Biking in Boston

So nice to finally have a bike lane on mem drive:

30899566301_b3ca738449_b.jpg


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Well, some of that appears to be from last construction season - both Mountfort St (Fenway) and Walter St in Rozzie were done earlier this year.

I haven't ridden the other streets in a some time.
 
CSTH said:
So nice to finally have a bike lane on mem drive:
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Agreed, but now they need to widen the pedestrian part and paint signage to get joggers off the bike side.

I don't what it is about Boston - for a strict, puritanical city, all rules when it comes to transportation are ignored - pedestrians just walk in front of cars, cars ignore all rules of the road, even people riding the t don't move into the car as much as they do in other cities. It's my least favorite cultural attribute.
 
^The 'written' rules are ignored; the 'unwritten' rules are enforced remorselessly.

Agreed on mem paths. Once challenge is that a lot of the the 'predestrian part' is granite blocks which most runners will try to avoid because its very hard and uneven.
 
FK4 said:
Agreed, but now they need to widen the pedestrian part and paint signage to get joggers off the bike side.

I don't what it is about Boston - for a strict, puritanical city, all rules when it comes to transportation are ignored - pedestrians just walk in front of cars, cars ignore all rules of the road, even people riding the t don't move into the car as much as they do in other cities. It's my least favorite cultural attribute.
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FK -- Boston hasn't been very strictly a Puritanical City for quite a while

You have to chalk up all the tolerance of scoflawism which is rampant around here to a combination of the immigrant groups who fled repression; marinated in the juice of the native zest for liberty [ref American Revolution's cradle -- original Tea party, etc.].

Thus in the 19th C the Irish arrived with a distrust of rules imposed by their British Masters, which fit right into the ethos of the Sons of Liberty. They rapidly transferred this perspective on being skeptical of rulers to the vestiges of the Yankees who continued to own or at least control the majority of the economic structure.

Later, toward the turn of the 20th C, the Poles, and Russian Jews arrived fleeing the repression of the Russian Tsar and who realized that getting caught breaking rules in Boston wouldn't get you a Siberian address. Somewhere in the middle the Italians came with a well known reputation of ignoring authority -- possibly an extended hangover from the fall of Roman Empire.

On top of those immigrants, for the past 100 years, we have had the temporary to permanent emigration each autumn of students and more students from everywhere -- imbued with the native student distrust of authority.

Stir this all together and you get the relatively unconstrained behavior of the "Bostonian" pedestrian, bicyclist, driver and the T riders.
 
"Agreed, but now they need to widen the pedestrian part and paint signage to get joggers off the bike side."

Actually, the new "bike side" is multi-use. It's not bikes only.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Wow. That's not a really racist hottake at all.
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I thought it was actually pretty hilarious and maybe even somewhat accurate (though hardly specific to Boston)

A friend of mine was a lifeguard at the JCC in Newton and found that the older Russian emigres wouldn't listen to anything he said - they came to America for Freedom, after all.
 
There is now green paint extending through the River St./Cambridge St./Soldiers Field Road mess. No pics because I was driving, but I'll try to grab some tomorrow if I remember. Presumably DCR saying "we tried" before revisiting this next year?
 
Uncivil_Engineer said:
There is now green paint extending through the River St./Cambridge St./Soldiers Field Road mess. No pics because I was driving, but I'll try to grab some tomorrow if I remember. Presumably DCR saying "we tried" before revisiting this next year?
Click to expand...

The state is in the middle of a $2.9 Million project at that intersection now. The project will upgrade the existing traffic signal, place signs above the road for lane identification, geometric improvements to the intersection, installing ADA complaint pedestrian ramps but also includes building a cycle track from River St to Western Ave along Soldiers Field Road. The project is 6% complete and is expected to be completed in Summer 2017.
 
matredsoxfan said:
The state is in the middle of a $2.9 Million project at that intersection now. The project will upgrade the existing traffic signal, place signs above the road for lane identification, geometric improvements to the intersection, installing ADA complaint pedestrian ramps but also includes building a cycle track from River St to Western Ave along Soldiers Field Road. The project is 6% complete and is expected to be completed in Summer 2017.
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What's the deal with bicycle underpasses when they rebuild the bridges? Is that still on track? The segment of "bike path" approaching the River St Bridge is almost too narrow for two bikes to pass each other as it is right now.
 
FK4 said:
What's the deal with bicycle underpasses when they rebuild the bridges? Is that still on track?
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The underpasses were not included in the 2017-2021 MassDOT Capitol Improvement Plan.
In a 1 to 3 rating system, MassDOT classified only bike and ped improvements were rated as tier 3, all other type of projects were given preference.
 
Randomgear said:
The underpasses were not included in the 2017-2021 MassDOT Capitol Improvement Plan.
In a 1 to 3 rating system, MassDOT classified only bike and ped improvements were rated as tier 3, all other type of projects were given preference.
Click to expand...

Wow, seriously? I don't actually know what the timeline is for the bridges to be done - is there still a chance then it is it all over?

I thought the Anderson was definitely going to get it also...
 
Anderson had water and gas lines reworked so as not to preclude a future underpass but an underpass wasn't part of the original bid scope and it wasn't added to the project.

I don't know about the other bridges, my hope is that they will also be reconstructed to not preclude future underpasses.
 
Arlington said:
If you are a bike commuter or anyone who rides a bike as "street transportation", please add the Ride Report app to your smartphone so we can crowdsource data on how well our grid is working for bikes:

https://ride.report
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The Boston map launched recently:

https://ride.report/boston

Not too much data on there yet, I bet they are discarding some routes that are only used by a few people with the app to preserve anonymity. I don't get how the block-by-block rankings work since I'm only asked to rate each ride as "great" or "not great".
 
Snow clearing on the Mass Ave cycle track:
Before:
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After:
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