Biking in Boston

The cycle tracks and paving on Causeway Street are looking close to being finished… The central median track is paved, flanked on both sides by new street lighting. I wish, especially since they redid the sidewalk on the Lomasney side of the O'Neill building, that they had provided for a cycle track from causeway, down lomasney and nashua Street to link up to the Nashua St. Park. That would at least provide for an unbroken connection with the river path system. There also is plenty of room for a track on the west side of lomasney at least as far as the intersection with Martha Road, and if there was any federal gripe about a cycle track right next to the O'Neil building, they could cross the track over to Avalon at the lone tenement.
 
Some early problems with the new flexposts on Congress Street, it's still wide enough for even truck driving Walsh supporters to park in:

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To the city's credit they went back and added more signs:
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And enforcement:
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I think that having the wide lane is reasonable in the short term. They don't have the equipment (sweepers and plows) to do anything narrower.
 
sm89 said:
I think that having the wide lane is reasonable in the short term. They don't have the equipment (sweepers and plows) to do anything narrower.
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lane width isn't the issue, the issue is distance between flex posts. They need to be close enough that someone cannot pull over in the middle of the block into the bike lane. Street sweepers and plows can enter and exit at the ends of the block.
 
dwash59 said:
lane width isn't the issue, the issue is distance between flex posts. They need to be close enough that someone cannot pull over in the middle of the block into the bike lane. Street sweepers and plows can enter and exit at the ends of the block.
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Boston drivers will just drive over the flex posts.

Strict enforcement is the only remedy.
 
tysmith95 said:
^screw flex posts. Make them steel or concrete posts.
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Well, that's not gonna happen.

I'd like to see flex posts on the Hvd Bridge, as well as auto lanes being narrowed. People drive way too fast on it, and I never feel safe when biking on it. Also on Mass Ave northbound by The Christian Science Ctr (and a fucking repaving of the road, which never got done before or after they just slapped some paint on the crumbling surface).
 
The Charlesgate Greenway project is continuing to inch along, there will be a public meeting on October 18th: http://www.mass.gov/eea/docs/dcr/ne.../projects/2016-10-18-charlesgate-greenway.pdf

At this public meeting, DCR will present the recommended conceptual design for the Charlesgate Greenway project, a multi-use pathway that will connect the Emerald Necklace pathways to the Paul Dudley White pathway within the Charles River Basin, including a signalized crossing of the Harvard (Mass. Ave) Bridge.
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There are some year-old concepts here: http://www.masco.org/system/files/d...e_greenway_presentation_to_lma_2015.10.21.pdf

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It looks like a nice bypass to avoid the Beacon/Mass intersection entirely if you are heading to points west. And the signal across Mass Ave will make it easy to get from Cambridge to the Paul Dudley White path as long as there is some queuing space.
 
Arlington said:
Meanwhile in Porter Sq, a grass roots (routes?) effort to install plastic, reflective poles:

https://www.gofundme.com/porter-bike-safety
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Yeah, good luck with that. They'll be installed in September and all deposited by plows in a snowbank by January. I know that's a good feature and all, but local climate is what local climate is and DPW drivers and private contractors working 12-hour shifts have their top priorities. Keeping a major intersection maximally clear is definitely a top priority. Can't exactly pussyfoot around that.

Pop-up barriers work in center of the roadway here where the plows are deflecting snow away from the yellow stripe. I just don't know logistically how you can make it work for anything on the shoulder except in extremely limited applications.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Yeah, good luck with that. They'll be installed in September and all deposited by plows in a snowbank by January. I know that's a good feature and all, but local climate is what local climate is and DPW drivers and private contractors working 12-hour shifts have their top priorities. Keeping a major intersection maximally clear is definitely a top priority. Can't exactly pussyfoot around that.

Pop-up barriers work in center of the roadway here where the plows are deflecting snow away from the yellow stripe. I just don't know logistically how you can make it work for anything on the shoulder except in extremely limited applications.
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Yes, ideally, these'd go in on April 1 (or 2nd?),and last 200 days at $3/day, but at the same time, for $650, think of it as much a cheap media buy & public relations (and a sign that they're politically organized) as it is legit infrastructure.
 
Cambridge's transportation director is against it due to the constrained width:

“We’re not conceptually against this, it’s just a tough location to make it work,” said Joe Barr, director of traffic parking and transportation for the city of Cambridge. “In the end it would result in a bike lane that’s less functional.”

Barr cited a number of reasons why flex bike posts wouldn’t work along the bike lane in Porter Square. For starters, he said the lane is not wide enough. Barr said according to MassDOT, the minimum width to place posts would be on a five-foot wide lane with a two-foot buffer, which the lanes in Porter Square don’t have. He also said unlike the location in San Francisco, bike posts here would cause issues with snow plowing in the winter.

“If they go ahead and put them in they would leave us without too many choices but to take them out,” he said.
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http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/ne...aise-to-take-bike-safety-into-their-own-hands

Meanwhile they're $300 over their goal and climbing. I donated to see what they can do, tactical urbanism projects like this are more about seeing what's possible than about building a permanent fix. Bufferless separated bike lanes are not a recommended solution for long stretches, but they are in use or proposed in a few spots where there has been a chronic problem of drivers parking in the bike lane. I think a few flex posts right here would keep the bike lane open so that cyclists can get into the left turn jughandle.
 
Now the city is saying they uploaded a bad version of the design, and that flex posts will at least be installed at Columbus and Mass Ave this year. I can believe that, there's an error present in both the 10/26 and the 11/3 versions so these definitely aren't perfect renderings.

Fertig is also tweeting that flex posts might be installed in the buffers in the spring, as if the 11/3 design is how the lanes will look at the end of the construction season this year. During the meeting in the summer it sounded like the city had more changes in mind for 2017. At the very least the Eliot Hotel has offered to pay for a sidewalk level cycletrack in front of their hotel, and the city plans to take them up on it next year.

See: http://www.visionzeroboston.org/massave
 
I was driving along Commercial Street yesterday and it's been stripped down a few layers for repaving... approaching Washington, a small part of an old streetcar rail was visible, embedded in the deepest exposed layer... Cool.
 
Separately, apparently the Neponset Trail extension is delayed until 2017, which is pretty disappointing.
 
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