Beacon Street (Arlington Street to Mass. Ave)

In 2022, Mayor Wu announced a plan to expand the citywide bicycle network and introduce other neighborhood traffic calming. The new design for Beacon Street builds on that plan and responds to feedback from community conversations in 2023 for the Berkeley Street Better Bike Lane project. Our initial design for that project included a new bike lane on the north side of Beacon Street between Mugar Way and Berkeley Street.

Pedestrians will benefit from this project in several ways. 

• We will rebuild curb ramps that don’t meet current accessibility standards. 
• We will make signal timing changes at the Beacon/Berkeley intersection meant to improve driver compliance and reduce pedestrian safety risks.
• Narrower travel lanes will encourage slower driving speeds and make crossing distances shorter. 
• The repaved road surface will make crosswalks smoother.

We launched community engagement for the Berkeley Street Better Bike Lane project in Spring 2023. Those conversations influenced our upcoming work on Beacon Street. We hosted pop-up events, virtual office hours, a virtual public meeting, and meetings with abutters, institutions, and resident groups. We incorporated most of the feedback we got from local stakeholders, making major changes to the design as a result. 

This fall, we will focus on letting stakeholders know about the upcoming work and answering questions. You can sign up for a 15-minute video chat or phone call with a project team member during our virtual office hours.

Curb ramps and landing areas will be concrete with red cast iron detectable warning panels. We will preserve existing brick areas around the ramps. This approach complies with Back Bay Historic District guidelines, which in all matters are subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards.

Many drivers use the Beacon/Berkeley intersection to get to Storrow Drive. While we can't fix all traffic problems in the area with one project, we can make Beacon Street safer. We will change the road to have two lanes instead of three between Mugar Way and Berkeley Street. This will keep parking on both sides.

We used traffic modeling to inform this decision. Our modeling shows that the design changes will result in a minor increase in 95th percentile queue lengths during peak traffic times. This is considered an acceptable margin within traffic engineering standards. 

You can review our traffic model and see more details and diagrams in the Final Design Report.

We’re committed to using the most accurate data to make our plans. Our traffic model is based on data from Fall 2022. We checked this data by looking at traffic in nearby places from 2019 to 2024. We used Streetlight data, which is aggregated data about real traffic patterns from smartphones, to verify our approach. You can read more about our analysis in the Final Design Report.

We found that traffic in the area has been relatively stable since Fall 2021. There was a small increase in traffic approaching  the Beacon/Berkeley intersection between Fall 2022 and Fall 2024. This small change is normal, so we’re confident that data from Fall 2022 is accurate for our traffic model.

We provided an update on upcoming design changes for Beacon Street between Arlington Street and Berkeley Street. We detailed how the revised design addresses many of the concerns raised by stakeholders while also advancing citywide safety and mobility goals.

READ THE MEMO (PDF 1 MB)

We shared a concept design report in Summer 2024. We posted it on the project website.

View the concept design report (PDF 2.3 MB)

We begin implementing our plans during the winter of 2017-2018.

We hosted a drop-in meeting on October 2, 2017. More than 100 attendees reviewed the plans in detail and asked questions to the full design team. You can view the meeting materials below.