A protected bike lane promised for one of East Boston’s most dangerous streets could disappear before it’s ever built. City officials are weighing a developer’s request to swap out previously approved safety upgrades on a 500-foot stretch of Bennington Street for extra on-street parking instead, a move that has alarmed residents who’ve watched the roadway claim lives for years.
The proposal centers on the 355 Bennington Street development, a mixed-use project under construction on the southern edge of Day Square, according to Streetsblog Massachusetts. The six-story, 162,296-square-foot building includes 170 rental units, with 24 designated as income-restricted, along with nearly 7,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, according to entity background from Transforming Cities. The Boston Planning Department approved the development in 2022, and it later achieved Phius CORE 2021 Design Certification in March 2025 as an all-electric, net-zero carbon residential building.
Back in December 2023, the Boston Public Improvement Commission approved a plan for Bennington and Bremen Street that included protected bike lanes and widened sidewalks. Those planned improvements were meant to include traffic calming, street trees, and a connection to a path from the Mary Ellen Welch East Boston Greenway, ultimately linking to the transit-oriented development’s goal of easy pedestrian access near the MBTA’s Wood Island Blue Line station, according to Redgate.
A Reversal at the August Hearing
That plan hit a wall at an August 6 Public Improvement Commission hearing. Molly Kennedy presented a new layout that eliminates many of the previously approved traffic-calming safety features, replacing the former bike lanes with parallel parking and what she described as minimal curb realignment. Kennedy said the additional parking was well received by neighbors, per the same account from Streetsblog Massachusetts…