"No Left Turn" Signs Coming to Brattle Street at Appleton Street

The City of Cambridge Traffic, Parking, + Transportation Department (TP+T) will implement a new "No Left Turn" regulation at the intersection of Brattle Street and Appleton Street on or about Wednesday, August 14, 2024. New metal "No Left Turn" signs will restrict left turns from Brattle Street eastbound onto Appleton Street northbound at all times.

The community is being notified of this change through laminated signs posted on sign posts in the neighborhood, door-to-door flyers in the immediate vicinity, message boards on Brattle Street and Lowell Street, and a news item in the city's Daily Email Update. We also plan to alert navigation apps of this change so that those using apps are directed to alternative routes. This fall, we will also perform additional data collection to gauge the impact of the change.

Coming soon, we will also:

• Add a speed feedback sign in each direction on Appleton Street.
• Restrict additional parking at the crest of the hill on Appleton Street add a short section of yellow centerline to keep drivers on the correct side of the road.
• Repaint the yellow centerline on Appleton Street at Huron Avenue and at Brattle Street to further emphasize that the street is two-way.

Background

This change is the result of the feedback we've received through a community outreach process and a review of traffic data. TP+T held a community meeting on May 23, 2024 at History Cambridge to discuss traffic concerns on Appleton Street. The intent of the meeting was to determine strategies to address reported cut through traffic on the street. City staff shared data regarding speed, traffic volumes and, crash data and then held a question and answer session for feedback. The materials from the meeting are available at this link.

Some main takeaways from the data included in the presentation are:

• Appleton Street has significantly more northbound traffic than the other streets that also serve northbound traffic. For example, it has over four times as much as Lakeview Avenue, which is the next highest in terms of northbound volumes: 3,318 vs 838. In 2017, Appleton Street was only about twice as much: 2,381 vs 1,117.
• The other ladder streets that are alternatives (Reservoir, Fayerweather, Lakeview, Lexington, Buckingham, etc.) have all had notable decreases in northbound volumes.
• Northbound volumes over all ladder streets combined are down by about 50 cars per day since 2017 (0.75% decline). We aren't seeing an increase in northbound drivers coming through the neighborhood; trips are just distributed differently amongst the streets.
• We did not find an increase in crashes as a result of the increased volume of vehicles on Appleton Street.

Contact Us

Please email Stephen Meuse, Supervising Engineer at smeuse@cambridgema.gov with comments and questions.