Biking in Boston

^ I suppose they like this because it is a "paint only" solution? Needs both green paint and bike symbols if they want people in cars to actually stay out of it.
 
They need a cycle-track. Why have this much of a road diet, and devote this much space with no cycle track. They could easily switch the location of the parking and bike lane and add a physical barrier between the two.
 
Nah. Get the "paint-only" solution down first - and once drivers get "used" to having just one lane of through-traffic, the cycle-track solution is almost just a cosmetic addition at that point.

This is how they get things done in NYC. Often these things start as paint-only, making them look temporary or experimental. I'm certain that cuts down majorly on resistance. One or two years later, when everyone realizes the world hasn't ended, the curbs get built out.

They do this with pedestrianized "pocket plazas" also.
 
Brookline’s traffic study says:

“A painted buffered bicycle lane was chosen to provide an enhanced level of comfort for bicyclist while still allowing room for vehicles to pull onto the painted area out of the way of a passing emergency vehicle when needed”
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So a physically protected lane was considered and rejected specifically so that people could drive onto the bike lane when needed, which likely means they will drive on it when it isn’t “needed”. American protected bike lanes are often designed with mountable curbs that allow ambulances, fire trucks, and roughly-driven police cars to drive up onto it. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen allowing non-emergency vehicles to pull off and let an emergency vehicle pass as a reason to not build protected infrastructure.
 
Scipio said:
Brookline’s traffic study says:
So a physically protected lane was considered and rejected specifically so that people could drive onto the bike lane when needed, which likely means they will drive on it when it isn’t “needed”. American protected bike lanes are often designed with mountable curbs that allow ambulances, fire trucks, and roughly-driven police cars to drive up onto it. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen allowing non-emergency vehicles to pull off and let an emergency vehicle pass as a reason to not build protected infrastructure.
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We often let irrational arguments of uninformed citizens/politicians trump safe infrastructure design. This kind of nonsense should not be up for debate. We know better.

But I guess it has to be incremental otherwise there might be too much resistance...
 
I've heard from friends in Brookline that even this will be a very contentious issue. Many people in Brookline don't believe that Beacon will survive a road diet and that bikes really don't belong on Beacon. If you remember what it took to get a few contra-flaw lanes in a few years ago, that will give you an idea of what the fight will be like.

I you live in Brookline or bike though it, please consider coming to the meeting tomorrow night Jan 7th at 7pm, Brookline Town Hall, Selectman's Hearing Room 6th Floor.
Please be mindful that suggesting parking reductions will, more than likely, ignite incredible backlash from some of the attendees who believe that on street parking is basic liberty.
 
This looks like progress, but what I'd really like to see is bike lanes for the eastbound side where there is pretty high cycling traffic every morning.

The westbound side is decent up to Coolidge Corner. It's also too bad this proposal isn't actually contiguous with the existing westbound bike lane. Getting through Coolidge Corner going west is not great.
 
Randomgear said:
I've heard from friends in Brookline that even this will be a very contentious issue. Many people in Brookline don't believe that Beacon will survive a road diet and that bikes really don't belong on Beacon. If you remember what it took to get a few contra-flaw lanes in a few years ago, that will give you an idea of what the fight will be like.

I you live in Brookline or bike though it, please consider coming to the meeting tomorrow night Jan 7th at 7pm, Brookline Town Hall, Selectman's Hearing Room 6th Floor.
Please be mindful that suggesting parking reductions will, more than likely, ignite incredible backlash from some of the attendees who believe that on street parking is basic liberty.
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I'll be there!

EDIT: Stuck at work. Damn.
 
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bigeman312 said:
I'll be there!

EDIT: Stuck at work. Damn.
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Any opposition to the proposal failed to show.
The bike crowd was huge, the biggest opposition to the Beacon Street plans came from Anne Lusk saying that a protected cycle track was what was really needed here.
I spoke, and while I had to agree with Anne, I supported the plan and asked for improvements in the future. The plan presented is cheap (paint and signal timing), fast, and while not perfect, can be added onto and modified in the future without having to do a complete street redesign; it's a good first step.
 
Randomgear said:
while not perfect, can be added onto and modified in the future without having to do a complete street redesign; it's a good first step.
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Agreed. It seems possible that we'd get about 4 projects like this for the time/money/politics that it'd take to produce 1 protected bike lane. I suspect that the 4 imperfect will get more use than the 1 and, more importantly, get more OCCASIONAL use from people who'll try biking and want better.

Bike lanes feel today like where highways were in the 1930s and 40s...we're experimenting with limited access and better protection just as parkways and expressways did, and just as it took until the 1950s to get a system of "true" interstates, we've got another 10 to 20 years of roll-out and use before the network of protected bike lanes gets here. Take heart that that better world is inevitable.
 
Here are some scans from a 1976 document that was part grant application, part bike traffic study, part bike network plan, and part safety study. Some stuff is the same, eg. Central Square sucks and will probably kill you, but some stuff is really different. The Beacon/Hampshire/Kendall/Longfellow commuting corridor is much more popular now for example.

http://imgur.com/a/0Mg9C
 
Here's the first peep I've seen on the Vision Zero campaign since it started: http://app01.cityofboston.gov/VZSafety/#_=_

It's a map to record pervasive safety problems, from double-parking to pavement defects to speeding. Bike advocates seem to be stacking the deck so far!
 
Scipio said:
Here's the first peep I've seen on the Vision Zero campaign since it started: http://app01.cityofboston.gov/VZSafety/#_=_

It's a map to record pervasive safety problems, from double-parking to pavement defects to speeding. Bike advocates seem to be stacking the deck so far!
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needs more input in the southern end of the city and throughout roxbury and dorchester. I've gone through my list of known problem areas and places where I'd like to see better bike infrastructure. Kind of nice seeing that many other people have had the same issues in the same places. Mass Ave is a complete blur.
 
Update on the Beacon Street bike lane proposal from last month, Brookline has revised the original double buffered plan and created a new option with a parking protected bike lane.

The revision to the original plan adds flexposts in front of businesses at the start of the bike lane to prevent “I’ll only be a minute” parking, a splitter island to keep people from driving into the start of the bike lane, heavier paint treatments through intersections, and some sort of weird paint blob in front of the Temple Beth Zion.

The new plan is a NYC-inspired parking protected bike lane following the huge turnout in favor of a protected bike lane at the meeting in early January. It’s 7 feet wide with a 4 foot buffer which allows for plenty of space for passing or even riding side by side. Looks great, but the transition back to sharrows through Washington Square is going to be jarring for anyone not comfortable planting their ass in the middle of the lane. There are “Change Lanes to Pass” signs proposed which do seem to make a difference when I've been on streets that have them.
 
Tomorrow night, Feb. 4, 2016
Brookline Transportation Board Meeting
MLK Room, Main Entrance, Brookline High School
100 Greenough Street

Per the agenda:
7:15 PM Discussion of DPW of current and future public works. I expect that we will find out the results of the Route 9 crossing bids that came in a couple weeks ago.

7:30 PM Parking rate discussion

8:00 PM 7. DISCUSSION AND ACTION ON THE PROPOSED BICYCLE IMPROVEMENT PLAN FOR BEACON
STREET WESTBOUND (MARION STREET TO SUMMIT PATH CROSSING)
 PROPOSED PLANS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD AT
WWW.BROOKLINEMA.GOV/TRANSPORTATION -or Scipio's link above.

Sorry for the late notice, I just learned of this meeting myself.
 
The Brookline Transportation Board voted in favor of the "older" buffered bike lane due to a late objection by the Fire Chief. Board will re-vote, likely in favor of the cycle track option if they can convince the Chief that the cycle track option is OK. The reason for the wide 4' buffer and the 7' bike lane was to give emergency vehicles enough room to use the cycle track as a bypass route if need be, but the Chief was concerned that it could possibly be blocked by other responding vehicles. I believe the that the budget for this project still has to be approved by the Selectmen.

No word yet on the Route 9 crossing bid. They scheduled their regular February Board meeting for the 25th.
 
Maybe Brookline can come up with some mitigations here like designated emergency vehicle parking spaces or signal priority to clear out queues ahead of an emergency vehicle. It’s probably not something that a single town like Brookline should have to fight out project-by-project.

Really this is something where NACTO or AASHTO should sit down with their counterparts in firefighting standards organizations and figure out how to make this work long term. Plenty of other countries can have both sustainable street design AND effective firefighting.

This is a really tricky issue that is holding back some complete streets, traffic calming, and bicycle infrastructure improvements nationwide. On the one hand designing roads to accommodate a big American fire apparatus means that other drivers are going to feel comfortable driving fast and that we don’t get nice things like bumpouts and protected bike lanes. But on the other hand burning to death in fires sucks, and fire departments have more support in communities than planners and engineers do.
 
A little bit of a stale update (took these ~1 month ago), but the one-block section of the Grand Junction path is progressing:

SAjtF0h.jpg


AsJIiJQ.jpg
 
Scipio said:
Really this is something where NACTO or AASHTO should sit down with their counterparts in firefighting standards organizations and figure out how to make this work long term. Plenty of other countries can have both sustainable street design AND effective firefighting.
Click to expand...

NACTO has tried to do this, but they've been met with lots of resistance. All those turning radius templates and minimum lane width for large fire trucks really don't work in old, narrow street layouts. Fire chiefs often aren't involved early in design processes which results in these weird vetoes at the end of a project's design.

There's a really good discussion of traffic calming and emergency response here, from 2000: http://nacto.org/docs/usdg/emergency_response_manual_burden.pdf
 
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