SCENES IN THE MASSACHUSETTS
AVENUE BIKE LANES, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Massachusetts Avenue, the main arterial through Cambridge, is lined with
retail storefronts and parallel parking over most of its length.. Bike lanes are
shoehorned in against the parking spaces, in the door zone, where it is unsafe to ride at
speeds above 5 miles per hour. Illegal parking in the bike lane is common; truckers making
deliveries have no alternative but to park illegally, because there are no loading zones
or back alleys where deliveries might be made. To the degree that the bike lane
installation involved narrowing the inner travel lanes, there is more room for
motorists to overtake bicyclists; but bicyclists do best simply to ignore the bike lane
stripe.
You don't have to go looking for scenes like those below. All you have to
do is ride along Massachusetts Avenue, any day. Fortunately, most bicyclists are clever
enough to understand that they must ride the very left edge of the bike lane, or stay out
of it. Often, bicyclists have no choice but to leave the bike lane wen it is blocked by
illegally-parked vehicles. My photos are from two days in the spring of 1999, one sunny,
the other cloudy. |