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With the expansion of Mt. Auburn Hospital and the expansion of the Harvard Campus in Allston, we need to plan for mitigating the long term impact of the additional traffic and reduction in green space. Traffic has doubled in the last 10 years and the additional traffic volume will not be easy to take. As elsewhere in our City traffic jams are becoming daily occurrences.

Parkland should be vigilantly protected and expanded. We can restore parkland with the following solution:

Traffic Management

At the beginning of Gerry’s Landing at Memorial Drive, the Eliot Bridge and Greenough Boulevard or between Mt. Auburn Hospital, BB&N and the Boat Houses, we designed a very large oval traffic circle, sunken to about the height of the lower parking lot of the Cambridge Boat House or perhaps even lower if drainage/water table permit. This oval is a device that allows traffic to flow without traffic lights and waiting air and noise polluting cars. The middle of this oval, which can be a quite substantial piece of land, is large enough to contain a parking garage for over 300 spaces. The parking is used to cover a need and to finance this venture. In the long term, the space within the oval would be used by the community as an athletics buildings. The former bath house next to Eliot Bridge could revert to this use when the river is swim-able. Its use and management could be combined with other athletic uses in the structure in the oval.

Parkland - Restoration of Green Space

The existing parkland along Memorial Drive and Gerry’s Landing, are now left-over strips of park, and more symbolic of what this environment used to be like when Charles Eliot’s plan was built. The danger, noise and pollution from the traffic, has substantially reduced people’s enjoyment of the riverbanks. We need more connected green space. The river could become an environment like Central Park in New York City, a true place for recreation and a refuge from the city’s beat.

The proposed garage/athletic building and much of the two lane traffic oval will be covered by a planted green roof making the area into a shallow hill that flows without interruption down to the adjacent school, BB&N, and up to the Coolidge Hill to the west and to Mt. Auburn Hospital that is less than 200 feet away to the north. Most of all it will reconnect the river banks with continuous parkland without traffic barriers to surrounding neighborhoods. The garage that comes out partially towards the river for the transition to Eliot Bridge and the Cambridge Boat House parking lot will be screened from the Boat house.

What was once wetland, and now is 6 to 8 lanes of traffic, will become a small hill, only about 8 feet above the current level. This new “hill” will reconnect and merge the still higher isolated Coolidge Hill with Mt. Auburn Street and the river scape. The roof over the garage is large and can be used for parkland and athletic fields such as for a few Baseball diamonds.  Space for athletic fields is a need in this area and the adjacent school would like to share in their use and could help finance his project.

Boston has precedents for green roofs with Post Office Square and the Boston Commons Garage.

Safety for Pedestrians

Pedestrians will be able to cross over from the paths along the river onto the “hill” over the parking garage without crossing traffic. Children will be able to cross these intersections (Memorial Drive, Gerry’s Landing, Greenough Boulevard, and C. Eliot Bridge in safety. We all will have reclaimed the parkland that once was part of the Eliot plan.

People using the parking garage can come up from it via small stairs or an elevator to the roof of the garage that is the top of the new hill and walk without crossing traffic to the Hospital, the Schools, the Boat Houses and the surrounding parkland and river.

Financing

The Athletic facilities, indoors and outdoors, and the parking can produce a profit to help finance this venture. The ownership of the parkland can remain the Department of Conservation and Recreation ’s with a public private partnership agreement for use.

With this solution, the community will have regained a beautifully situated park with athletic fields, gotten the noisy and dangerous traffic out of sight.