By Fred Bouchard. Photographs by Shawn Carey. We’ve changed tactics for getting familiar with our bird buddies of the brumal (pre-vernal, i.e., winter) season. We’ll pair like with like—woodpeckers, raptors, songsters, and feeder favorites. For more information, research any species by visiting ebird.org. Downy Woodpecker / Red-bellied Woodpecker Woodies are mostly non-migratory. While flickers and sapsuckers head South, the rest abide with us—quite vocally—year-round; in leafless months we get to see them better. Of the five remaining, three mainly stay in forested areas: the mid-sized Hairy, the majestic Pileated (“Woody”) and the rare Red-headed Woodpeckers. Our likelier winter peckers [READ MORE]
Lone Tree Hill Displays Autumn Glory
BCF Community Service Opportunity
I hope to recruit a high school student to work with me on a Belmont traffic project for community service. The project will use the rotary at the intersection of Grove, Blanchard and Washington Streets to estimate the effectiveness of similar rotaries at the entrance to McLean Hospital at Mill Street, and at the intersection of Concord Avenue and Common Street at Belmont Center. I am a retired electrical engineer with an advanced degree from MIT. I did a traffic study in 2017 with a high school student to estimate Belmont’s cut-through traffic during the morning rush hour. Here are [READ MORE]
Belmont Serves Subdues Center Knotweed
Letter to the Editor: Traffic at McLean
To the Editor; On June 26, Belmont Town Meeting approved the amended Traffic Monitoring and Mitigation Agreement between Belmont and McLean Hospital. Part of the agreement is to improve the intersection of McLean Drive and Mill Street. The plan is to install adaptive traffic signals at the intersection that use a camera and software to control the lights based on what is needed on a moment-by-moment basis. In 2017, a high school student who needed community service credits and I spent the summer counting cars to estimate the cut-through traffic in Belmont during the morning rush. We did good work. [READ MORE]
Belmont’s Student Bikers Cut School Traffic
Test and photos by David Chase This fall, we solved a school crowding problem by moving two grades from the middle school to the new combined middle and high school. However, with almost 50% more students arriving every morning, this move aggravated an already-bad traffic problem on Concord Avenue. The new combined school has 2,128 students. If each one of them traveled in a car through the single-lane Goden Street entrance, the line would take over an hour to clear. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen; many students carpool, many walk, many get dropped off a short distance from the high school [READ MORE]
Profiles in Belmont: Peter Struzziero
By Elissa Ely Eight hundred people a day used to visit the Belmont Public Library on Concord Avenue when the building existed, and few of them ran into Peter Struzziero, the library director. Even fewer run into him now. You would need to hang a right off Grant Street onto tiny C Street, past Department of Public Works trucks and equipment, into a cavernous but immaculate town garage the size of a warehouse, and through a door that appears out of nowhere. It’s a little like spelunking, except there are windows. The library’s reconstruction project is well underway, hopefully to [READ MORE]
Waltham Rail Trail Makes Slow Progress
By Vincent Stanton, Jr. The Massachusetts Central Rail Trail (MCRT), when complete, will extend 104 miles along the former right of way of the Massachusetts Central Railroad (MCRR), connecting Northampton on the Connecticut River to North Station in Boston. Design of Belmont’s 2.1 mile segment of the MCRT is proceeding in two phases. Phase I (Brighton Street to Clark Street Bridge) will be 75% complete by the end of October, with 100% design expected in early 2025 and construction scheduled to start in 2026. When Phase 1 is completed, cyclists and pedestrians will be able to travel east from Belmont [READ MORE]
Town Meeting to Decide MBTA Zoning
Below are three articles on the MBTA Community zoning (3A rezoning) proposals that will come before Town Meeting this November. An Overview of 3A By Taylor Yates This fall, Belmont Town Meeting will consider a plan to comply with the MBTA Communities Act, a law passed by the state to increase the supply of housing across 177 towns. Each town, including Belmont, is required to zone for a specified amount of multifamily homes across a specified number of acres. Belmont must zone for at least 1,632 homes across a minimum of 27 acres. After two years of work by both [READ MORE]
November/December 2024 Newsletter
Read the November/ December 2024 Newsletter PDF In this issue: Town Meeting to Decide MBTA Zoning This fall, Belmont Town Meeting will consider a plan to comply with the MBTA Communities Act, a law passed by the state to increase the supply of housing across 177 towns. Belmont must zone for at least 1,632 homes across a minimum of 27 acres. Read more. Waltham Rail Trail Makes Slow Progress Repair of the rusting nineteenth century truss bridge and installation of a new deck for path users was included in the Waltham path design package, and was also part of the [READ MORE]