Before Tremont Street was rebuilt, crossing its South End stretch meant stepping into one of Boston’s most dangerous corridors. The four-lane roadway hid cars and people from one another, creating the kind of “multi-threat” conditions that led to repeated injuries — and, in the worst cases, deaths.
City records show the danger plainly. Between 2015 and 2017, the three years leading into the redesign, the corridor saw 53 EMS-responded crashes, including 19 involving pedestrians and two pedestrian fatalities, ranking Tremont Street in the top 3 percent of Boston roadways for pedestrian crashes. Those numbers prompted the city to rethink the South End segment from Massachusetts Avenue to Arlington Street. Beginning in 2020, Boston cut the street from four lanes to two, tested quick-build safety islands, and by late 2022 replaced them with permanent raised crosswalks and separated bike lanes — part of a four-year reconstruction completed in 2024.
The project, born from fatal flaws in the street’s old geometry, has reshaped how people walk, ride and drive on Tremont — and now serves as a test case for Boston’s next generation of safer streets.
Reengineering a street built for speed
When Boston’s Streets Cabinet studied Tremont Street, planners saw a corridor where serious crashes were not anomalies but design outcomes. Four travel lanes created blind spots at every crossing.
“There had been several pedestrian fatalities along the corridor,” said Nathaniel Fink, deputy director for capital project planning. “When we looked at the street holistically, the risks were the same throughout, the geometry just didn’t forgive mistakes.”
The city’s first step, in 2020, was a quick-build phase: temporary islands that let people cross in two stages and forced drivers into a gentler path. It helped, but it didn’t resolve the core hazard.
“As long as there were multiple lanes in the same direction, the visibility challenge was still there,” Fink said.
Traffic modeling showed Tremont could carry its traffic with one lane each way, opening space for a full redesign. Removing lanes slowed vehicles, created room for protected bike lanes and allowed crosswalks to be raised for visibility and accessibility.
“There’s a perception that this was driven by biking,” Fink said. “It was really driven by pedestrian safety. Once we knew we could remove lanes, separated bike lanes were the best way to use the space.”
At bus stops and conflict zones, the bike lane rises to sidewalk height — one of the corridor’s most visible features.
“The raised sections signal that this is a pedestrian priority zone,” he said. “They slow cyclists a bit and keep the crossings accessible.”
A corridor people actually use
Two decades ago, cyclists in Boston often rode alone. On Tremont today, that solitude is gone.
“When I started biking here in 2004, I could go a whole commute without seeing anyone else on a bike,” said Charles Denison, a transportation advocate who rides through the South End almost daily. “Now, when you stop at a red light, there are bikes all around you.”
Denison, who sits on the board of the LivableStreets Alliance, often uses a Bluebike on Tremont’s raised protected lane.
“Bluebikes lowered the barrier,” he said. “You don’t have to own and store a bike. You just grab one and go.”
For commuters who rely on Tremont as a north-south link, the redesign has changed not just the route but the experience.
“I wouldn’t ride this route without the bike lanes,” said Michael Berger, a Roslindale resident who commutes daily to MIT. “They’re my buffer from chaos.”
Seasonal counts reinforce what riders describe. Data collected at three points along Tremont show steady year-round use, underscoring how the protected corridor functions as a reliable connection through multiple neighborhoods.
In one 2022 sample on nearby Columbus Avenue, volunteers recorded 815 riders in June and 558 in December, showing that protected lanes stay active through winter. Tremont-specific counts from spring 2024 to summer 2025 show the same pattern: ridership falls in colder months but never disappears.
For many, that reliability is what safety looks like.
Denison told me riders shared with him that they can pay attention to the wind, the cold or the routine of commuting — instead of scanning mirrors for sudden lane changes or guessing whether a driver has seen them.
“If people want to come, they find a way”
If any stretch of Tremont was likely to feel business strain from a redesign, it was the lower segment near Roxbury Crossing and the Southwest Corridor — dense with restaurants, bars and studios that depend on regular customers.
In city debates elsewhere, business owners have blamed bike lanes for falling sales. But on Tremont, people running shops along the Orange Line told a different story.
Grace, who works at Puddingstone Tavern, said customers haven’t complained. If anything, she said, “the crossings feel safer at night.”
At Tavern Tales, server Rudi said parking is “still available on both sides” of the street. “For customers, nothing has really changed.”
At Mission Hill Yoga, owner Pedro Aguirre said clients adapted quickly.
“Parking’s always been tough,” he said. “But if people want to come, they find a way.”
And at Nachlo, where most customers are students, manager Anas Bende R Roun said the bike lanes “make no difference” because many people walk or order in.
These accounts match what advocates often see.
“When we hear that sales are down because of bike lanes, we look for numbers — and they’re just not there,” said Mandy Wilkens of the Boston Cyclists Union. “The fear of change travels faster than the facts.”
The redesign also reworked the curb. Tremont’s old outer lanes were often consumed by double-parked cars and trucks. By converting space into loading zones, short-term parking and delivery areas, the city aimed to give businesses the access they needed while keeping travel lanes clear.
Measuring safety, not just speed
Researchers say the true test of Tremont’s redesign will emerge in the crash data that follows.
Northeastern University professor Peter Furth, who studies bicycle safety and traffic engineering, called the project a “quantum leap forward in safety.”
“Going from four lanes to two makes speeding nearly impossible and gives drivers time to see people crossing,” he said. “You’re not just helping cyclists, you’re improving safety for everyone on the street.”
Citywide EMS data shows how bike-involved crashes have fluctuated in the years since Tremont’s redesign, reflecting broader patterns in Boston rather than street-specific trends.
Citywide data supports that pattern. According to Boston’s February 2025 Impact of Separated Bike Lanes on Traffic Safety report, the city examined 370 crashes across redesigned corridors — 248 before installation and 122 after — and documented a 51 percent overall decline. The reductions included 68 percent fewer pedestrian crashes, 57 percent fewer bicycle crashes and 29 percent fewer motor-vehicle–only crashes.
While Tremont’s post-construction data is still accumulating, engineers and advocates expect the street to follow similar trends.
For now, the evidence lies in what people see: slower traffic, shorter crossings, fewer double-parked vehicles and a steady stream of cyclists using the corridor in all seasons.
Politics of the next phase
Even with the South End rebuilt, the work isn’t finished. At-large City Councilor Henry Santana, re-elected this year, said the city must balance safety gains with business concerns.
“I’m a pro-bike person,” Santana said. “We’re trying to help support our local businesses that are complaining about parking, but we really need to look at the data.”
Santana pointed to the “broken” stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, a gap between protected segments, as one of the areas the city hopes to address in the next four years.
“Mayor Wu is looking into these bike lanes carefully,” he said, adding that extending continuity across neighborhoods has become a priority.
A street that no longer shrugs off blame
In the years before the redesign, Tremont’s South End segment routinely appeared in Boston’s high-crash analyses. The design allowed responsibility to blur, a driver citing a blind spot, a pedestrian misjudging a gap, a cyclist trying to avoid double-parked cars.
The rebuilt corridor leaves less room for ambiguity. One lane in each direction curbs speeding. Raised crossings shrink exposure time. Protected bike lanes gather riders into predictable space.
The result is not a perfect street, but a different one — a corridor where the margin for error is wider and the burden of staying safe is shared more evenly among everyone who uses it.
