Many of the deadlines in the Ordinance are either “by May 1” or “by no later than May 1” of a certain year. To make it easier to understand how all the pieces fit together, we’re consistently referring to all these dates as April 30, including in cases where the formal deadline is May 1. This means that you can think of the “Separated Bike Lane Year” as beginning in May and ending in April, which will hopefully make the timeline simpler to follow.
Each year, at the end of May, we must provide a report to the Cambridge City Council detailing the progress we’ve made during the previous year and what we plan to do in the current year. We’re also required to maintain information online about the location and length of the facilities that we’ve installed.
The Ordinance distinguishes between quick-build methods and construction. Quick-build methods include pavement markings, flex-posts, signage, and signal changes. Construction involves more extensive changes, including potentially moving curbs and/or removing medians. Work becomes more complex anytime we dig into the ground, and construction projects may include work on the infrastructure (e.g., water, drainage and sewer pipes, traffic signal wires) that we have underground.
As a reminder, under the original Ordinance passed in 2019, we must construct separated bike lanes when streets in the “Greater Separation” category of the Bicycle Network Vision are reconstructed as a part of the City’s Five-Year Plan for Streets and Sidewalks.