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A Legal battle has brought a Cambridge bike and pedestrian path renovation to a halt — for now
By Spencer Buell, Boston Globe Staff, Updated August 14, 2025, 2:06 p.m.

CAMBRIDGE — The curving, tree-lined pathway in the Linear Park that runs between Alewife station and the Somerville border has been a peaceful respite in North Cambridge for 40 years.

It’s also getting old, its pavement buckling, sometimes giving way to potholes and puddles, or icy patches in the winter. Built before most of the area’s new bike infrastructure, its tight corners and narrow sections make for slow, bumpy going.

After years of planning, the city has greenlit an overhaul of the bike and pedestrian path that officials say will bring it up to modern standards, with construction set to begin on the half-mile stretch in September.

But a group of neighbors and environmentalists, worried about its impact on the serenity of the space and its canopy of mature trees, have been urging officials to scrap the plans.

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Now, in the opening shot of a legal battle with the city, they have secured a court order to halt the project, for at least a few days.

In a ruling Wednesday, a judge told the city to stop doing prep work on the path until at least Aug. 25, when a preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled.

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The move comes after the residents, including members of a group called Cambridge4Trees, filed a lawsuit last week accusing the city of breaking state open space and environmental laws and local zoning rules, which the city denies.

Charles Teague, a longtime advocate for protecting trees in Cambridge, is among the plaintiffs. Teague, who lives next to the park and said he walks in it daily, has for years tried to cast doubt on the benefits of rehabbing the park in the way city engineers have envisioned and believes it would do lasting damage to its greenery.

“They are saying we will produce a safer path for everyone. And I dispute that,” Teague said, walking the park’s curving pathway underneath the shade of decades-old trees. “There will be a tremendous environmental cost.”

Among other changes, the project would widen the pathway from about 10 feet to about 14 feet, with shoulders on either side, and add new landscaping and amenities to it. Advocates say it makes sense for a key commuter path from Alewife to Somerville to be more accommodating of the commuters at varied speeds and via different means, all at the same time, and that great care has been taken to preserve existing greenery.

A city spokesperson said the planning process for the path was done properly and urged community members to read about the many promised benefits of the project posted on the city’s website, which include the creation of “an inclusive space and accommodating of all users” and “a resilient and biodiverse landscape suited for a changing climate.”

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“The City of Cambridge is conducting a thorough review of the complaint,” the city spokesperson, Jeremy Warnick, said in a statement. “In the meantime, we are confident all required processes and procedures have been followed and stand by the plans for this project. We look forward to enhancing the park and more effectively supporting the needs and interests of our community.”

Teague said he was dismayed on Wednesday morning to see a city contractor working on trees along the path. He filed for a restraining order to stop the work later that day.

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Warnick said the city‘s plans do not include removing any healthy trees from the park.

The restraining order will halt plans to prune trees to make way for the arrival of construction equipment, but Warnick said that, per an agreement struck in court, the city will still be allowed to move forward with plans to remove five unhealthy cherry trees.

The $7.2 million renovation, discussed at length here for years, calls for the most significant upgrades to the park since it debuted in the 1980s atop the extension of the Red Line.

But not everyone wants change to come.

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Teague and his tree-protection group argue that the city would do better to leave the park largely alone and have pushed for much less ambitious fixes, including simply repaving the existing path.

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He has his critics in the city, who say his group’s concerns about damage to the tree canopy are overblown and that the park’s path is long overdue for an upgrade to reflect the surge in multimodal traffic on the path.

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“There is just not enough room for all the people who are using it,” said Darren Buck, a Cambridge dad and cycling advocate who also lives near the trail and uses it frequently. “Leaving it as is is not an option.”

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Buck said he shares Teague’s concern about trees but trusts that the city is doing enough to protect them. He hopes the lawsuit doesn’t add any more delays or complications to the project he says is badly needed.

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“I believe the city has gone through a process of trying to balance the needs of everybody, and what we’re going to end up with is a trail and a park that functions better for both purposes in the long run,” Buck said. “I hope the court recognizes that.”

Walking through the park Tuesday on a sweltering 90-degree afternoon, Teague said his issues with the project run the gamut. He worried that the project would only make the area hotter and less hospitable.

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A more modern shared-use path there would encourage people to travel too fast, he said, and add yet more impermeable surfaces to one of the city’s valuable green spaces.

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City officials said the project will not harm existing trees and that they plan to plant more than 100 new ones, along with shrubs and other plants, and have published a tree protection plan. But Teague fears the renovation as planned would mortally wound the roots of lots of decades-old trees, which might wither and die in the coming years, citing an analysis he and his allies did on their own, which suggests a much more dire result should the city break ground on the project.

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Bad news, he said, for neighbors like him who adore the park and don’t want to let go of the feel it’s had for all this time.

“It’s going from a place where people love to walk their dogs to just another brutal, brutal place‚" he said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.