PEABODY CIRCLE RESTORATION
Boston, Massachusetts
The Olmstead-designed Peabody Circle, at the entrance to the Franklin Park Zoo, has seen considerable pressure from modern-day traffic, and numerous traffic safety issues have surfaced in the past few years. Currently over 10,000 vehicles pass through the circle daily while very few have the Zoo as a destination. This traffic conflicts with the unloading of school buses at the zoo entrance, and visitors with passenger cars must cross the busy street from the parking area to the zoo entrance.
Working as a traffic consultant on a team of planners, architects, and engineers, C&C Consulting Engineers has prepared a preliminary scheme that will calm traffic considerably within the circle, while providing a higher level of service for regional traffic traversing the area. The key to the plan is the construction of a relocated City street around the perimeter of the Circle. This will allow redevelopment of the circle to allow passenger car parking, bus unloading, and a generous plaza at the zoo entrance, where community events can be staged safely away from traffic.
To verify the potential for safety afforded by the proposed reconstruction, we conducted a “safety audit”. In this task, the potential for conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles was used as an indicator of the relative safety of various schemes. Peak hour counts of both vehicles and pedestrians were performed, and the data was used to develop a “factor” consisting of the total number of pedestrians multiplied by the number of conflicting vehicles in each scheme. The scheme shown in the picture above proved to have a significantly lower factor that other schemes being considered.
A major concern in developing the concept was the preservation of the various historic features of the circle and its surroundings while still meeting the modern-day engineering guidelines for urban street layout.
The work included participation in two neighborhood workshop meetings, and the preparation of three different schemes for traffic organization. Additionally, meetings were conducted with the Boston Transportation Department and the MBTA to coordinate the schemes with the needs of the involved agencies.
The conceptual plan for the restoration of Peabody Circle was completed in June 2001, and Zoo New England, the managers of the zoo, is currently seeking funding for follow-on phases of the project.
