Biking in Boston

While increased environmental awareness is part of it and may help reinforce or justify car-less living, its is not the reason for it (at last at growing scale). Being in my mid-20s I don't (want to) own a car for 2 reasons.

1) the expense and hassle of it. parking (paid or searching for free), insurance, risk of getting hit, gas. for me this is a simple cost benefit.

2)I dont have road rage but i get aggravated driving. I see people doing the dumbest stuff in their cars, and i just think about how my life is in the hands of a soccer mom with 2 kids texting in a giant ford excursion. That and being in TRAFFIC seeing that gets me.

3) this is more a tangent but a big part (if not the biggest in facilitating the carfree choice for not just me but many)- after growing up in the suburbs i saw 2 things- a) my dad would spend 2.5 hours a day in the car and 1 on the T in daily commuting. To me that just seems an unneccessary burden on a person (yes he did it for his family, but i think the suburban ideal is (and has been) a nice myth crafted by many forces. and B) a realization that although a yard is nice. a half-acre to yourself with no access to a shop/restaurant/bar/common hangout can get lonely and boring. At least in the city you can go around the corner and DO something, SEE someone.

To me the ideal of a suburban yard is similar to a car, and they go hand in hand. Both a car and a yard are nice to have when you want them, but outside of those times, they can just be a burden/expense and if you are willing to put up with some largely minor inconveniences every now and then, you can rent a car and go to a park. Ironically, living in the city and not having a car, I actually see more of nature than i ever did. Now when I go to "nature" i go camping instead of just sitting on a fertilized lawn.
 
A month after launch, and Hubway is still not at 50 stations yet, nevermind the promised 61 or the initially sought 150.
 
jass said:
A month after launch, and Hubway is still not at 50 stations yet, nevermind the promised 61 or the initially sought 150.
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I know that the businesses surrounding the proposed locations often had helpful alternative sites. The city and Hubway seem to be taking them under serious consideration but it does take time to contact abutters.
 
bbfen said:
I know that the businesses surrounding the proposed locations often had helpful alternative sites. The city and Hubway seem to be taking them under serious consideration but it does take time to contact abutters.
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The contract was awarded in 2009.
 
actually no, it was only awarded within the past year. The previous contract wasn't fulfilled.
 
MonopolyBag said:
One billion cars in the world. And if you look at US cities, the number of cars to the number of people is quite astonishing.

However, just because one owns a car doesn't mean they drive it every day, or even every week.

But our towns, cities, streets, shopping centers, way of life, schools, restaurants, libraries, and everything else here is the US is tailored towards cars, not bikes and walking. If the walking and biking amenities were there, people would not use the car as much. But it is the chicken or the egg right now. Invest money into non car oriented design when everyone uses the car to promote non car use, or wait until people stop using the car (will not happen without other change IMO)
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Monopolist

The automobile has been the single largest liberator of people in the past 50 years -- not only do cars let people move around inside of countries as economic oportunities change -- But cars and other personal motive transport (scooters, 3 wheelers, motorcycles, etc.):

1) enhance and foster the simplest of entreprenurial activity from selling your production of goods to offering your services and even just as ersatz transport for others
2) are vital to allowing opproessed peoplles to escape from oppression
3) easethe process of changing oppressive governments when they finally reach the breaking point

If all you have are public transport and feet -- its really easy to keep you bottled up where modern technology can be effective oppressing you -- give a man a car and suddenly he can become Genral Patton

That's why India is rapidly on its way to becoming the automobile / motorcycle capital of the world

Viva le car!

that of course doesn't mean that the entire landscape needs to be devoted to the car culture -- just that any attempt at changing people into pedestrians and users of public transport by making cars hard to use in cities by underinvesting in the infrastructure is doomed to failure -- see any city in India for example
 
In NYC, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen (among many other places) huge numbers of people get around on foot, bicycle, and public transit. They don't seem like oppressive places to me.
 
Ron, even more people walk, bicycle, rickshaw, and take public transit in Delhi, Mumbai, etc.

However that is hardly a strong endorsement of emulating cities with virtually no traffic rules, where lanes and even directions are arbitrary, people buy and sell anything anywhere at anytime and where people are occasionally run-over by ox-carts -- the essense of lack of oppression!
 
"people buy and sell anything anywhere at anytime " sounds like a good thing to me; let's have more of it here.
 
Ron Newman said:
actually no, it was only awarded within the past year. The previous contract wasn't fulfilled.
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Ron, it was the same company. They just said they were good for the first contract, then once they won, backed out so they could get more favorable terms.

The fact is, work on bikeshare has been ongoing since 2008. Conversations with land owners began in 2008.

Locations should have been confirmed and ready to go in 2010.
 
Posted last night:

Hubway Hubway
The system will be shut down tonight at 12 due to extreme weather conditions. We will update you when Hubway will be open for riding.
 
Whoa. Didn't know this about the Hubway. Where can I get me some of this money?

Hubway is completely funded by grants totaling $4.5 million including $3 million from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), $450,000 from the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) and $250,000 from the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grant program.

In addition to the grant funding, station sponsorships and revenue through a separate advertising program, as well as income generated by memberships and one time payments by individual users are expected to cover the annual operating costs for Hubway. The Boston Transportation Department (BTD) will oversee and work with Alta Bicycle Share to ensure they meet the individual requirements of the contract.

Currently, 11 sponsorships have been secured for Hubway worth $1.5 million over three years including over $600,000 from New Balance, and Boston Bikes will continually seek more. As part of its sponsorship, New Balance retains naming rights of the system which is expected to become New Balance Hubway. Sponsors will be assigned stations where their logos will appear, they include:

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Northeastern University
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Children’s Hospital
Procter & Gamble Gillette
Harvard University
Boston Properties
Fallon Company/Fan Pier
Colleges of the Fenway
Equity Offices
City Sports
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Source: http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/default.aspx?id=5075
 
I wonder how JCDecaux/Wall feels about their exclusive outdoor contract being bumped into?
 
jass said:
Ron, it was the same company. They just said they were good for the first contract, then once they won, backed out so they could get more favorable terms.

The fact is, work on bikeshare has been ongoing since 2008. Conversations with land owners began in 2008.

Locations should have been confirmed and ready to go in 2010.
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Beats me. I know of four different racks in the Back Bay where the city gave abutters 30 days notice to comment and respond with alternatives before the bikes showed up. In at least one instance the location was succesfully changed.
 
whighlander said:
Monopolist

The automobile has been the single largest liberator of people in the past 50 years
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Actually, it's closer to 100 years. The automobile brought a huge improvement in the lives of the working class. When Boston's upper classes went to the North and South Shore and the Maine coast in the summer, and the upper middle might go to a cottage at Nantasket, Franklin Park was laid out so that the lower classes of Boston could pretend that they were in the 'country.' The Model T let them actually go to the country, or the seashore as they saw fit. The automobile let them live beyond walking distance of a factory, and to find new work elsewhere when they saw fit. The misery of isolated farm life became more bearable when you could drive to town, and relatives in different communities could stay in contact.

And beside those sociological benefits, the automobile was a huge environmental improvement. When horses reigned in cities, the roads were full of manure year-round which either became a foul soup in the rain, or dried to dust that blew in the wind, filling your eyes and mouth, and entering every open window and covering every surface. They also ended the constant need to remove dead work horses from the streets. Removing dead horses was a major municipal function before the automobile. Streets would be blocked for hours, and the rending facilities were an extraordinary source of pollution.

People who lived through the introduction of the automobile were not stupid - they knew what was good for them, and they celebrated the change.
 
bbfen said:
Beats me. I know of four different racks in the Back Bay where the city gave abutters 30 days notice to comment and respond with alternatives before the bikes showed up. In at least one instance the location was succesfully changed.
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I would have done it differently. You need to sell the abutters on the concept. Bike share station = customers being deposited directly at your door. Bike share station = extra convenience for your condo people.

You dont approach it like "we're going to drop this rack off, ok?" you need buy in, you need to make the abutters WANT a station.


Done right, theyll actually COMPETE for a station, and in some cases, chip in money to have one near them. Thats whats happening now in DC. When someone proposes a new building, guess what, they say "well buy a bike share station". They get bonus points during the approval process AND years of free publicity from having one at their door.
 
jass said:
Done right, theyll actually COMPETE for a station, and in some cases, chip in money to have one near them. Thats whats happening now in DC. When someone proposes a new building, guess what, they say "well buy a bike share station". They get bonus points during the approval process AND years of free publicity from having one at their door.
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This will likely happen here, too, as it becomes more evident that the program is successful.
 
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