Cambridge Council Orders Garden Street Two-Way Traffic Study by April 2025

CAMBRIDGE -- December 9, 2024, Cambridge City Council votes 9-0 to study restoring Garden Street to two-way automobile traffic. The unanimous December 9 vote amended a policy order sponsored by Councillor Paul Toner, who said he had spent nearly two years hearing consistent complaints that the 2022 one-way conversion had pushed traffic from Garden Street onto narrow residential side streets including Raymond, Buckingham, and Appleton. More than 50 of 83 registered public speakers urged restoration; City Manager Yi-An Huang warned of trade-offs including the loss of roughly half of the street's current 32 parking spaces and longer signal cycles at the Garden-Huron-Sherman intersection. As amended, the order directs the city to return with analysis and implementation options "as soon as possible but no later than April 1, 2025", the earliest season for permanent lane markings in any case. The council also voted 9-0 to reaffirm Cambridge's sanctuary city status ahead of the incoming Trump administration, with Vice Mayor Marc McGovern warning that the president-elect was "talking about birthright citizenship" and deporting entire mixed-status families, and unanimously passed a resolution congratulating 230 Cambridge Health Alliance physicians and clinicians on filing for union certification with SHARE/AFSCME.