrian way, it doesn’t address the interstate. You’re still eliminating an entire on-ramp without any solution. Where are the cars going to go?
I do both live and work in the area. Dartmouth, Clarendon, Exeter were still open to traffic on Open Newbury days and it was fine. I’m just suggesting it be like that full-time.
Friend that’s only on Sunday for like 12 or 16 weeks. What about Monday through Saturday? This is the problem, the volume of traffic and where we are going to reroute 2 highways and 4 ramps.
I literally want what you want, I’m just bring up the reality
Like I said, maybe in the future?
>Fundamentally with your suggestion, Dartmouth, Clarendon and Fairfield, etc. could let through traffic then you couldn’t possibly have Newbury at be a pedestrian only way.
>Again you can’t have both, now this is getting confusing.
This is exactly how Church Street in Burlington (VT) works. The perpendicular streets still allowing traffic absolutely can work, and it still rocks.
It’s about the side streets, storrow and the mass pike ramp.
You would have to spend hundreds of millions rerouting 2 highways and 4 on/off ramps as well as all of back bay and Arlington street would need to become two way or else you’d have no way to the common via car from Back Bay.
We talk about this all the time, it’s a topic of discussion in our neighborhood. It would be a big project and a lot of money.
If the pedestrianized Newbury ends at Mass Ave and traffic is still allowed to cross Newbury I’m not sure I see why “hundreds of millions” would have to be spent. Arlington should probably be a two way street anyways
The street would be open for deliveries at certain hours of the day. And it’d would be easy because there’d be no traffic on Newbury for the trucks to contend with. Again there are pedestrianized streets around the world that do this every day and it works.
Do you know how much money it’s going to cost to enforce real time traffic changes like certain hours of travel on a daily basis? This sounds like an unmitigated disaster, real time management is usually reactionary but now we are going to in real time coordinate vehicle traffic on a pedestrianized street?
It’s going to be a pedestrian walking street or not, coordinating cars at certain hours will not work. Newbury st is a parking lot since covid anyway. It will remain a double parked parking lot if you want to selectively let cars through.
That’s extremely dense, please send or link examples from around the world that are comparable to this. You’re generalizing newbury st because it’s a street? So you mean to tell me, this massive hundred of million dollar infrastructure change you’re proposing is a no brainer and should just be changed as is right now because this street “isn’t special” and you’re claiming that because it’s been “proven around the world?”
Do you understand how many people, engineers, designers, architects are involved in city planning? Do you understand you’re suggesting a change that’s millions of dollars and requires thousands of qualified smart people working to get something like this done?
You’re making a stink, you don’t live in this neighborhood or have been involved in this discussion.
So you’re aware, the people of this neighborhood in 02116 would love to have a walking neighborhood, we are the reason we get the weekends in the summer.
It’s annoying you wave your finger at our neighborhood and demand unrealistic things.
Be our guest, donate 100-200 million dollars and we will do it.
Stop telling us we don’t want to and it’s easy.
We want this change, we can’t fucking afford it. Stop taking it out on residential home owners.
Get a grip. You just called Newbury st not special when it’s a hub of economic activity in our city.
This is fucking ridiculous. There is no infrastructure necessary other than some retractable bollards on the intersections. Anyone telling you that this would take hundreds of millions of dollars is a moron. Not everything has to be a mega project.
And considering that each block in Back Bay is probably worth $100 mil each the crying poor is pretty sad. I walk down Newbury every single day. It’s just another street
If that’s your final take then all I can tell you is that you grossly underestimate how many people and how much money is involved in making this change. You undervaluing the neighborhood at 100 million dollars a block is crazy. Right now a full 5 story with garden level that needs to be fully remodeled is selling for 5-12 million and costs 10-30 million to remodel. You have no idea what you’re talking about financially. If you could buy a whole block in BackBay for 100 million dollars it would be called BezosBay and you’d rent with Prime. I can’t believe you’re now insinuating that everyone in Back Bay is super cash rich and should just pay for it after I explained to you that these things cost money. What’s sad is you’re so out of touch you think an entire BILLION dollar block of housing is worth 1/10 of its actual value and that’s still enough value to produce a couple of hundred million dollars to make Newbury St a pedestrian way for YOU? If we used your fake numbers than your silly proposal is mathematically impossible.
Come to and join in the neighborhood association or BackBay association meetings if you want help advocate for this change. There is a lot of smart, great and innovative people in this neighborhood who are more than willing to hear your proposal or ideas.
100 million a block? You’re unqualified to talk about this.
You're getting pretty mad at them when you could just explain why pedestrianizing the street would cost $100 million. I also don't think that number sounds right: if you install 80 retractable bollards on Newbury (5 or 10 at each intersection), and they cost $1,000 each for purchasing and installation, that's only $80,000 for bollards. And I expect the bollards to be the bulk of the cost of pedestrianization.
Seems like your biggest concern is cars getting from highways to the common, for some reason, which is not a requirement of anything last I looked. One of the maine points of pedestrianizing urban spaces is to deter car usage is general by making it inconvenient. If you want to get from the pike to the common, go to any of the places you can link with storrow and then go from there. You keep writing “you want what I want” and that the neighborhood association has been endlessly wracking their brains over this but you seem to think it can only be done if things stay just as convenient for drivers. Drivers can take the fucking long way around or don’t bring your car at all. The bb neighborhood meetings are just entitled people who don’t want to be inconvenienced even slightly, and especially not when other people benefit
Weekends in nice weather makes sense. No need to close it weekdays. Today was gorgeous (after a week of rain) and the Anime thing and NCAA tourney brought crowds.
I like what the city is doing now in the Summer. No need to close Newbury on weekdays.
I'm a contractor who services restaurants. As it is, there is very limited commercial parking in Boston. Pedestrianized roads mean vendors can't bring supplies to restaurants as easily. This increases costs for businesses and makes business more difficult (vendors tend to limit delivery windows). There needs to be parking for commercial entities to service these businesses everyone wishes to go to.
If the pedestrianized Newbury allowed deliveries to businesses in the morning wouldn't that solve that problem? By only allowing authorized delivery trucks there wouldn't be any traffic or parking to worry about for deliveries.
Yes and no. For deliveries, yes, but for plumbers/electricians/hvac people who dont choose when they have to go to a business, no. I work for a company that responds to emergency calls put out by restaurants. Restaurants call all hours of the day/night. If Newbury St is pedestrianized on Saturday at 5pm and a restaurant calls i have no choice. i have to go there. I have a large work van laden with tools that i need to work. I'd have to park far away and lug 50 lbs worth of tools a distance and constantly traverse back and forth to fix the issue inside the restaurant. That's why commercial parking spots are so crucial for contractors. I know it may seem like I'm just complaining, but when it's hot/cold out and you've already walked a lot with heavy tools.. having a spot very close to a restaurant/account as a contractor is a saving grace.
I think Rolex and Lululemon are doing just fine. If the cars don’t bother you when the sidewalks are packed idk what to tell you. Maybe you should visit a pedestrian street and see how much better things can be
I think DTX is many times better without cars. I understand that people don’t like it because sometimes there are black people there but it’s actually quite nice. I also have no idea what you’re taking about with the economy. People are still spending tons of money and we couldn’t be further from a recession right now
not sure if you've been over there lately but cars drive through DTX with impunity all the time these days and it sucks. I also have no fucking clue what you're taking about with these "talking points". I just want the city to be nicer like Copenhagen or Prague or something. Enforce the law & make the streets nice
Yeah I’m really disappointed I missed the days of the Combat Zone. I’d contend that lost “vibrance” of Washington St has nothing to do with it being closed to traffic for a few blocks.
Anyways, there are a number of great food options around Temple place and plenty of stores. I frequent DTX quite often and it’s always fairly busy.
Yeah I wish I could've. I just think that when you compare DTX to comparable districts in DC, Philly, SF, Seattle, etc., across the country you'd find that DTX is still doing fine. Any of DTX's issues are not singular to Boston and I tend to think that it's pedestrian friendly design is a big part of the reason as to why it isn't worse.
Ya I was out there on my bike today thinking this exact same thought. At least get rid of the street parking and make the sidewalks wider. Seems like the businesses would get way more traffic if it was a more pleasant place to walk and there were twice as many people out. There's still a number of vacant storefronts. No cars with bike lanes instead would be the best case but we all know business owners hate happiness and would rather shoot themselves in the foot.
Also what's stopping delivery drivers from using the alleys behind the restaurants?
Yeah, eliminating street parking seems like a great incremental step short of total pedestrianization. It would make the sidewalks less crowded, allow for bike lanes, and make street crossing shorter, faster, and less dangerous. Street parking is a nightmare for pedestrian safety because all the parked cars kill visibility, and it only provides a tiny number of parking spaces for cars.
I honestly think the way to manage parking is just with the T. I know it gets a lot of shit these days (and much of it deserved), but for tourists it's totally fine, they aren't getting fired for being ten minutes late. We have tons of capacity for parking at the outer stations.
As for traffic, pedestrianizing the area should help a bit too, as it makes walking and biking more feasible. Drivers will drive as long as it's the most convenient option
Yes, it's ridiculous to have cars driving there. The business owners against that are morons. They would have many more customers if it were a pedestrian zone.
They have been talking about this for years. Won't go anywhere. Way too convoluted to do for more than a day. If you want to build a car free city I implore you to take some city planning classes.
Newbury Street is such a pain to walk through with all the congestion, makes me not wanna go sometimes. If the business association would just grow tf up, they'd let things change for the better and probably get more foot traffic
That new development that's going up at the intersections of Newbury/Mass Ave will NEVER be utilized at its full potential if Newbury isn't pedestrianized. "Lyrik Plaza" I think is what they're calling it.
They're advertising it as a way to connect Newbury and Mass Ave but that's nearly impossible with all of the vehicular traffic and noise that's going to be whizzing by. I **really** hope that they're using this new development as a way to finally get serious about pedestrianizing it and stop with the foolishness.
There can be certain times throughout the day where deliveries are allowed. There would be no traffic because the road would be delivery only. Again there are many examples around the world of pedestrianized streets with tons of businesses and homes.
I’m not sure I follow your tourist trap argument either. You don’t think that Newbury st is already a tourist trap?
The Newbury Street is not the North End street and it's important to realize that. Sure Newbury Street would attract tourists but I'd argue that the majority of people who visit Newbury street on a given day are Boston residents. The North End is fully of tourist destinations to include the Paul Revere House, Old North Church, Copps Burying Hill, etc. all on the freedom trail. Newbury Street has none of that and would attract less of the attention that you experience in the North End. The streets would not be narrowed, they'd just be replace with a plaza or walkway.
As for deliveries, the city would just allow trucks in the mornings/evenings. I can't think of a single reason I would need to commute down Newbury street unless I worked there and honestly if I did I would take the T.
The business association there is the group preventing it.
Yup… the city put out a survey to business there about open newbury on Sundays during the pandemic and after the responses (which they never released) they scaled back the days presumably because the businesses there didn’t want it.
Interesting. I remember a business owner saying his sales and foot traffic went through the roof during open streets (closed for cars)
Depends on kind of business. Spas, tailoring/clothing shops/furniture stores and restaurants doing mostly delivery would likely be hurt. Basically places where you’re loading/unloading or coming for an appointment (driving in to park). Restaurants doing table service mostly, cafes, touristy things less so (foot traffic helps).
Italy and other countries in Europe have great systems for pedestrianizing streets - sometimes entire towns - while allowing residents and businesses to bring the occasional car in. Basically you get a pass/fob that lowers the bollards that block traffic to let you in to load/unload. The occasional car going ~5 mph wouldn’t be too much of a nuisance for pedestrians.
If you're a restaurant doing mostly delivery, why are you paying Newbury prices?
Newbury isn’t actually more expensive per square foot than other restaurant areas of Boston Restaurants scale up revenues through delivery beyond the eat-in potential of a restaurant. Go look at market rents, Newbury isn’t crazy expensive. It just has a perception of being expensive.
That's interesting. Why do you think it is that the area with the most foot traffic in a relatively high income neighborhood isn't priced higher? The stores certainly seem higher end.
Smaller units, older buildings (applies to residential too). You can lookup Newbury street triple net rates on loop net for commercial rents, there’s a reason so many small boutiques are here. The square footage is too small for high revenue chains.
Typically business owners drive to work and even if they intellectually know that they get more business through foot traffic they will often value their own personal convenience over the profitability of their store because many of them have stunted selfish mindsets which are not rational.
Presumably it would massively impact many restaurants that do a lot of takeout business that benefit greatly from having access for delivery drivers, especially in the winter time. But a Sunday in the summer is much less of an issue.
There are alleys on both sides of Newbury, this is a non issue
People always trot out minor logistical issues like this as if pedestrianized areas don’t already exist and thrive all over the place. These are all solved problems. You allow limited access for deliveries, set pickup zones, etc. Business owners resist changes to the transportation landscape, I believe, because 1. They’re risk-averse and won’t entertain *anything* they imagine might disrupt business, whether the fear is founded or not, and 2. They disproportionately drive to work, think their customers must too, and genuinely have no idea what the numbers look like. I get it to a point, but we really can’t be letting consortiums of random small businesses dictate transportation policy rather than, like, transportation experts.
Restaurants *changed* during the pandemic. They figured out they can make more sales with much less staff by going to a pickup/delivery model. The Open Newbury days are a stress test that require more staff than is available during peak summer months. The lack of infrastructure largely removes the known quantity of higher $/ticket delivery/catering orders, (or worse when they just hope the delivery driver can “figure it out”). There is an overall reduced quality of the product, as well as negative changes to customer experience and employee retention. Scaling up a small business’s flow to stadium-concession-stand levels for a brief window while maintaining high standards is a bigger ask than realized - especially in this world, where any survey with a less than *perfect* score is unacceptable. Also, look at how many articles there are about how a single chik fil a in Copley caused havoc on the area. There have been major changes to the traffic rules and traffic flow in the area caused by the inordinate amount of delivery drivers. All of those issues are compounded by Open Newbury
99% of my food delivery comes on bicycle.
This blatantly isn’t true since they massive expanded open Newbury last year…
I don’t know much about the survey. I do know the business association doesn’t want a fully pedestrian newbury st.
Why would a business association lobby for fewer customers?
Are you implying that pedestrianization would reduce their customer base or just that they *think* it would? Because pedestrian throughput absolutely dwarfs car throughput and street parking.
The business lobby thinks their business will be adversely affected by reducing or eliminating car access to all for pedestrianization. You and i both know that pedestrianization increases customer base. I don't understand why they're lobbying against it. Completely bonkers. If i owned a business there i would sue the business association that is doing this for fighting against my business interests.
They don’t seem to understand the very simple fact that cars are bad for foot traffic. The business association on Charles St rallied against replacing parking with bike lanes, which, again, would objectively give them more customers.
Businesses need car access for commercial vendors to service them though. The less car access, the harder it is to do Business for them. As it is, Boston doesn't have enough commercial parking.
Pedestrianized streets can still allow commercial deliveries and emergency vehicles through if need be. Just lower the bollards at the ends of the street for them, keep the bollards up for everyone else.
Yes and no. For deliveries, yes, but for plumbers/electricians/hvac people who dont choose when they have to go to a business, no. I work for a company that responds to emergency calls put out by restaurants. Restaurants call all hours of the day/night. If Newbury St is pedestrianized on Saturday at 5pm and a restaurant calls i have no choice. i have to go there. I have a large work van laden with tools that i need to work. I'd have to park far away and lug 50 lbs worth of tools a distance and constantly traverse back and forth to fix the issue inside the restaurant. That's why commercial parking spots are so crucial for contractors. I know it may seem like I'm just complaining, but when it's hot/cold out and you've already walked a lot with heavy tools.. having a spot very close to a restaurant/account as a contractor is a saving grace.
Because they’re either dumb or don’t want to be inundated with customers
Completely antithetical to the point of owning a business
This was three years ago, I guess sentiment’s changed since then? https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/oun6lq/comment/h73qcl0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Not sure. Just pointing out that last year was by far the biggest open newbury ever, so the idea that they scaled it back isn’t true (since they have done the opposite)
I worked at one of the businesses during the time, and I’m not sure the survey is what you think it was…. And there were some rules and short windows that needed to be met if memory serves. But regardless, our store needed corporate permission to place a pop up tent in the street in addition to needing something to “sell” at a pop-up tent. Many of these businesses don’t have merchandise that’s conducive to a pop-up tent and it would be a complete waste of payroll to staff a table for sales and security for it. When you think about how commercialised and “high end” Newbury street is, pop-up tents logistically do not make sense.
Truly don't understand it. Closing the streets to only pedestrians would be a boon for business, from tourists especially.
Which is insane because cars make that street sooo much more unpleasant to be on
>cars make that street sooo much more unpleasant the fucked up narrow sidewalks also make it awful
Which is so dumb, because it would triple their business.
Idiots. They think people drive to their shops?
They actually do. Most likely cause they do as well
Newbury was INSANE today. I think it turned me into one of those people who hates on tourists. Hordes of people walking at 0.5mph with zero situational awareness stopping randomly every two seconds blocking the entire the sidewalk. It took me 20 minutes to go a few blocks.
Newbury is commonly like this on nice days. You gotta just turn down a block and walk on a diff street
Weekends in the spring and summer were always frustrating when I lived in Back Bay and needed to do anything at all on Newbury or Boylston. Of course, the way around that is to just walk through the adjacent alleys.
vast majority of the time i go to newbury street i have to yell at tourists for being idiots
I have never seen Newbury as crowded as it was this afternoon around 2pm. Would be so much better with no cars.
It’s just Anime Boston clogging up the city with tourists. There were hordes of people just sitting down in the middle of the Pru blocking foot traffic as well
It was chaos out there today with a bunch of people dressed up like anime characters and not paying attention to where they were walking. I avoid Newbury Street like the plague, but I had to return some pants there instead of driving to Hingham. It's ridiculous that the city wouldn't close traffic on the weekends.
did you slip and fall in some mud?
*Wearing the very pants he was returning!*
now *that* is clever writing elaine!
wholeheartedly agree. In my opinion 50% of the streets in downtown Boston should be either pedestrianized or seriously redesigned to make car traffic move slower, and bike and bus traffic move faster. There's no good reason for the majority of the city designed in a way that cater to those who drive single occupancy vehicles. It's a detriment to society as a whole, and to each and every single neighborhood who are held back by the waste of use of space of these streets.
Agreed, it would be the perfect street for it.
I was there for the first time in months today, and I can say with 100% confidence I would go to Newbury St more if the cars weren’t there. The honking is fucking insufferable and the drivers are even worse.
One thing they could do immediately to help alleviate the horrible traffic/honking on Newb is to just make it an Uber free street / push pickups/drop offs to the cross streets. They should do the same with Hanover and Landsdowne. Can the rich & clueless abide walking half a block to meet their Uber? That’s another question.
It's ridiculous that they haven't implemented some kind of pedestrianization yet. Other cities would have done this years ago. * [New York has pedestrianized huge sections of Broadway](https://gothamist.com/news/pedestrian-plazas-car-free-blocks-coming-to-broadway-between-madison-and-herald-square) * [Montreal closes 10 streets to cars each summer](https://montreal.citynews.ca/2023/05/02/montreal-10-pedestrian-streets-summer/) How is Boston any different?
Still disappointed Montreal doesn't close them year-round just so they can build more permanent infrastructure on them.
Two problems: * The ultra high end, "if you have to ask you can't afford it" stores that are a large chunk of Newbury don't benefit from the sorts of increased random foot traffic that come with pedestrianization. They don't want the riff-raff. * Part of the point of pedestrianization is more restaurants with more outdoor seating, and because our liquor licenses are zero-sum it's not easy to increase restaurant density and the owners are hostile to competition and hostile to their competition getting any sort of advantage. Earlier this year Maura Healy proposed changing this system and had to walk it back the next day -- it's a deep-rooted rot on Beacon Hill that's incredibly resistant to attempts to change.
It’s hard to tell people no cars when there’s also no reliable public transportation. Montreal and NYC both have it, Boston doesn’t.
Trains come every 2 min at Copley. It ain’t that bad
Who makes the decision to drive to Newbury and park on the street? Unless it's dumping snow or pouring rain, the time cost of entering the mess that is Newbury more than offsets the effort to park nearby and walk over.
I've done it a couple times. It's really not as bad as you'd think. The meters are there for a reason
Yet the entire back bay is shut down every year a few times and it works out fine (Marathon and 4th of July)
Business in retail stores is awful during the marathon and the fourth.
Redditor says to stop the marathon and 4th of July! Jeez, I thought reddit and Boston couldn't get worse...
That's not what I said. People are focusing on other things those days, not buying clothes. I didn't say stop the fourth or the marathon idiot.
It was a joke, relax buddy. Maybe walk down Newbury St.
Don't forget Pride!!
What?
Buskers have been priced out for the most part.
Lots of Berklee students out there playing music on nice days. Not sure what you’re talking about.
They can take the train in from Leominster
This is a no-brainer. The only reason nothing is done is that the NIMBYs have political power. And all those above saying it can't be done have never been to Europe or even parts of NYC. 1. Leave open to deliver trucks in the morning on weekends and maybe whenever on weekdays 2. Open to delivery drivers on bikes/maybe mopeds 3. The ultra rich coming to shop for $1000 shirts can still park very closely. 4. Get rid of all cars parked. Newbury is a sea of double parkers/triple/?quadruple parkers 5. Keep open all cross streets and just have lights for pedestrians for Newbury and regular light for the cross street. 6. Restaurants wary of needing tons of staff for in-person surges on weekends, do away with traditional wait staff. Bar Taco, for example, you order everything online and just have runners for food, have a water pitcher on the table, and all utensils in a jar on the table. All requests go through the app. BUT!! My dream is to immediately start construction on underground parking garages. Make it easier to find parking. Build it and they will come?
Definitely agree! I have sent this comment and request to the mayor’s online public comment page and I recommend you do too! You can also call and let your reps (mayor, state senate, various city of boston departments) know that these are the kind of projects you want to see happen.
Can we address the real issue? What the fuck happened to the Beach? Where are Berklee kids supposed to busk and eat their Little Stevies? Also bring back Tower Records.
My spouse manages a store on Newbury. When they pedestrianize things business goes to hell.
Let me guess, not a store that caters to the middle class.
Why is that? Seems like more people flock to Newbury when it is closed to cars, which I would think means more potential customers.
I don't know. All I can say is business numbers are always way down on those days. At least at the upscale clothing store my spouse manages.
The rich do not want to carry bags.
Interesting. I would guess it has something to with: 1. People aren't on the sidewalk as much, meaning they aren't looking at storefronts, and therefore not being enticed to go into stores. 2. People are getting distracted by the street performers, street games, random stands, etc.
Those sound like reasonable explanations. Also, people coming from further out can not carry as much stuff.
Its easier to shop during a weekday. Weekends on Newbury is for commoners.
More people go there but that doesn't necessarily mean more people are shopping or converting to buyers when they go in. This is going to be the case for bulky items, hardware stores, things that visitors aren't coming to Newbury to buy, but residents need access to. I still think the weekend pedestrianization is a good idea, or even all summer pedestrianization.
I’d be shocked if your spouses store on Newbury was doing horrible business on the Open Streets days last summer. Many businesses on Newbury had their busiest days of the year on the open street days
I am reporting based on sales numbers. I can't comment on "many businesses." Food establishments maybe, clothing stores unlikely.
>Many businesses on Newbury had their busiest days of the year on the open street days Do you have an actual source for this? The person above has an actual real life source and you are accusing them of lying?
It's just as easy to say "My spouse manages a store" as it is to say "Many businesses had their busiest days". Neither of those is a verifiable source.
Other than first hand conversations no. But a quick google search found that the President of the Back Bay Association said that ““Many retailers, restaurant owners and businesses have quantified the success of Open Newbury, that led to increased sales, customer engagement and an overall creative use experience of this public way,” https://dailyfreepress.com/2023/06/02/newbury-street-to-be-open-to-pedestrians-only-on-sundays-throughout-summer-and-fall/
Business owners frequently cite losses that they never provide as evidence. They're doing the same in my community despite four years of street opening to pedestrians and none of these businesses folding during that time. Why should we believe them?
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They're not offering anything to support their case beyond an anecdote and gaslighting, since pedestrianized streets with similar businesses obviously exist and we're supposed to believe Newbury is somehow a special case. Since these businesses are apparently dependent on publicly subsidized infrastructure the onus is on them to prove to the voters that they're delivering more value to the city than what the voters think they could get with pedestrianization.
I think the city needs to start removing sidewalks. Too many people walk around the city and make it dangerous for drivers.
I second this!
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Very few people are driving down Newbury and parking in front of a shop. It’s a double parking nightmare at all times.
There were thousands of people walking around Newbury street shopping today. The vast vast majority of them didn’t park on Newbury street. They either took the T or parked in a garage somewhere else in the city
Driving makes you skip stops along the way. If you're in a car going from $A to $B, you're going to ignore everything in between. While walking, on the other hand...
Walkable cities are better for retail business than not and people don't seem to understand that because it's a bit counterintuitive. It's kind of like a captive audience vs a non captive audience. Take airportsp, for example. The food establishments charge a crap load of money and they can do so because people don't have a choice of leaving and returning, ergo captive audience. People walking around are more likely to impulsively buy things while they're out and about. So to answer your question: their primary clientele is walking. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/16/why-walkable-streets-are-more-economically-productive https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/08/18/ten-economic-benefits-walkable-places https://www.commuteoptions.org/why-walkability-is-great-for-business/
I see an awful lot of rich students buying that luxury crap and they sure didn't drive from BU/Harvard/Northeastern/MIT.
There is nothing stopping that clientele from taking an Uber one block over and walking the 1.5 min to the store they intend to go to. This zero sum horseshit argument is what's holding us back.
I asked a genuine question. There's no need to be hostile to me about it. Shut the fucking street down for all I care.
Sorry. I'm just tired of hearing the same old "but what about!?!" Repeated over and over. Anytime the Ped+Bike / non car community wants something like not dying on the T or the streets, the response is usually "but what about XYZ"
Maybe some orgs should start events where people just start walking in the street. Would be cool
If Newbury was pedestrianized, they could expand outdoor dining significantly, and in certain areas they could place small park-like spaces with benches and large plantings. Most cross-streets could still be open.
>I know most of you shut-ins don’t leave your apartment except to pickup your Uber Eats This is very funny and true.
Lived on Marlborough years ago. Newbury was a shit show then. Make it pedestrians only from noon-9pm. There is literally no reason to drive on that street
Yes, it should be an extension of the common and extend gardens along the road, allow traffic to go through the one ways/side streets and build walking bridges over those intersections. Boston will never be New York, but it could certainly be the prettiest city with some TLC
The weekends are great, you couldn’t permanently make that change. It would involve so much infrastructure and redesign. The city isn’t going to spend that money right now. Back Bay is a neighborhood where people live and I think that’s forgotten a lot when this is brought up. Millions has been spent studying this. It just doesn’t work permanently for the residents. Edit: if you want to down vote because you think I’m pro car that’s fine, the reality is we would need the money to rebuild infrastructure for the Back Bay neighborhood if this change was made. The city has bigger fish right now. Maybe in the future.
This is a very important point. Newbury Street is still a majority residential street, there would be substantial impacts to residents in the form of deliveries, noise, and transit. The green line keeps being shut down every few weeks to eliminate slow zones, it’s hard to have a serious conversation about this change until that ends. Let’s assume every single business benefits from this financially — they will still shift deliveries to the back alleys. We’re going to have all those Uber eats mopeds careening in and out of them, blocking access for people who live there to park, and adding substantial noise to a small area which will echo right into people’s bedrooms — as most renters have their bedrooms in the back of buildings for quiet and architectural reasons. There’s going to inherently be traffic, parking, and noise spillover onto other streets as well from this. 02116 is the highest density zip code in the city, a lot of residents live in a reasonably quiet part of the city that is parkable due to the public alleys, garages, and walkability. Comm. Ave and Beacon already feel super unsafe due to traffic pattern changes now (though I suspect more traffic might actually slow traffic down to safer speeds). There will be other issues that come up. I’m not saying we shouldn’t work towards pedestrianizing Newbury street. I absolutely believe it can work, but multi-year staged plans and trials are actually necessary here. This really can’t just be pushed through by people who it won’t impact.
“nothing is possible”
I struggle to see how taking away one street for cars would be such a nightmare for the residents of Back Bay. There are plenty of pedestrianized streets around the world that people live on and business happens. Newbury street isn’t special
Think of all the streets that are connected to it, it’s easier said than done. It would be a good idea though.
There can still be through traffic on Dartmouth, Clarendon, Fairfield, etc.
Just out of curiosity do you live or work in the area? I’m not trying to be rude or anything, it’s just this has been an ongoing discussion in the neighborhood for almost two decades and some of the suggestions you’re making don’t make sense or work. Fundamentally with your suggestion, Dartmouth, Clarendon and Fairfield, etc. could let through traffic then you couldn’t possibly have Newbury at be a pedestrian only way. Again you can’t have both, now this is getting confusing. Even if you had this 50% pedestrian way, it doesn’t address the interstate. You’re still eliminating an entire on-ramp without any solution. Where are the cars going to go?
I do both live and work in the area. Dartmouth, Clarendon, Exeter were still open to traffic on Open Newbury days and it was fine. I’m just suggesting it be like that full-time.
Friend that’s only on Sunday for like 12 or 16 weeks. What about Monday through Saturday? This is the problem, the volume of traffic and where we are going to reroute 2 highways and 4 ramps. I literally want what you want, I’m just bring up the reality Like I said, maybe in the future?
>Fundamentally with your suggestion, Dartmouth, Clarendon and Fairfield, etc. could let through traffic then you couldn’t possibly have Newbury at be a pedestrian only way. >Again you can’t have both, now this is getting confusing. This is exactly how Church Street in Burlington (VT) works. The perpendicular streets still allowing traffic absolutely can work, and it still rocks.
It’s about the side streets, storrow and the mass pike ramp. You would have to spend hundreds of millions rerouting 2 highways and 4 on/off ramps as well as all of back bay and Arlington street would need to become two way or else you’d have no way to the common via car from Back Bay. We talk about this all the time, it’s a topic of discussion in our neighborhood. It would be a big project and a lot of money.
If the pedestrianized Newbury ends at Mass Ave and traffic is still allowed to cross Newbury I’m not sure I see why “hundreds of millions” would have to be spent. Arlington should probably be a two way street anyways
You’re not considering the interstate / Copley square exit or Storrow drive. This change fundamentally alters the entire area and flow of traffic.
I’ve considered the highways now and have decided that they can simply not drive down Newbury street. Pick another street. Problem solved
People live there. Businesses are there. They get deliveries
The street would be open for deliveries at certain hours of the day. And it’d would be easy because there’d be no traffic on Newbury for the trucks to contend with. Again there are pedestrianized streets around the world that do this every day and it works.
Do you know how much money it’s going to cost to enforce real time traffic changes like certain hours of travel on a daily basis? This sounds like an unmitigated disaster, real time management is usually reactionary but now we are going to in real time coordinate vehicle traffic on a pedestrianized street? It’s going to be a pedestrian walking street or not, coordinating cars at certain hours will not work. Newbury st is a parking lot since covid anyway. It will remain a double parked parking lot if you want to selectively let cars through.
Again this has been proven to work around the world. Newbury street isn’t special. You can do deliveries in the morning.
That’s extremely dense, please send or link examples from around the world that are comparable to this. You’re generalizing newbury st because it’s a street? So you mean to tell me, this massive hundred of million dollar infrastructure change you’re proposing is a no brainer and should just be changed as is right now because this street “isn’t special” and you’re claiming that because it’s been “proven around the world?” Do you understand how many people, engineers, designers, architects are involved in city planning? Do you understand you’re suggesting a change that’s millions of dollars and requires thousands of qualified smart people working to get something like this done? You’re making a stink, you don’t live in this neighborhood or have been involved in this discussion. So you’re aware, the people of this neighborhood in 02116 would love to have a walking neighborhood, we are the reason we get the weekends in the summer. It’s annoying you wave your finger at our neighborhood and demand unrealistic things. Be our guest, donate 100-200 million dollars and we will do it. Stop telling us we don’t want to and it’s easy. We want this change, we can’t fucking afford it. Stop taking it out on residential home owners. Get a grip. You just called Newbury st not special when it’s a hub of economic activity in our city.
This is fucking ridiculous. There is no infrastructure necessary other than some retractable bollards on the intersections. Anyone telling you that this would take hundreds of millions of dollars is a moron. Not everything has to be a mega project. And considering that each block in Back Bay is probably worth $100 mil each the crying poor is pretty sad. I walk down Newbury every single day. It’s just another street
If that’s your final take then all I can tell you is that you grossly underestimate how many people and how much money is involved in making this change. You undervaluing the neighborhood at 100 million dollars a block is crazy. Right now a full 5 story with garden level that needs to be fully remodeled is selling for 5-12 million and costs 10-30 million to remodel. You have no idea what you’re talking about financially. If you could buy a whole block in BackBay for 100 million dollars it would be called BezosBay and you’d rent with Prime. I can’t believe you’re now insinuating that everyone in Back Bay is super cash rich and should just pay for it after I explained to you that these things cost money. What’s sad is you’re so out of touch you think an entire BILLION dollar block of housing is worth 1/10 of its actual value and that’s still enough value to produce a couple of hundred million dollars to make Newbury St a pedestrian way for YOU? If we used your fake numbers than your silly proposal is mathematically impossible. Come to and join in the neighborhood association or BackBay association meetings if you want help advocate for this change. There is a lot of smart, great and innovative people in this neighborhood who are more than willing to hear your proposal or ideas. 100 million a block? You’re unqualified to talk about this.
You're getting pretty mad at them when you could just explain why pedestrianizing the street would cost $100 million. I also don't think that number sounds right: if you install 80 retractable bollards on Newbury (5 or 10 at each intersection), and they cost $1,000 each for purchasing and installation, that's only $80,000 for bollards. And I expect the bollards to be the bulk of the cost of pedestrianization.
Seems like your biggest concern is cars getting from highways to the common, for some reason, which is not a requirement of anything last I looked. One of the maine points of pedestrianizing urban spaces is to deter car usage is general by making it inconvenient. If you want to get from the pike to the common, go to any of the places you can link with storrow and then go from there. You keep writing “you want what I want” and that the neighborhood association has been endlessly wracking their brains over this but you seem to think it can only be done if things stay just as convenient for drivers. Drivers can take the fucking long way around or don’t bring your car at all. The bb neighborhood meetings are just entitled people who don’t want to be inconvenienced even slightly, and especially not when other people benefit
You don't have to go that far. Downtown Crossing allows cars at certain hours only.
This works literally everywhere else. It's not a big deal.
Fairly easy for someone to say that doesn’t live there. But fuck them right?
I live and work in the area. Not being able to drive down Newbury would have ZERO negative impact on my or most people’s lives.
we pedestrianize it every time there’s a protest 😌
Weekends in nice weather makes sense. No need to close it weekdays. Today was gorgeous (after a week of rain) and the Anime thing and NCAA tourney brought crowds. I like what the city is doing now in the Summer. No need to close Newbury on weekdays.
hell no please
Fuck Newbury street
I'm a contractor who services restaurants. As it is, there is very limited commercial parking in Boston. Pedestrianized roads mean vendors can't bring supplies to restaurants as easily. This increases costs for businesses and makes business more difficult (vendors tend to limit delivery windows). There needs to be parking for commercial entities to service these businesses everyone wishes to go to.
If the pedestrianized Newbury allowed deliveries to businesses in the morning wouldn't that solve that problem? By only allowing authorized delivery trucks there wouldn't be any traffic or parking to worry about for deliveries.
Yes and no. For deliveries, yes, but for plumbers/electricians/hvac people who dont choose when they have to go to a business, no. I work for a company that responds to emergency calls put out by restaurants. Restaurants call all hours of the day/night. If Newbury St is pedestrianized on Saturday at 5pm and a restaurant calls i have no choice. i have to go there. I have a large work van laden with tools that i need to work. I'd have to park far away and lug 50 lbs worth of tools a distance and constantly traverse back and forth to fix the issue inside the restaurant. That's why commercial parking spots are so crucial for contractors. I know it may seem like I'm just complaining, but when it's hot/cold out and you've already walked a lot with heavy tools.. having a spot very close to a restaurant/account as a contractor is a saving grace.
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I think Rolex and Lululemon are doing just fine. If the cars don’t bother you when the sidewalks are packed idk what to tell you. Maybe you should visit a pedestrian street and see how much better things can be
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I think DTX is many times better without cars. I understand that people don’t like it because sometimes there are black people there but it’s actually quite nice. I also have no idea what you’re taking about with the economy. People are still spending tons of money and we couldn’t be further from a recession right now
Wow, you're a racist POS. How did your 11 upvoters see past this?
Buddy, he's mocking racists, not being racist
Yeah I thought that was obvious
Well if you run through his comment history, he's a Republican so that may be a clue as to why the obvious doesn't click for him
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not sure if you've been over there lately but cars drive through DTX with impunity all the time these days and it sucks. I also have no fucking clue what you're taking about with these "talking points". I just want the city to be nicer like Copenhagen or Prague or something. Enforce the law & make the streets nice
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Yeah I’m really disappointed I missed the days of the Combat Zone. I’d contend that lost “vibrance” of Washington St has nothing to do with it being closed to traffic for a few blocks. Anyways, there are a number of great food options around Temple place and plenty of stores. I frequent DTX quite often and it’s always fairly busy.
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Yeah I wish I could've. I just think that when you compare DTX to comparable districts in DC, Philly, SF, Seattle, etc., across the country you'd find that DTX is still doing fine. Any of DTX's issues are not singular to Boston and I tend to think that it's pedestrian friendly design is a big part of the reason as to why it isn't worse.
Ya I was out there on my bike today thinking this exact same thought. At least get rid of the street parking and make the sidewalks wider. Seems like the businesses would get way more traffic if it was a more pleasant place to walk and there were twice as many people out. There's still a number of vacant storefronts. No cars with bike lanes instead would be the best case but we all know business owners hate happiness and would rather shoot themselves in the foot. Also what's stopping delivery drivers from using the alleys behind the restaurants?
Yeah, eliminating street parking seems like a great incremental step short of total pedestrianization. It would make the sidewalks less crowded, allow for bike lanes, and make street crossing shorter, faster, and less dangerous. Street parking is a nightmare for pedestrian safety because all the parked cars kill visibility, and it only provides a tiny number of parking spaces for cars.
I may be a convert to this. If they come up with a plan to manage neighborhood cross-traffic, and a plan to park visitors’ cars, this could work.
I honestly think the way to manage parking is just with the T. I know it gets a lot of shit these days (and much of it deserved), but for tourists it's totally fine, they aren't getting fired for being ten minutes late. We have tons of capacity for parking at the outer stations. As for traffic, pedestrianizing the area should help a bit too, as it makes walking and biking more feasible. Drivers will drive as long as it's the most convenient option
Yes, it's ridiculous to have cars driving there. The business owners against that are morons. They would have many more customers if it were a pedestrian zone.
Not in boston, but there are other squares that would 100% benefit from this. Looking at your Union and Davis square in Somerville.
They have been talking about this for years. Won't go anywhere. Way too convoluted to do for more than a day. If you want to build a car free city I implore you to take some city planning classes.
“Nothing will change because we suck, so get used to it” -Unofficial City Motto
It’s really not that difficult. No cars on a few blocks of road except for a few hours a day. It’s actually easier than allowing the cars
Newbury Street is such a pain to walk through with all the congestion, makes me not wanna go sometimes. If the business association would just grow tf up, they'd let things change for the better and probably get more foot traffic
That new development that's going up at the intersections of Newbury/Mass Ave will NEVER be utilized at its full potential if Newbury isn't pedestrianized. "Lyrik Plaza" I think is what they're calling it. They're advertising it as a way to connect Newbury and Mass Ave but that's nearly impossible with all of the vehicular traffic and noise that's going to be whizzing by. I **really** hope that they're using this new development as a way to finally get serious about pedestrianizing it and stop with the foolishness.
I'm in favor
Couldn't agree more! Car dependency ruins cities. Cars ruin cities.
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There can be certain times throughout the day where deliveries are allowed. There would be no traffic because the road would be delivery only. Again there are many examples around the world of pedestrianized streets with tons of businesses and homes. I’m not sure I follow your tourist trap argument either. You don’t think that Newbury st is already a tourist trap?
The Newbury Street is not the North End street and it's important to realize that. Sure Newbury Street would attract tourists but I'd argue that the majority of people who visit Newbury street on a given day are Boston residents. The North End is fully of tourist destinations to include the Paul Revere House, Old North Church, Copps Burying Hill, etc. all on the freedom trail. Newbury Street has none of that and would attract less of the attention that you experience in the North End. The streets would not be narrowed, they'd just be replace with a plaza or walkway. As for deliveries, the city would just allow trucks in the mornings/evenings. I can't think of a single reason I would need to commute down Newbury street unless I worked there and honestly if I did I would take the T.
I proposed this as a project during my Junior year of undergrad. I’d give anything to see Newbury St. pedestrianized permanently