Harvard Traffic Pattern

For slightly more than one week Cambridge residents have been wrestling with the City's new traffic plan, but it is still not clear whether the re-arranged traffic pattern is a success or a failure. For one thing only the first half of the new system has been put into effect. And the inevitable confusion which must accompany any great change in the traffic pattern has still not dissipated.

Beginning July 30 local drivers will enter another period of crisis when another large section of Massachusetts Avenue becomes one-way. From Waterhouse St.--which skirts the northern side of the Cambridge Common--to Garden St. all the traffic on Mass. Ave. will move north. The south-bound traffic will be rerouted onto Waterhouse St. and Garden St. and then back onto Massachusetts Avenue.

The protests which are sure to accompany the next step in the reorganization of Cambridge traffic will come primarily from the residents of Waterhouse St. who, with horror, still remember a similar plan which the City tried ten years ago. That plan temporarily turned the Common into a large rotary by diverting southbound cars onto Waterhouse St.

As a result Waterhouse St. residents were subjected to what they regarded as an intolerable increase in traffic noise, and they felt cut off from the Common by the dense flow of cars. After three days the plan was scrapped.

Many local drivers expect--and hope--that the scheme introduced last week will meet the same fate as its predecessor ten years ago. But the City's traffic administration has changed radically since that time, and for that reason the new plan is not likely to be revoked. Ten years ago the City Council was directly responsible for all traffic regulations. But the Council relinquished that four years ago by handing over its authority to a traffic director who was to be appointed by the City Manager and responsible only to him. Robert Rudolph, then working in Baltimore's traffic department, was brought to Cambridge to take over the post.

To advise the traffic director and to protect the interests of local residents, the City Council also created a three-man traffic appeal board. Presently made up of two lawyers and an executive of the Cambridge Electric Light Company, this board is limited to an advisory role. But if it receives a complaint--signed by 50 or more local residents--against any new traffic regulation, the board is required to hear the views of the citizens and of the traffic direction, and in this situation they have the power to overrule the director.

In four years there has only been one such investigation, and in that case the appeal board sided with Rudolph. If the board conducts a hearing on Rudolph's new scheme it will probably uphold his decision. The only other method of defeating the new traffic plan would be to fire Rudolph. The City Manager--not the City Council--has the power to dismiss him, and he is unlikely to do so.

Rudolph is largely free, therefore, from political pressures. Not beholden to Cambridge residents or votes, he can ride out public criticism more easily than can a City Councillor. But in addition, Rudolph's scheme is intelligent, and will probably be effective in relieving the City's chronic congestion. Many of his recommendations are based on a study of traffic in the Harvard Square area which was commissioned by local commercial interests in 1962. And Rudolph has carefully avoided several of the mistakes which crippled the abortive plan ten years ago.

There have traditionally been four major traffic bottlenecks in the Harvard Square area. The rotary around the Common will eliminate the problem at Cambridge and Mass. Ave.; the Cambridge St. underpass will eliminate the intersection of Kirkland and Cambridge, thus ending that problem; and Rudolph's new one-way streets have largely cleaned up Brattle and Harvard Squares. Once the MBTA Kiosk is removed from Harvard Square the situation will be better still.

Although it is too soon to say flatly that the new plan will end all of Cambridge's traffic difficulties, it is clear that there has been an improvement. As Cambridge drivers become more familiar with the new pattern, the advantages of Rudolph's scheme will probably become even more apparent.