This section is a special case: As Bulloughs Park approaches Commonwealth Avenue, it bisects a section of the Carriage Lane on the east that is open to EB driving, and a section of Carriage Lane on the west that is a footpath only, and closed to motor vehicles.
It is also a very popular section: Drivers get a view of Bulloughs Pond on their right, and also get to bypass the traffic light at Walnut Street.
This design however has presented several dangers. We identified a few problems and a few solutions and below you will see how these have turned out.
First, in 2012 at our request, DPW added an “EXCEPT BIKES” sign to the bottom of the “Do Not Enter” – which had previously not had any such signage at all – where the footpath begins, for those heading west:
Another problem was the cobbled area immediately east of the intersection. The cobbles were seriously coming apart, with gaps as wide as 8 inches, and this presented a serious tripping hazard to the thousands who walked and ran here.
It took some time, but in the autumn of 2017 DPW removed the cobbles and replaced them with a new experimental surface.The Dept of Public Works was so proud of their work that they even tweeted about it (The Tweet has since been deleted, as the DPW isn’t carrying Tweets earlier than 2018 now.):
With the rise in the popularity of walking on the Carriage Lane, we noticed that people started parking their cars on Bullough Park, very close to the intersection with the footpath, and this would block a southbound driver’s ability to see a pedestrian or bicyclists exiting the footpath area. Councilor Downs agreed to docket regulations that prohibited parking for some distance north of that footpath.
Recently we put in a request to add a pedestrian cross walk here. Due to regulatory requirements, that request could not be fulfilled at that time, but engineer Isaac Prizant worked with the Traffic Coordinator to add additional signs here, to awaken, and warn, drivers to the existence of bicyclists and pedestrians using this area as a crossing along the Carriage Lane. (The original diamond-shaped signs were added in 2015 by Transportation Zach Bosch (at our request) at various locations up and down the Carriage Lane.)
