Biking in Boston

underground said:
Sorry, what?!
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It means that as I was making the conscious decision to go through a light that was turning yellow, a couple of bikers swerved out of their lane into the street in front of me, forcing me to stop for the red. Of course, they didn't even slow down for the red, almost causing an accident with the car coming out of the sidestreet that then had the green light. This experience seems pretty par for the course. As one of my favorite sayings goes: it's too bad that 90% of you give the other 10% of you a bad name!!!
 
So you're angry at some bikers because you couldn't proceed through a yellow light that you're legally obligated to slow down for? Sorry, but I'm not sure who was breaking the law here, because by your explanation, it was just you.
 
underground said:
So you're angry at some bikers because you couldn't proceed through a yellow light that you're legally obligated to slow down for? Sorry, but I'm not sure who was breaking the law here, because by your explanation, it was just you.
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I'm angry that they have their own lane, but then swing into mine (right in front of my car) without warning. It would be like if I drove onto the green line tracks without looking then blamed the train for hitting me. You guys seem to play by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
 
As I was saying ... all these problems would evaporate if people were just willing to take it a bit more slowly...

There is no right to drive fast or "beat" lights.
 
You guys seem to play by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
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What set of rules were you using when you tried to speed up through a yellow to beat the light?
 
Matthew said:
As I was saying ... all these problems would evaporate if people were just willing to take it a bit more slowly...

There is no right to drive fast or "beat" lights.
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I wasn't driving fast, but easily would have made it through that light if I didn't have "vehicles" in front of me doing less than half the speed limit.

Doesn't solve the problem of the cars swinging into oncoming lanes on the single lane streets. Sorry, am I supposed to stay behind you guys for an entire 30-40 miles commute?


davem said:
Remember, bicycles came before cars, by a wide margin. It's the cars that weren't built to "play nice" with just about ANYTHING, not the other way around. Hence why SO MUCH money has been spent over the past two generations to modify our environment to cater to them. And then after all that time and money, we have a runaway greenhouse effect, chronic obesity, disastrous land-use patterns, longer commutes than ever before, and crushing average debt due to the near obligatory purchase of an object that begins deprecating the second you purchase it. There is a very good argument that all the money pouring into maintaining asphalt and traffic control devices is a large part of the reason why our modern civic institutions are underfunded, ugly, and falling apart.
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Just because you ride a bike, it doesn't mean you're saving the world. Your over the top rant reminds me of the South Park episode where the "smug" overwhelmed San Francisco.

If there's one thing we most definitely can agree on, it's probably that we would most likely point our fingers at each other and say "You give Daves a bad name."
 
Doesn't solve the problem of the cars swinging into oncoming lanes on the single lane streets. Sorry, am I supposed to stay behind you guys for an entire 30-40 miles commute?
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I'm not sure what problem you are referring to here. When making turns, you are supposed to stay in the travel lane closest to the curb, and turn into the travel lane closest to the curb. If your vehicle cannot manage that, then you need to yield to oncoming traffic, whether it be bikes, cars, or something else. Generally, people manage to work this out by using caution and common sense.

I don't expect you to "stay behind a bike for an entire 30-40 miles". You are welcome to pass as soon as you find a safe moment to do so, leaving ample enough space between your vehicle and the bike.

It's really not helping your case to say things like "you guys". I don't think it's likely that I was ever one of the people in front of you riding a bike.
 
Matthew said:
I don't expect you to "stay behind a bike for an entire 30-40 miles". You are welcome to pass as soon as you find a safe moment to do so, leaving ample enough space between your vehicle and the bike.
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The problem I see is that impatient cars don't wait, and sometimes if it drags on (ie never ending stream of cars coming in the other direction) cars often make that pass way too close to both the biker and the oncoming cars. This is much more of a suburban issue than Boston itself. More like if I'm driving down Route 62 or 117 or something out there, outside 95. In a utopian world, everybody would wait patiently and sing kumbaya and safely pass and there would be no problems. However, in MASSACHUSETTS, a minimum of 25% of drivers are going to go for that unsafe pass, which puts themselves, the bikers, and other drivers at significantly further risk than if there were no obstructions in the road. There's a lot of yelling, a lot of angry people, and a lot of middle fingers that go both ways. Unfortunately, bikers are a major source of road rage for many people. I'm honestly surprised more of you don't get killed on some of these roads. I would feel safer walking around Detroit by myself with a big bag of $$$ than I would cycling down many of the streets around here.
 
DZH22 said:
Just because you ride a bike, it doesn't mean you're saving the world. Your over the top rant reminds me of the South Park episode where the "smug" overwhelmed San Francisco.
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I don't think I'm saving the world, and I love my car. Here's the thing, though. What part of anything I said is false? The US in general seems to forget the immense amount of negative externalities caused by automobiles, and have slowly accumulated over the past generation or two.





As for drivers unsafely passing, it's the drivers fault. It just is. The cyclist is using their legally entitled piece of road and the driver is illegally leaving theirs to swerve into another lane / oncoming traffic. No one is at fault here except the driver. Period. The end. Full stop.

I would say there is an equal percentage of both drivers and cyclists who do stupid, illegal things. In all likelyhood, the driver that blows through a red is a cyclist that does too. There is, however, one glaring difference; a bicycle is slower, lighter, and has a full field of vision and hearing. A car is the opposite of that. Hence why traffic laws didn't need to exist before automobiles. Bicycles don't need traffic control devices to move around safely, the entire structure of our roadways are because of cars. Bicycle infrastructure is, at the end of the day, really there to accommodate cars, not bikes, because they naively don't need anything to begin with. Look at the Charles River paths: multiple intersecting high capacity paved ways, not a single traffic control device. Whens the last time someone died on one of them from a collision? Whens the last time an ambulance was needed because of a collision?
TL;DR: A cyclist is really only a hazard to themselves when they do something illegal. A motorist is a hazard to everyone around them when they do.



Regarding staying behind a cyclist because it's not safe to pass, remember the tortoise and the hare?
In the city, I beat my girlfriend in her car every_single_time. Sure she can get off the line nice and fast and beat me on a straightaway, or fly down storrow or mem drive, but inevitably she gets stuck in traffic on the Bowker, or crossing one of the bridges, or poorly timed lights, or someone making a left, general congestion, or all the other things that I can just scoot around. And then parking! With the possible exception of 4am, cycling in the city is the fastest way to get to and from your destination.



As for bad weather, unless it's actively snowing I ride all winter. My next investment will be studded tires and then I'll be riding no matter what. For the most part my body heats up faster than my cars heater, and I wind up stripping off my outer layer within less than a quarter mile. Bad weather cycling is more of an investment, though. You need fenders, a change of clothes (or waterproof jacket/pants), really good lights, and high quality tires. But it's doable. It helps that I was a ski instructor for years so I have plenty of cold weather layering stuff. For the average person it's probably an even larger investment. I still prefer it to bike more than freeze waiting for the bus, or my cars heater though.
(I will say, rain SUCKS. It's probably because I never check the weather so I get caught in it all the time without waterproof stuff, but getting home and looking like I just jumped in a pool is gross.)


DZH22 said:
Completely unsurprising articles:
http://arm.coloradowomenshealth.com/doctors-blog/bicycling-affect-male-fertility/

http://www.livestrong.com/article/468837-testicle-damage-from-cycling/


Population control is a serious issue. Thank you for doing your part.
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I drank something like ten million gallons of pre-reformulated Mountain Dew in high school. I'm pretty sure the bike seat has nothing on old yellow #5. In all seriousness though, a well designed seat does away with most of those issues, and I spend half my time standing on my bike anyway. I can't imagine sitting on our godawful roads.
 
DZH22 said:
Completely unsurprising articles:
http://arm.coloradowomenshealth.com/doctors-blog/bicycling-affect-male-fertility/
http://www.livestrong.com/article/468837-testicle-damage-from-cycling/
Population control is a serious issue. Thank you for doing your part.
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Now *this* is trolling, and is inappropriate here.

This is the ArchBoston forum Biking in Boston thread. Posts should deal with biking in Boston's urban core (Bos/Camb/Smvl/Watertown/Revere/Brookline, with a splash of Waltham, Newton, Arlington, Medford, Everett & Chelsea)

We also have a Biking in the Boston 'burbs thread, which is clearly the better place to discuss commutes in Sudbury and "suburban" settings.
 
DZH22 said:
It disturbs me that you insinuate that my dislike for bikes automatically means I'm going to try to kill you.
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first off - I never insinuated that YOU were out there trying to kill me - what bothers me is the attitude that bike riders are somehow this "other" or "less than" which is really dangerous because it's about marginalization of a minority - which leads to some really nasty stuff. doesn't matter if some people are breaking the law - bikers are legal road users - we're all human beings.

You sound like the type of guy who deserves whatever reactions these people have had.
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yeah... this is serious troll territory here.
 
DZH22 said:
The problem I see is that impatient cars don't wait, and sometimes if it drags on (ie never ending stream of cars coming in the other direction) cars often make that pass way too close to both the biker and the oncoming cars. This is much more of a suburban issue than Boston itself. More like if I'm driving down Route 62 or 117 or something out there, outside 95. In a utopian world, everybody would wait patiently and sing kumbaya and safely pass and there would be no problems. However, in MASSACHUSETTS, a minimum of 25% of drivers are going to go for that unsafe pass, which puts themselves, the bikers, and other drivers at significantly further risk than if there were no obstructions in the road. There's a lot of yelling, a lot of angry people, and a lot of middle fingers that go both ways. Unfortunately, bikers are a major source of road rage for many people. I'm honestly surprised more of you don't get killed on some of these roads. I would feel safer walking around Detroit by myself with a big bag of $$$ than I would cycling down many of the streets around here.
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Again, it sounds like a lot of the problems you describe are caused by impatience, anger, and road rage. People are imperfect, no doubt, and we all act and feel ways we might later wish we didn't. The key is that we aspire to be better than that.

And none of this explains why public policy and law should accommodate impatience, anger, and road rage. We should not be designing streets as if we were in constant fear of road-ragers. As I said before, with great power comes great responsibility. We want to have the advantage of motorized transportation for many uses, but we also want to have safe streets that can be shared by everyone no matter their means and ability. I think that we really can have it both ways -- if everyone would just go a bit more slowly and cautiously on city streets.

Believe it or not, Massachusetts is one of the safest states in the Union already, and Boston does quite well in statistical rankings compared to other cities in the USA. We can do better, of course, and I think the trend is positive.
 
I bike. I walk. I drive. I take transit. I do it all. And I can tell you this: Bostonians are (a) selfish, (b) rude, and (c) impatient. It doesn't matter which mode they are using. Whenever people start blaming "the pedestrians" or "the bicyclists" or some other group for all their woes, I have no sympathy. I could go on for hours about the variety of asshattery: pedestrians wandering across the street while traffic has a green light, bicyclists running red lights, taxis swerving all over the place and stopping randomly in the middle of the street, trucks double parking wherever they feel like it, etc. Unless we can make people nicer and more considerate in general, this is unlikely to change.

Regarding motorists getting stuck behind bicyclists, I have little sympathy. The roads are for everyone. And the speed limit is just that: a limit. There is no right or guarantee that you get to travel unimpeded at the speed limit. It just happens that before we had an increase in bicyclists, the chances that you could do this while driving were probably a bit higher. But it's just as much the bicyclists' right to be on the road as it is the motorists', so everyone's just going to have a take a deep breath and be a little more patient.
 
Arlington said:
Now *this* is trolling, and is inappropriate here.
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I almost agree, but if you're going to push for more people to ride bikes, then it's relevant to point out that a bike seat and a car seat do different types of damage.
 
cden4 said:
I bike. I walk. I drive. I take transit. I do it all.There is no right or guarantee that you get to travel unimpeded at the speed limit. It just happens that before we had an increase in bicyclists, the chances that you could do this while driving were probably a bit higher. But it's just as much the bicyclists' right to be on the road as it is the motorists', so everyone's just going to have a take a deep breath and be a little more patient.
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Thanks for this, and note that when the streets are redesigned with all modes in mind, the speed for non-taxi cars goes *up*. Uncontrolled mixing (and lane swerving by the greediest/angriest of drivers) is the problem, the solution to which is controlled mixing.

There should be a multimodal consensus on that, and any user who come to the table "angry" should be shunned, because the cooperative consensus is actually the best engineering solution too.
 
DZH22 said:
The problem I see is that impatient cars don't wait, and sometimes if it drags on (ie never ending stream of cars coming in the other direction) cars often make that pass way too close to both the biker and the oncoming cars. This is much more of a suburban issue than Boston itself. More like if I'm driving down Route 62 or 117 or something out there, outside 95. In a utopian world, everybody would wait patiently and sing kumbaya and safely pass and there would be no problems. However, in MASSACHUSETTS, a minimum of 25% of drivers are going to go for that unsafe pass, which puts themselves, the bikers, and other drivers at significantly further risk than if there were no obstructions in the road. There's a lot of yelling, a lot of angry people, and a lot of middle fingers that go both ways. Unfortunately, bikers are a major source of road rage for many people. I'm honestly surprised more of you don't get killed on some of these roads. I would feel safer walking around Detroit by myself with a big bag of $$$ than I would cycling down many of the streets around here.
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Well then, your problem is with other drivers, that 25% you mention is what gives you guys such a bad name. Seriously, a driver making a decision to engage in dangerous behavior is nobody's fault but his own.
 
cden4 said:
Bostonians are (a) selfish, (b) rude, and (c) impatient.
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I confess this is me in all modes of transportation.

I usually bike and I follow the rules but bend them when I think it's safe or, quite frankly, most convenient. Same with driving. And walking. And I hate every non-bus thing slowing me down when I'm on a bus.

One mode being more disrespectful than the other isn't the issue. As others have said, as mixed mode transit continues to increase, any anomalies seen from subsets of a given population should be balanced out by the crowd. So, it isn't that cyclists break more laws, merely that they break DIFFERENT laws than cars. This isn't my opinion. It's this guy's: https://medium.com/cycling-in-the-city/why-bikes-make-smart-people-say-dumb-things-9316abbd5735

So let's put aside the us-vs-them for a moment and assume for the sake of argument that all travelers will make the same efforts to get to their destination as any other traveler using a different mode, and will take advantage of the benefits of their respective mode (speed, bus lane, alternate routes for bikes). Assuming again that each mode will bend or break the rules in equal amount, which is the most dangerous mode? We all know the answer to that. (It's cars http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0739885912002156)

A more troubling concern I have is that driving not only is the most dangerous mode when we all behave the same, it's also that drivers have more indications of extremely dangerous behavior outside the norm. Intentionally killing people because of travel rage is pretty much exclusive to cars. I found lots of examples of car on car rage incidents. Then I tried to find something involving bicycle road rage causing a death. Google "bicycle rage kills" and all you get is cyclists getting murdered by cars.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=bicycle+rage+killing

If I never biked another day in my life and got everywhere by car, sitting in traffic I'd probably hate everything (bikes, walkers, and cars) that was cutting me off and slowing me down. I'd be as bitchy as our anti-bike friend on this thread and blame the other modes for screwing up the whole system. I'd be (a) selfish, (b) rude, and (c) impatient. I'd think I was right. And I'd be wrong.
 
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