It would be oh-so-nice if they had sessions where they specifically invited transportation board chairmen [or all members if they had enough room] from cities and towns nearby. Boston can do things to encourage cycling within the city, but encouraging cycling commuters — which involves getting folks from Cambridge, Quincy, Newton, Brookline, Somerville, Waltham, Watertown, etc to ride to work in Boston even some of the time requires working with the towns that are adjacent to Boston, and the towns adjacent to those towns.
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Get a few towns on board, and you’ll be able to create bicycle networks that are as seemless as roads when the cyclist crosses the town line, instead of having bike lanes simply evaporate, etc.
Though, speaking as a regular bicyclist living in Brighton, Cambridge and Brookline are considerably ahead of Boston at the moment. Brookline just recently put a bike lane on Beacon Street (westbound–eastbound is still scary) Cambridge also has far more bike lanes, some even in their own car-free areas, such as part of Vassar St.
The Beacon St bike lane is heterogeneous. Loosely speaking, it runs toward Coolidge Corner. Cleveland Circle to St Marys St (the line with Boston) has bike lines on both sides of Beacon St, but never on both sides of Beacon St at the same time.
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It’s worth noting that it enters Boston on both sides — near Kenmore Square [Audubon Circle] in the Fens and Cleveland Circle out past Washington Square. In both cases Boston could easily continue the bicycle lane so there’s continuity. Will they? Seems to me they’d be more likely to do so if they’d incorporate Boston metro in their meetings and in their general philosophy.
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* The Harvard St bike lane is also heterogeneous. It’s sometimes on one side of the road, sometimes the other, sometimes both, sometimes neither. It also starts/ends abruptly at the Boston line a block from Pizzeria Uno’s [the road becomes Harvard Ave]. Interestingly, the part of Harvard Ave on the other side of Comm Ave has tons of “U” bike racks, and is wide enough for a bike lane but there isn’t one there. It’s another opportunity for Boston to “continue” the work from the town line, providing more continuity. The reverse is that Brookline has an opportunity to add more bike racks on Harvard St to match the large number on Harvard Ave and reach “continuity”. I can tell you that more bike racks will be installed on Harvard St within the next 6 weeks, on both sides of Beacon.
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* Brookline is also just getting started in really working on getting more kids to bicycle to school. We’re getting more racks at the schools [same project as above], and we’re working on comprehensive plans to have more “bike routes” which are combinations of bike lanes, bike paths, and safe mixed-use streets. This will take a long time; it’s a process not an event. Because Brookline has almost a dozen schools [if one includes privates], increasing the number of kids riding to/from school will increase cycling throughout the town, though obviously more in North Brookline.
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* AFAIK, Brookline has no bike shops, although the Landrys on Comm Ave pays Brookline property taxes because the building straddles the line. I’d love for a shop — even just a repair shop — to show up in Coolidge Corner, or even in the “no mans land” between Coolidge Corner and Brookline Village.
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* There are a number of Brookline Town Meeting members who are cyclists — people who regularly use bicycles as a means of effective transportation. I can think of at least six off of the top of my head. That’s not many, but it does mean that cycling is often considered in conjunction with lots of other issues, from DPW [bike lanes, racks, etc] to schools [safe routes, racks, etc] to parks [bike paths, ramps, etc].
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As a side note, it’s my understanding that the road work on Comm Ave near BU is coming with bike lanes. They’ve already installed dozens of “U” racks up and down the inbound side between the BU West T stop and Kenmore Square. Apparently though, the bicycle-friendly design [and lots of ped friendly improvements] weren’t initially planned and were fought for by Jeff Rosenblum and Livable Streets. This was, of course, before Mayor Menino’s bicycle eureka. If so, great for them, and great for us. Hopefully projects to be designed will incorporate these rather inexpensive designs to allow access to the transportation network by all people, and to encourage transportation that doesn’t result in air or noise pollution and is far less likely to kill anybody. Time will tell I suppose.
It would be oh-so-nice if they had sessions where they specifically invited transportation board chairmen [or all members if they had enough room] from cities and towns nearby. Boston can do things to encourage cycling within the city, but encouraging cycling commuters — which involves getting folks from Cambridge, Quincy, Newton, Brookline, Somerville, Waltham, Watertown, etc to ride to work in Boston even some of the time requires working with the towns that are adjacent to Boston, and the towns adjacent to those towns.
<
p>
Get a few towns on board, and you’ll be able to create bicycle networks that are as seemless as roads when the cyclist crosses the town line, instead of having bike lanes simply evaporate, etc.
Though, speaking as a regular bicyclist living in Brighton, Cambridge and Brookline are considerably ahead of Boston at the moment. Brookline just recently put a bike lane on Beacon Street (westbound–eastbound is still scary) Cambridge also has far more bike lanes, some even in their own car-free areas, such as part of Vassar St.
<
p>
It’s worth noting that it enters Boston on both sides — near Kenmore Square [Audubon Circle] in the Fens and Cleveland Circle out past Washington Square. In both cases Boston could easily continue the bicycle lane so there’s continuity. Will they? Seems to me they’d be more likely to do so if they’d incorporate Boston metro in their meetings and in their general philosophy.
<
p>
* The Harvard St bike lane is also heterogeneous. It’s sometimes on one side of the road, sometimes the other, sometimes both, sometimes neither. It also starts/ends abruptly at the Boston line a block from Pizzeria Uno’s [the road becomes Harvard Ave]. Interestingly, the part of Harvard Ave on the other side of Comm Ave has tons of “U” bike racks, and is wide enough for a bike lane but there isn’t one there. It’s another opportunity for Boston to “continue” the work from the town line, providing more continuity. The reverse is that Brookline has an opportunity to add more bike racks on Harvard St to match the large number on Harvard Ave and reach “continuity”. I can tell you that more bike racks will be installed on Harvard St within the next 6 weeks, on both sides of Beacon.
<
p>
* Brookline is also just getting started in really working on getting more kids to bicycle to school. We’re getting more racks at the schools [same project as above], and we’re working on comprehensive plans to have more “bike routes” which are combinations of bike lanes, bike paths, and safe mixed-use streets. This will take a long time; it’s a process not an event. Because Brookline has almost a dozen schools [if one includes privates], increasing the number of kids riding to/from school will increase cycling throughout the town, though obviously more in North Brookline.
<
p>
* AFAIK, Brookline has no bike shops, although the Landrys on Comm Ave pays Brookline property taxes because the building straddles the line. I’d love for a shop — even just a repair shop — to show up in Coolidge Corner, or even in the “no mans land” between Coolidge Corner and Brookline Village.
<
p>
* There are a number of Brookline Town Meeting members who are cyclists — people who regularly use bicycles as a means of effective transportation. I can think of at least six off of the top of my head. That’s not many, but it does mean that cycling is often considered in conjunction with lots of other issues, from DPW [bike lanes, racks, etc] to schools [safe routes, racks, etc] to parks [bike paths, ramps, etc].
<
p>
As a side note, it’s my understanding that the road work on Comm Ave near BU is coming with bike lanes. They’ve already installed dozens of “U” racks up and down the inbound side between the BU West T stop and Kenmore Square. Apparently though, the bicycle-friendly design [and lots of ped friendly improvements] weren’t initially planned and were fought for by Jeff Rosenblum and Livable Streets. This was, of course, before Mayor Menino’s bicycle eureka. If so, great for them, and great for us. Hopefully projects to be designed will incorporate these rather inexpensive designs to allow access to the transportation network by all people, and to encourage transportation that doesn’t result in air or noise pollution and is far less likely to kill anybody. Time will tell I suppose.