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Update, January 20, 2026:

MassDOT has removed the barriers at the foot of the Franklin Street footbridge, allowing for bike traffic down Cambridge Street southbound. In a Tuesday statement to Allstonia, Emily Jacobsen, who fought against the bike lane’s closure said, “As much as I am grateful that cyclists can now avoid using the sidewalk, MassDOT really missed an opportunity to extend the barriers down to the Harvard St. intersection and provide a truly safe experience for riders along that stretch of road.”

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This month, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) began its preservation of Cambridge Street Bridge.

“A preservation job retains the existing design of the bridge. It doesn’t add lanes. It doesn’t add new design features,” says Luisa Paiewonsky, who is the executive director of megaprojects at MassDOT. In addition, the project will reopen the sidewalk that runs on the right side of Cambridge Street southbound, which has been closed for over a decade. 

“Basically, the intent of the preservation work is to keep the existing structure functioning as well as it can,” says Paiewonsky. 

Starting Thursday, workers have closed the right lane of Cambridge Street southbound “to support ongoing construction activity,” according to a statement by MassDOT. The lane will remain closed until the conclusion of the preservation project in October 2026.

Neighbors have expressed concern over the closure of the bike lane on the right lane of Cambridge Street southbound, which has regulated non-motor-vehicle traffic — pedestrian, bicycle, and wheelchair — to an uneven sidewalk.

Emily Jacobsen, a Brookline resident who bikes into her job in Allston, has since launched a public petition calling on MassDOT to provide a protected bike lane during construction.

During a public Allston Multimodal Transit Project (AMTP) meeting on January 15, Task Force member Galen Mook raised concerns about accessibility.

“We have heard from folks who can’t use their wheelchairs on that sidewalk because of its condition. So that basically removes that entry point to the neighborhood entirely,” Mook said.

Mook acknowledged the need to protect construction workers but emphasized the safety of non-motorized road users.

“The workers need protection, obviously, but just as vulnerable as the workers are people who are not in automobiles sharing that road space,” he said. “If it’s possible to have D-6 look at some sort of barrier protection between the moving traffic, that would be the ideal barrier.”

The project is overseen by engineers at Highway District 6 Office, which is a state office that assists with road engineering, maintenance, and construction in the Greater Boston area. The office is directed by John McInerney. 

Funding for the project comes from state bond funding allocated annually to MassDOT through federal transportation funds. The funding is programmed through the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) and approved by the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization before being scheduled for construction.

The project comes at a time following the loss of a federal funding grant of 327 million dollars that was directed toward the AMTP, which was projected to cost at least two billion dollars. The loss prompted Paiewonsky and MassDOT to start “thinking about what could we do now, given that the big project is not going to be happening immediately.”

The MassDOT team identified the Cambridge Street Preservation Project as an “early action project,” which are “early actions that are within the scope of the prior AMTP and could potentially be advanced as standalone projects.”

“The sidewalk on the Cambridge Street overpass has been closed since, I believe, 2010, or 11, and so, again, it’s really not an early action project, it’s an extremely late action project,” says Jessica Robertson, resident and Task Force member. 

“I definitely really appreciate that MassDOT is trying to pivot from a loss of our federal funding to see what we can do in the near term. These pieces that they’ve started working on so far are a good step in that direction, but we’d really like to see more.” ■