Category: Advocacy
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Moderation of comment on Massbike
[This message was from 2013. The answer: to the question in the post is that cyclists’s rights are not the strong point of much bicycling advocacy.My comment was in response to lobbying initiated by the League of American Bicyclists at its annual National Bicycle Summit — it was that time of year. ] http://massbike.org/blog/2012/03/19/progress-in-dc-but-battle-continues-virtual-lobby-day-thursday/ The…
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Making Commonwealth Avenue work for everyone?
The Barr Foundation has published an interview with Livable Streets Executive Director Jackie Douglas under the headline “Making Our Streets Work for Everyone”. The main point which Douglas makes is that progress, and a victory, as she describes it, were achieved by bringing groups with different interests onto the same page. The Boston Globe published…
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Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, Boston petition on Change.org
One Joshua Grolman has published a petition on Change. org asking for “protected bike lanes” on Centre Street, the main street through the Jamaica Plain neighborhood in Boston. Centre Street is two-way, narrowed by parallel parking on both sides everywhere except at special locations — bus stops, turn lanes, approaches to intersections etc. While the…
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Non-responsive signal actuators in Waltham
Why are we still seeing traffic-signal actuators which won’t trigger the signal for bicycles or motorcycles? I have made a short video of a Waltham intersection, Bedford and South Streets. This illustrates the problem which a bicyclist or motorcyclist faces with many traffic-signal actuators. Another issue at this same intersection is that many westbound motorists…
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Some questions about bicyclists’ rights in Massachusetts
The bicyclists’ advocacy organization Massbike has as of today, November 27, 2018, posted a quiz online and promoted it in an e-mail, and the first question is “True or false: Massachusetts law considers a bicycle to be a vehicle.” Massbike says true, and gives this explanation: It’s true! The law considers a bike a vehicle.…
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Bicyclists always had the right, the Globe got it wrong
The Starts and Stops column in the Metro section of the Sunday, June 10 2012 Boston Globe, and in Boston.com, included a discussion of whether bicyclists are required to ride in bike lanes, under the subheading “Bikers get the right” and concluding that there is no such requirement in Massachusetts. The article quotes Boston Bikes…
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Harvard Bridge connection to the PDW path: proposed improvement
Let’s look at how well bicycle routes around the Boston end of the Harvard Bridge (Massachusetts Avenue bridge over the Charles River) might be improved. Here is a Google maps overview of the area. There are two special bicycle routes in the area: the Paul Dudley White bicycle path along the river, and the ramp…
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Sheet of ice draws praise from advocates
The headline of the Boston Globe article with this picture is “Snowbank becomes accidental hero for area cyclists”. The shiny area in the bikeway is meltwater from said snowbank. When the temperature drops below freezing, the meltwater becomes a sheet of black ice. This problem is unavoidable with a street-level barrier-separated bikeway. I discussed it…
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Vision realistic
From an e-mail about the 2016 Progress Report of the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition: Based on our assessment, the City has made progress, but the City will need to dedicate more capital resources and funding for staff in order to eliminate traffic fatalities in Boston by 2030. [Update, December 2024: The 2016 report was already…
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What’s wrong with this picture?
As hunting seasons are introduced to control the deer population in Boston suburbs and nearby parklands, I’m reminded of an article which appeared in the alumni magazine of Middlebury College, one of my alma maters. The article told how Middlebury College sanctions students’ involvement in hunting, and described the usual controversy over hunting which occurs…