Electrical Fire at Furniture Store in Brighton Center

Traffic along Washington Street in Brighton Center, including buses 57 and 501, were all stopped up this evening due to a small electrical fire in the rear of the Europe Today furniture store at 380 Washington Street.

Steve MacDonald, Public Information Officer for the Boston Fire Department, said that the fire appears to have been caused by a water leak that shorted out some old wiring. The fire was contained to a wall towards the rear of the building. BFD responded to the one-alarm fire and reports no injuries. Traffic should be opened up by 6:15 pm or so.

Update: Market Street Looks Fully Re-Opened Tonight

This evening around 10 pm, Market Street southbound had some cars travelling on it. Maybe this means that it will remain open in the morning.

The MBTA is no longer showing service advisories for bus #86.

Hopefully, Wednesday morning we won't have gridlock for a six-block radius around Brighton Center like we've had Monday and Tuesday. At one point on Tuesday morning, one detour route, southbound Foster Street, was literally backed up bumper-to-bumper all the way from Commonwealth Avenue to Washington Street.

The massive traffic jams and gridlock experienced in the Brighton Center area these last two days is one indication of how the transportation infrastructure around here has been stretched to its limit. One little road closure (southbound for two blocks of Market Street) has caused a ripple effect on the traffic patterns all around the neighborhood up to a mile away.

Time to bring back those streetcars to discourage people from driving on Washington Street.


Earlier: Brighton Rite-Aid (nee Brooks) Pharmacy roof collapses.
Bus #86 re-routed.
Southbound Market Street remained closed until completion of work to shore up walls from further collapse.

Bad Traffic Circulation is Good for the Neighborhood: Bring the Streetcars Back to Washington Street

The Urban Man on Los Angeles radio station KCRW writes in "The Joy of Poor Circulation" that lousy traffic circulation is just what is needed to make an area a good neighborhood.

The olden days had people walking around their neighborhood making it feel personal, but lots of efficient traffic flow puts people into cars driving to Costco:

On Monday you walked around the block for coffee and croissants, down where narrow streets filled pleasantly with a confusion of people and cars. There you idled in front of a flower shop and popped into a tiny market for apples, where you joked with the beautiful cashier.

Then lo, Tuesday morning you step out your door and find that someone has widened the street and added an onramp. At the end of the block, an Office Depot looms.

Just like that, romance flees. Soon you're driving to Costco for apples and croissants. Soon, you forget the beautiful cashier.

Instead of having wide boulevards with many lanes of efficiently moving traffic, people stuck in lousy traffic on overburdened streets begin to think about walking, riding bikes, and using mass transit. And the neighborhood is all the better because of it.

Brightonians have been complaining a lot lately about the horrendous traffic that is building up on Washington Street between Oak Square and the Police Station. It's so bad that 3-5 cars are regularly stuck in gridlock-mode in the middle of the intersection of Foster Street and Washington Street.

The Urban Man thinks that bad traffic is good, so let's apply his arguments: keep Washington Street one lane in each direction, have no dedicated left-hand turn lanes, install lots of raised crosswalks, make it one-way in a few places, set the traffic signal programs on "random" (so that some unlucky cars have to wait several light cycles), and plop a trolley line right down the middle of the street...

...But wait, the street used to have the trolley, so let's bring it back! Brighton Center might then return to feeling like a neighborhood instead of way station for Newton commuters. Wouldn't the return of the streetcar be a beautiful sight?

(1964 photo from Brighton Allston Historical Society)