Green Line Extension to Medford & Union Sq

[RandomWalk]

The path curving around the bollards near the Gilman entrance is going to be a source of conflict with cyclists.

 

[Charlie_mta]

The path curving around the bollards near the Gilman entrance is going to be a source of conflict with cyclists.

Why was that wow in the path needed? Looks like really poor design.

 

[Brattle Loop]

Why was that wow in the path needed? Looks like really poor design.

Probably better than having the entrance opening right onto the path. With the ROW fence there it would be hard to see if anything was coming, and probably too big a risk of passengers getting accidentally run down by bikes. Not sure that they needed to make the kink in the path as wide as they did, though (that closest pair of bollards seems like it might well have been sufficient to protect the entrance).

 

[Dr. Rosen Rosen]

Can we just come out already and make signs that say: “bicyclists in spandex who think they’re trying out for Tour de France are not welcome here.” Seriously, to the d*ck on a $1,000 bike riding above 10mph, I’ll make sure you know you’re unwanted on our community path.

 

[RandomWalk]

I worry that folks just wanting to walk the path are going to get yelled at for impeding the through cyclists, and that is going to lead to a socialized avoidance by casual users.

 

[The EGE]

I guess that's a possibility. I did hear a fire alarm going off though (continuous ringing). I hope it's just a drill... I really want this to open on 12/12

Somerville Fire Department was training at the stations; presumably Medford as well.

Somerville Firefighters Local 76

Throughout this week all companies are rotating through familiarization training with the new Green Line MBTA stations in preparation for their opening in a few weeks. Each station presents its own...

www.facebook.com

 

[bigeman312]

Can we just come out already and make signs that say: “bicyclists in spandex who think they’re trying out for Tour de France are not welcome here.” Seriously, to the d*ck on a $1,000 bike riding above 10mph, I’ll make sure you know you’re unwanted on our community path.

While I understand the point you are trying to make, but I need to point out two things:

1. The most common fast and dangerous people on multi-use trails are no longer the “bicyclists in spandex who think they’re trying out for Tour de France," but rather those on electric vehicles. Your gripe would have been valid 10 years ago, but nowadays you'll commonly see eBikes, including Class 2 (throttle to 20mph without pedaling) and Class 3 (28 mph, even uphill, with no exertion, stamina, strength, skill, or experience necessary), and escooters of questionable legality that can go 40+ mph. The people using human powered vehicles seem like a quaint problem from the 2010s.
2. $1k doesn't get you what it used to. This is a popular $1,000 bicycle. It's a fairly standard, mid-tier hybrid bicycle from a reputable manufacturer. This is exactly the type of bicycle that would be recommended to someone who is not a cycling enthusiast, wants a new bicycle, values a balance of comnfort and performance, and doesn't want to cut corners.

I would welcome a speed limit. I'd also welcome banning any EV that can travel greater than 20 mph. Class 3 eBikes should be classified as mopeds and be banned from multi-use trails, but Massachusetts isn't ready to have that conversation yet, it appears.

 

[guitarguynboston]

My ebike was under a $1,000 and my throttle can get up to almost 35mph and even a little faster with pedal assist.

The trails out here in North Central Mass are alot quieter but you get those slow families going for a stroll where they take up the whole path in both directions and their kids are just let to run wild not paying attention or being polite.

But me personally and the people I know who have ebikes follow the bicycle rules when riding. We don't ride at top speeds around pedestrians. We slow down, signal when we're supposed to, and basically be courteous towards riders and walkers.

Now there's gonna be some a$$holes but there are some of those same people driving cars, walking and riding basic bicycles.

 

[bigeman312]

My ebike was under a $1,000 and my throttle can get up to almost 35mph and even a little faster with pedal assist.

The trails out here in North Central Mass are alot quieter but you get those slow families going for a stroll where they take up the whole path in both directions and their kids are just let to run wild not paying attention or being polite.

But me personally and the people I know who have ebikes follow the bicycle rules when riding. We don't ride at top speeds around pedestrians. We slow down, signal when we're supposed to, and basically be courteous towards riders and walkers.

Now there's gonna be some a$$holes but there are some of those same people driving cars, walking and riding basic bicycles.

There are multiple things at play, here, and all are imnportant parts of the conversation:

• Behavior: "Now there's gonna be some a$$holes but there are some of those same people driving cars, walking and riding basic bicycles." This is true and something that needs to be accepted to fully understand the following bullet-points.
• Vehicle Appropriateness: It is unlawful and inapprioriate to drive a tank down Blue Hill Ave. It is unlawful and inappriate to ride a bicycle on the Mass Pike. It is unlawful and inappropriate to ride a motorcycle on the Minuteman. Could some of these actions be possible and safe if driven/ridden by a kind, skilled human? Sure. But we accept that is an unrealistic approach and therefore seek to separate types of vehicles that are incompatible with space or one another. I am firmly of the belief that a vehicle whose throttle can get you to 35mph is inappropriate for a multi-use path and completely against the spirit of the infrastructure. We are sleepwalking into making the same mistake of our great grandparents, who saw the electric bicycle become the motorcycle, and the "parkways" (emphasis on park) become "highways." You may be bending over backwards to make sure to be curteous of other path users, but as long as ass holes exist, so too do rules and regulations.
• Infrastructure: Sometimes, it's not the vehicle or the behavior that's the problem, but rather the infrastructure. In your case, you own a 35 mph electric moped (by any other name is still a moped). It would be a good thing to see a shift away from SUVs and towards lower-footprint EVs like yours. For this to be possible, we need the infrastructure to accomodate that shift. It is perfectly understandable that you choose to ride on the more pleasant multi-use trails, rather than highways and roads. We need more infrastructure that caters to the space between a pedestrian and an SUV, and this space should be taken from the SUVs not the pedestrians. Here, you are often forced to choose between making your life worse (riding your EV on roads where you may perceive danger from SUVs) or making the lives of pedestrians worse (by bringing a 35 mph throttle-powered electric moped onto a multi-use trail). That's ultimately an infrastructure problem.
• Enforcement: None of this matters without enforcement. As long as people park their cars in bus lanes, ride dirt bikes on the Southwest Corridor, drive 40mph through a 25mph city street with lots of pedestrians, and know there are no repurcussions for their behavior, the "a$$holes" win. Enforcement needs to be a part of the equation.

 

[SomervilleRed]

New temporary blue fence for the “Pedestrian Walkway” at Gilman as a barrier to the High School construction work. And some last minute welding touch-ups.

 

[Ruairi]

While I understand the point you are trying to make, but I need to point out two things:

1. The most common fast and dangerous people on multi-use trails are no longer the “bicyclists in spandex who think they’re trying out for Tour de France," but rather those on electric vehicles. Your gripe would have been valid 10 years ago, but nowadays you'll commonly see eBikes, including Class 2 (throttle to 20mph without pedaling) and Class 3 (28 mph, even uphill, with no exertion, stamina, strength, skill, or experience necessary), and escooters of questionable legality that can go 40+ mph. The people using human powered vehicles seem like a quaint problem from the 2010s.
2. $1k doesn't get you what it used to. This is a popular $1,000 bicycle. It's a fairly standard, mid-tier hybrid bicycle from a reputable manufacturer. This is exactly the type of bicycle that would be recommended to someone who is not a cycling enthusiast, wants a new bicycle, values a balance of comnfort and performance, and doesn't want to cut corners.

I would welcome a speed limit. I'd also welcome banning any EV that can travel greater than 20 mph. Class 3 eBikes should be classified as mopeds and be banned from multi-use trails, but Massachusetts isn't ready to have that conversation yet, it appears.

I have a $1000k e bike (class 1, pedal assist, capped at 20mph) that I use to ferry my kid around. I plan to use the path a lot as he spends a lot of time at the Y and cycling along highland is dangerous and unpleasant.
I actually see e-bikes as major factor in future urban mobility.
We don't have a second car and the bike does everything a secondary vehicle is needed for.
I really don't see many using the path for casual walking from where it dips under McGrath inbound.

 

[bigeman312]

I have a $1000k e bike (class 1, pedal assist, capped at 20mph) that I use to ferry my kid around. I plan to use the path a lot as he spends a lot of time at the Y and cycling along highland is dangerous and unpleasant.
I actually see e-bikes as major factor in future urban mobility.
We don't have a second car and the bike does everything a secondary vehicle is needed for.
I really don't see many using the path for casual walking from where it dips under McGrath inbound.

That's perfect. Like I said, I'd welcome banning any EV that can travel greater than 20 mph. Class 1 e-bikes should be the upper bound for a narrow, urban multi-use path with lots of pedestrian volume, like the Somerville Community Path.

 

[Charlie_mta]

I worry that folks just wanting to walk the path are going to get yelled at for impeding the through cyclists, and that is going to lead to a socialized avoidance by casual users.

If walkers will just stay on the right side of the line and not take up the full width of the path, then bike riders and walkers should be able to navigate it just fine.

 

[ant8904]

This is ultimately an engineering problem. Just looking at bike trails and community paths all over the state shows we can't just expect people to walk on the right and etc. Even if people do do that, just he discomfort some will feel of a bike riding by at decent clips will feel discouraged.

The reality is these conflicts are going to happen and keep happening until investments get made to reduce/remove the conflicts. Which may never happen or at least within a timeframe that matters to us. A lot of it is (probably) in the pre-value engineer version of GLX (if anyone know where to look that up, I would like a link, best I can find again is the Somerville By Design stuff which may not reflect what the MBTA were truly planning along the path - though it does clearly show the Gilman Sq's old station headhouse plans).

But we're not in that timeline, people who wants to use the trail to commute to Boston and thus speed versus the path for more recreational and pedestrian uses will be a continual issue. I imagine it will be similar to the conflicts on the Esplanade in some area. That's what's it's going to be though hopefully one day some of the conflicts will be fixed/reduced by future projects.

Edit: I found more renders of the old plan - http://www.halvorsondesign.com/glx - It's only the old artist renderings and not the full plans, but I think it's worth remebering. Not to cry on what could have been, but maybe one day political will and funding can be bought to execute some of the old designs. From what I can tell, I think the old plans for Gilman was the bike path stay level to the rails with on-and-off ramps while an accessible area is above. Thus bikes can ride to spandex/e-bike speeds below while pedestrians would walk in the "Accessible Path" area. I don't know if these things can be installed in the future or not.

 

[RandomWalk]

If walkers will just stay on the right side of the line and not take up the full width of the path, then bike riders and walkers should be able to navigate it just fine.

I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or not.

However, the path is intended for use by everyone. That includes kids, who can be, by nature, chaotic. They could be, for example, learning how to bike, and meandering across the path. The existing community path is wide enough to accommodate that, while the new part doesn’t appear to be so. Not coincidentally, the existing part passes through more affluent parts of Somerville.

Are you telling folks living near the new part that they should go a mile down the path before they can practice biking? This runs right into issues of environmental justice.

 

[bigpicture7]

I worry that folks just wanting to walk the path are going to get yelled at for impeding the through cyclists, and that is going to lead to a socialized avoidance by casual users.

I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or not.

However, the path is intended for use by everyone. That includes kids, who can be, by nature, chaotic. They could be, for example, learning how to bike, and meandering across the path. The existing community path is wide enough to accommodate that, while the new part doesn’t appear to be so. Not coincidentally, the existing part passes through more affluent parts of Somerville.

Are you telling folks living near the new part that they should go a mile down the path before they can practice biking? This runs right into issues of environmental justice.

The serious commuting cyclists (of which my amazing wife is one) are probably not going to like me for saying this, and I truly mean no disrespect for it (I say this as someone who made a legit attempt years ago to become skilled and comfortable as an urban commuting cyclist and came close but didn't quite ever feel comfortable, so mostly withdrew from it)

We need to stop referring to 'cycling' as if it is one thing. It is composed of at least two distinctly separate concepts, and we do ourselves a disservice by treating all cycling as one...and doing so leads to ill-advised designs such as the narrow portions of this path. Commuting cyclists want serious speed (again, don't shoot me for saying this because I am not saying it in contempt: my position is that this speed should be accessible). "Serious speed" is relative; but think of the large effective speed range here: walkers, joggers, blue bikers, novice/casual bikers, commuting cyclists.

Random's top quote here is the operative one. Firstly, cyclists generally do not put others at significant risk of injury. One has an amazing amount of control as a cyclist. You in fact want the others to ignore you rather than try to evade or move out of the way (unless, of course, they're fully blocking you) because you are incredibly more nimble and adaptive than they are, and it is actually faster for you to steer around or adaptively brake to get around the obstacle quicker than if the pedestrian actually acknowledges you. However, unless all pedestrians or slower bikers are also themselves experienced cyclists, they are not going to 'get' this. And they get the crap scared out of them (note, I am not saying they are actually at substantive risk of harm or injury). So, to Random's point, it risks socialized avoidance by casual users. It risks this pathway becoming a super biker's super highway to the exclusion of everyone else on their own volition.

If the designers of this made it an essential design requirement to accommodate fast cycling and slow cycling, rather than just conceptualizing cycling as one universal thing, then they never would have arrived at this as an acceptable design for a "community path." At the very least, it would have forced a conversation about design priorities; or better yet, pushing the boundaries re: design constraints to maybe have creatively found a way to make this thing wider.

 

[Arlington]

I agree that the path is too narrow. I bike Winter Hill / Gilman a couple of times a month and, selfishly, want better for the neighborhood (as an outsider). My questions are: whose job is it to fix? And can you really call it "justice"?

My answers. It is Somerville's job to fix (not the State) and this is a matter of municipal politics, not [statewide] justice.

Here's why: The State's judgement, going back to the settlement with the Conservation Law Foundation, was that electric transit itself was the tool of Environmental Justice: it was agreed to be a sufficient boon to poorer parts of Somerville to offset the Big Dig's injustice. If you change the definition of justice, it isn't justice, so I don't accept that the transit itself needs a path of any particular description. Anything wider than 0" is more than just, as far as the original definition of justice is concerned.

The path is a "recent"/afterthought/extra. An additional boon. I don't accept that any bike path promoters (myself included) are doing justice. We're simply doing politics. We want stuff. We want a wider bike path. We believe that the bike path is cripplingly narrow, and a wider path, if someone could have been found to pay for it, would have been had faster and more cheaply as part of GLX. But it wasn't.

I judge that the State, MassDOT, and MBTA have done their duty here, and should focus from here on delivering things like Red-Blue, and other projects that address EJ communities that have never gotten an electric transit extension nor a path of any width. Places like Lynn, Revere, and Lowell. We gave Chelsea SLX in exactly this spirit. Some places in Chelsea there is no path alongside the SLX even though if they'd worked at it, the ROW coulda fit it. Sad and displeasing to path advocates, but not unjust.

But sure, let Somerville (who built the existing, wider path, that, by comparison, makes the MBTA's path seem "unjust") make its own local investment allocations to fix subtler EJ problems within its borders. That might turn out to be things like better access to Assembly from Ten Hills rather than a wider path at Gilman.

 

[ant8904]

Somerville pledged to give GLX $50 million dollars when the project was looking at death's door pre-value engineering (which media and state never made any noise about). Which 2nd start of the project that it was able to stay within budget and thus allowing GLX to return a combined $28 million (combined Somerville and Cambridge contributions) while also cancelling future contributions.

$50 million (or Somerville's amount of the $28 million returned) should go a long way to independently widen the path. I am assuming there's permission requirements but such funds were earmarked with Somerville prepared to swallow that financial cost for to accept GLX and community path in this incarnation. I don't know where the funds went, but if it's return and not used up, why not build the path to a design that it was originaly should to have been in the first place.

 

[Charlie_mta]

I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or not.

However, the path is intended for use by everyone. That includes kids, who can be, by nature, chaotic. They could be, for example, learning how to bike, and meandering across the path. The existing community path is wide enough to accommodate that, while the new part doesn’t appear to be so. Not coincidentally, the existing part passes through more affluent parts of Somerville.

Are you telling folks living near the new part that they should go a mile down the path before they can practice biking? This runs right into issues of environmental justice.

I am serious, based on my experience of riding my clunky, non-electric bicycle slowly on 8 foot wide paved paths. Pedestrians walking in groups and hogging the entire width is usually the problem. If they would just stay to the right of the centerline, then there is ample opportunity to safely pass and accommodate mixed modes. The one danger I experience is e-bikes and e-scooters zooming along at roadway speeds and almost hitting me and others. I think the solution are signs that say "Keep to the Right Except to Pass", and speed limits with speed limit signs for e-bikes and scooters, with violators getting ticketed. That will require some changes in laws, but certainly politically doable.

 

[chrisbrat]

A maybe-too-narrow path is better than no path, right? All the bitching about these new services and amenities before they're even open. And to think people in other parts of the country consider Bostonians to be grumpy and negative...