Today I rode on Winter Street in Waltham, which runs around the south and west sides of the Cambridge Reservoir. A few years ago, bike lanes were installed on much of Winter Street, starting a quarter mile west of West Street in Waltham and extending (with a couple of interruptions) to the Lincoln town line. The bike lanes were functional — no problem with parked vehicles — but today I found that considerable parts of the eastbound bike lane have been removed, to extend a left-turn lane into the Gatehouse Drive office park, and other parts have been poorly repaved as part of a project which, based on observation, installed storm drains so that runoff from Winter Street would drain into Hobbs Brook below the reservoir, rather than into the reservoir itself. It used to be necessary to control the right-hand travel lane of four-lane Winter Street for a quarter mile west of West Street and at a couple of other places west of the reservoir. Now it is necessary to control the lane over a greater distance. Also, some stretches are bumpy due to a seriously third-rate repaving job following the installation of new storm-sewers.
I am curious as to who funded the recent project, and who had to approve it. The Reservoir belongs to the City of Cambridge, but the street is in Waltham.
The location, in Google Maps (this server won’t embed Google maps, so you’ll have to open the map separately).
As a Google Street View from September, 2017 makes clear, the work occurred in 2018.
Photos follow.
Westbound bike lane past reservoir gatehouse
Farther along westbound — rough paving following installation of storm drains
No bike lane, rough paving southbound approaching Gatehouse Lane
Bike lane removed eastbound at dam
Bike lane removed eastbound opposite gatehouse
Bike lane removed eastbound opposite gatehouse
