Beginning with Monday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles, police said they plan to use concrete Jersey barriers to block off the street, calling the steps a precaution and not a response to a specific threat against the iconic ballpark. With Yawkey Way and Van Ness Street already closed during games, police will have sealed off much of the traffic from the roadways that surround the park, save for small sections of Brookline Avenue and Ipswich Street. The closure would likely begin two hours before the game and end when the crowds have dissipated.

Lansdowne Street, which sits in the shadow of Fenway Park and fills with fans and sausage vendors as the first pitch approaches, will be closed to vehicle traffic during Red Sox games, under a plan designed by the Boston Police to deter the kind of truck attacks that have rocked European cities over the last year.


“We’re doing what we can and taking simple measures to ensure the safety of the neighborhood on game day,” said Officer Rachel McGuire, a Boston police spokeswoman. “Hopefully, it will act as a deterrent.”

Several business owners expressed confidence that the closure would not crimp commerce on the street, which they said relies more on foot traffic from fans who walk or use public transit. Even now, they said, few cars attempt to drive down the congested street during games.

But as with all changes involving traffic in Boston, the shift touched off some grumbling.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Eileen Duggan, a Duxbury resident who was walking on Lansdowne on Thursday, on her way to a doctor’s appointment. “I can see closing the street to parking, but not to cars trying to get through. It’s already hard enough to get around.”

Duggan’s husband, Paul, agreed that closing the street to traffic seemed heavy-handed.


“You can’t live your life in fear,” he said.

The move comes after multiple attacks across Europe revealed how vulnerable large crowds are to low-tech assaults by terrorists driving trucks.

In July, a man driving a cargo truck down a waterfront promenade in Nice, France, killed more than 80 people who had gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks. In December, a truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin killed 12. In March, an attacker drove into pedestrians and stabbed a police officer near Parliament in London. And earlier this month, a man plowed a truck into pedestrians on a busy Stockholm street, killing four.

Given that history, closing Lansdowne when it is jammed with pedestrians makes sense, said Ryan Jones, a manager at Game On, which sits on the corner of Lansdowne and Brookline Avenue, and the Bleacher Bar, located on the street.

“With a lot of what’s going on in the world today, I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have cars driving down a street with thousands of people on it,” he said. “It’s a precaution and it needs to be done.”

David Littlefield, also known as the Sausage Guy, said closing the street to traffic could actually help him sling more links from his food cart on Lansdowne. Many people, he said, already assume the street is closed to traffic during games, and walk right in the middle of the roadway.

“The impact is going to be really pretty minimal overall and it’s going to make for a safer environment on the street,” Littlefield said. “I could even see the benefit to what we do because people will feel at ease on the street and it could increase traffic from pedestrians.”


The Sox are allowed to close Yawkey Way to traffic under a controversial deal that the team first struck with the city in 2003. For more than a decade, the deal required the Sox to pay the city $183,000 annually in exchange for air rights over Lansdowne Street and the right to turn Yawkey Way into an outdoor food court and pedestrian mall on game days. Under a new agreement signed with the city in 2013, after criticism that the arrangement amounted to a sweetheart deal, the team agreed to make annual payments of about $734,000 over the next decade for rights to the two streets.

John W. Henry, the principal owner of the Red Sox, also owns the Globe.

Zineb Curran, a Red Sox spokeswoman, said the team has been working with Boston Police and city officials on the new security measures for Lansdowne Street. “We are supportive of the city and their potential plans to close the street to vehicular traffic on game days for security reasons,” she said in a statement.

McGuire pointed out that police have taken similar precautions for a few large-scale events like the July 4th fireworks on the Esplanade and the Boston Marathon, blocking off streets with garbage trucks and dump trucks loaded with sand. But for Red Sox games, she said, police opted for concrete barriers in part because they are less obtrusive.


“We want to keep the friendly atmosphere while at the same time keeping the safety of pedestrians in mind,” she said.

Levenson can be reached at michael.levenson@globe.com