The Blog is Dead! Long Live the Blog!

The new Bike Newton website just went live yesterday! It's the same link as the old Bike Newton website:

www.bikenewton.org

If I did everything right, pretty soon this blog will disappear from Google searches for "bike newton" and only the new website will appear. All of the old contents of this blog (and, of course, new blog entries) are accessible in the new blog, which is a page on the website:

www.bikenewton.org/blog

Nathan and I are still the official bloggers, and now that the website is done, expect more consistent updates.

Soon, links to this blog will redirect to www.bikenewton.org/blog.

New Website on the Way!

Sorry about the lack of entries lately. I've been hard at work getting a degree in library and information science, and then putting that coursework to work designing a new website for Bike Newton.

Soon, this blog and the bikenewton.org website will be consolidated into a new website at bikenewton.org. There will be all kinds of new features, including a road hazard report form, bike safety instruction, google calendar, and more! The site will even have an iPhone version, so you'll be able to report road hazards as you encounter them, check the calendar for upcoming events, or even add your two bits on the blog from your handheld devices.

I will post a notice here when the site is migrated. I'll leave all the blog postings up here after the migration as a failsafe backup, but you'll be able to access all of the old posts (and comments) on the new site as well. The target date for the migration is June 1, but don't be surprised if it takes a little longer, or if the new site has a few missing features when the migration happens.

Promises Broken

The roadwork on Commonwealth Avenue between Grant Ave. and the Boston line has finished. In spite of repeated pledges by city officials to paint bike lanes on that length of Comm. Ave., the absence of bike lanes is loud.

-----update 12/21/12------

Apparently, it's the fault of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A recent email from Newton's Commissioner of Public Works to a Bike Newton Steering Committee member said the City of Newton pushed for bike lanes on the project, but the Commonwealth rejected the idea because of their requirements for bicycle and auto lane widths. The Commonwealth did paint the center line in a position such that bike lanes will be possible. The Commissioner intends to paint bike lanes after the Commonwealth cedes control of the project (next year) to Newton.

Keep Your Legs in Shape this Winter!

Bike Newton recently received an email about an event that should interest anyone who wants to keep fit later this winter when the white starts blowing:

My name is Allison Carter, and I am part of Team Velox Rota, the largest friends-and-family cycling team that raises funds and rides for the MS Foundation of New England. We are a Boston-area group that trains and educates cyclists for safe, long-distance charity rides, particularly those that benefit the MS Foundation. For more information about TVR, check out our website: http://www.veloxrota.org/

I work in Newton and I have become familiar with the good work your organization does, including organizing community rides to promote safe streets for folks on bikes as well as leading a group of riders on the Newton House Tour. I have attached a poster for an upcoming Spin-a-thon even that will be held on January 14th at the Boston Sports Club in Davis Square, Somerville. We are hoping to attract people who are interested in cycling and looking for training over the wintertime to participate.

Contact INFO@VELOXROTA.ORG to register.

 

Accident Close to Home

On Tuesday last week, one of our own, Jo-Anne Wyndham, was badly injured when a car struck her on her bicycle. Here is her story, from an email (reproduced with permission):

I was right hooked by a car turning right into a gas station... . The driver passed me with my 2 rear blinkys on, much reflective clothing and bike shoes and a very bright front blinky all visible and turned right into the gas station right in front of me. I tried but couldn't stop or steer out of the way so she hit me with her front fender, I rolled off the fender and hit the ground... .

Although she did not even bother to approach me to find out if I was OK, there were 8 amazing bystanders who took great care of me. One held my head/neck still for about 10 minutes as he was concerned about a neck injury (and he was right). Another brought me a blanket. One called 911. Another called a friend of mine to come down to be with me. The rest formed a human chain and wouldn't allow any cars to enter the driveway where I was lying. They were amazing and the worst part is that I can't thank them because I don't know who they are. I learned the meaning of paying it forward, as this is exactly what I do for others and now a group of people did it for me! I was so touched by their caring! 

So far the accident report only reflected the driver's point of view and I'm now trying to locate the cop from Boston District 5 to give my side of the incident.

My injuries include 3 ruptured cervical disks, central spinal cord contusion and a concussion. My helmet saved my life or at least saved me from a major brain trauma! I am now going to become a great advocate of helmet use and have called everyone I know who cycles without a helmet and pleaded with them to wear one. My son actually told me that as soon as he heard about my accident and the fact that I'm still alive pushed him to start wearing that "nice helmet" I bought him. I'm so glad!

I am out of work until further notice (at least until September 13th). I may need spinal fusion surgery if the neurogenic pain from one of the ruptured disks that is sitting on my spinal cord and likely causing the pain in my hands and arms (neurogenic pain is worse than labor pain, and I never thought I would say that anything was worse than labor pain!). I will continue to try conservative medical treatment and see if that helps at all, but I can tell you that if this pain continues, I will agree to the surgery.

If anyone wonders why bicyclists sometimes feel persecuted, perhaps this story explains why. How did the driver not see a cyclist with bright clothing, reflectors, and lights? Why did the driver fail to check on the victim of her poor driving? Why did the policeman who responded to the accident not interview the victim either at the scene or later in the hospital? How often do we hear about this kind of negligence in car-to-car accidents? It just confirms a perception that road-culture is predominantly anti-bicycle. Then again, there were all those helpful bystanders: clearly, road-culture is mixed, and we can depend on some people for genuine, selfless support. Perhaps those are the same people who slow as they pass me, who wait for me to cross an intersection before turning, and who wave at me to take a turn.

I hope her recovery is quick, (she's fit and in good spirits, which helps), and in the longer run, I hope  her legal case (she has secured Andrew Fischer, a lawyer specializing in bike injury cases) convinces more drivers and police to behave as if bicyclists have a place on the roads.

In the meantime, be careful out there. Clearly, this isn't Amsterdam. Yet.

Stuck on Parking

What's becoming more and more clear to this novice activist is that any local changes to roadways and road use pretty much require changes in the procedures of governance. Bike Newton (along with Newton BikePed) has been diligently working on convincing various elected and appointed officials that we need changes on our roads to make them safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. At a recent Bike Newton meeting, frustration surfaced: it seems as if we've convinced, if not everyone, at least a lot of critical people. The mayor assures us we have his support, several Aldermen are supporting us in every way they can muster, and even the head of DPW wants changes (as he should, since he frequently bikes to work!).

But all this activity and support seems to result in very little action. We now have a short stretch of bike lane on Beacon Street at B.C., and a few short snippets in the neighborhood of city hall, and some promises (but little else) for more. If there's all this support, what keeps things from happening? The "way it's done," is what we keep hearing. How is it done? You'd think the head of the DPW could direct his employees to have a design proposed, get some input from community groups, and revise and execute it. You'd think. Or you'd think the mayor could say, "Let it be so." You'd think.

The sticky business that slows everything down seems to be parking: anything that involves parking--or more specifically, reducing the amount of on-street parking--triggers a visit to Traffic Council, an Aldermanic Committee designed to halt projects long enough for concerned citizens to derail them. The process has a veneer of democracy: why shouldn't potentially affected citizens have a voice in the process? If I'm going to be prohibited from parking on the street in front of my house, shouldn't my voice have a place in the decision process? Answer: Yes, but.

But nobody's voice, mine included, should gum up the process so thoroughly that every effort to change the status quo requires a Herculean effort. The short-run solution is to flow around these barriers with compromise. We can't have a through-bike lane because of parking? Alright. There are alternatives, such as sharrows or, as Newton Streets and Sidewalks has suggested, bike lanes marked with dotted lines, or as Brookline has done on Beacon Street, bike lanes alternating with "Share the Road" signage.

The longer-term solution, though, involves changes in the paths of these proposals. They really don't belong in Aldermanic Committees. They belong in the DPW, which has the skill set for evaluating roadway designs, and under the Mayor's office, which has the charter for public safety. There should of course be some kind of provision for citizen input, but it shouldn't be designed primarily to collect objections and wield tacit veto power. Can we ever get unstuck from parking? Can Newton move forward?

Bikers subsidize drivers

Not only do we need more bikes for the environment, we need more bikes to balance local budgets! Taxes borne by drivers (fuel, registration, etc.) support highways. The cost of driving on local streets is mostly borne by non-driving-related taxes: sales taxes, property taxes. We're all sharing the cost, even those of us who drive less or not at all. Roads cost about 28 cents per mile of car driving. Bikes? Not quite a penny a mile.

To balance the road budget, we need 12 people commuting by bicycle for each person who commutes by car.

 For more details, follow the link to Grist.

Crowd Sourcing Bike Lane Rankings

Newton has less than 0.2% of its roads marked with bike lanes. Boston has almost 4% marked with bike lanes. What about your town? Let's create an annual metro Boston town ranking, see who is doing best, and which towns need to get their acts together. Kind of like college rankings.

Contact your town transportation department or bike group to find out how many miles of bike lane you have, and post it in a comment here (with attribution, preferably). If you are especially motivated, look up your town's total roadway mileage here and express your number as a percentage of either centerline miles (that is, just the length of the total roadway), or lane miles (roadways multplied by number of lanes in the roadways).

Get Your Groove On!

Get a finger-snapping, foot-tapping earful of the mellow sounds of the Nate Aronow Nextet with their brand new number, "Bikin' the Bike"!

 

Ride your bike to the Newton Farmer's Market

Tired of the tuesday afternoon gridlock on Beacon Street? Bike Newton will be providing free valet parking for bicyclist shoppers at Newton Farmer's Market at Cold Spring Park tomorrow from 1:30 to 6:00 pm. Don't forget a backpack to hold your veggies, and of course your helmet.

If successful, bike valet parking will be extended to the friday market in Nonantum. We may even arrange for delivery of produce by bike.

Bicycle Friendly Summer Reading

I've been offline lately while I learn to be a reference librarian. One of my assignments was to create an annotated bibliography - a list of sources with descriptions.

Perfect opportunity for a bike-friendly bibliography! And here it is: 31 sources (web pages, federal, state, and local documents, and studies in peer-reviewed journals) to help Newton become more bike-friendly.

Most of the resources are available online: all you have to do is cut and paste the url from the bibliographic entry. Not quite as straightforward as just clicking on a link, I know, but we'll get there this fall.

Enjoy, and pass along to anyone who may find it relevant or interesting. It's tailored to Newton, but many of the resources would be just as relevant to any Massachusetts community trying to become Bicycle Friendly.

Zipcar at Lasell and Mt. Ida Colleges?

Colleges are great places to site car shares. Salem State has just added a zipcar hybrid and cargo truck on campus and offered students a discount on membership.

Meanwhile, Newton's Transporation Advisory Committee will be making a transporation map that includes zipcar location in town.

Building on the Salem State story, it seems Lasell College and Mt. Ida could be great places to site zipcars, allowing less cars on/around campus, improving town-gown relations, and serving as a resource for neighborhood residents.

More Asphalt, Anyone?

Newton has roughly 310 miles of paved roadway, occupying roughly 10% of Newton's land.

The city is talking about 8-laning Route 9 in Chestnut Hill, 4-laning Winchester/Needham Street, and letting the MBTA help itself to a massive parking garage at Riverside.

Meanwhile, other forward-thinking communities (like Charlotte, NC) are embracing Complete Streets.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts pioneered a pedestrian- and bike-friendly design guide in 2006, the Healthy Transportation Compact was signed into law in 2009, MassDOT has just launched GreenDOT and Boston has been installing bike lanes left right and center.

But Newton is driving pell-mell backward into the era of King Car.

Why?

Do people really want this?

If you want Complete Streets in Newton, one venue to make yourself heard is the Access Subcommittee meeting of the Mixed Use Task Force next Thursday (July 29th), 7:15pm at the Senior Center.

Biker Down on Beacon St. near Cold Spring Park

A young woman biker (with helmet) was being stablized with a neck brace this morning around 10AM. She was sitting up, conscious, in tears. It looks like she had been heading eastbound on Beacon St. just east of Cold Spring Park, and collided with a car at/near the driveway to a new office building there.

Intercity travel without a car

My wife and son are in New Jersey. We all went down together in our one car on Friday, and caught the fireworks in my mother-in-law's home town. On Sunday, fetching bagels for a brunch, wishing I had a bike stored there so I could bike to and from the bagelry, I reflected on all the driving around we do that's so unnecessary and happens only because there's no good alternative. The next day, we all drove into the city together to MOMA, where I saw Duchamp's "Bicycle Wheel."

It's a Dada-ist ready-made that stands there like a punch-line waiting for a joke, or like a Zen koan rebuke to our utilitarian, humdrum concerns.

If I'd had a working bike, I could have biked to and from the bagelry on a pleasant Sunday morning. If public transit to that northern New Jersey town were anything but a joke, we could have had a convivial train or bus ride. (As it was, we were 5 in a car, so it was pretty convivial anyway; and what a treat to park for free on the street half a block from the museum! Holiday parking.)

But I improved on the situation. I had to be back in Newton for the week, so after tea at Moma's terrace cafe and tearful goodbyes (OK, so I've invented the tears), I grabbed my little backpack, scooted off on foot to a subway station a few blocks away, caught the D local to Grand Street, and walked a few block through Chinatown's funky storefronts to the Lucky Star bus counter, where I dropped my $15, stood on line for 5 minutes, and clambered aboard a clean, quiet bus for a 4 hour ride (with a stop at a fast-food joint in Sturbridge) to South Station, typing all the way on my tiny little laptop. Red line to Green line to Newton. Hooray, public transportation and enterprising cut-rate bus lines! On Friday, I'll head back to the big apple on a Bolt Bus, and we'll see how they compare.

In the meantime, since we're a one-car family, I'm having my own bike-week. To the garden, to groceries, to the library, to the T... . For me, a vacation from a car is a vacation, indeed!

A request to BH Normandy Riverside LLC

Dear BH Normandy Riverside LLC,

Please draw up plans - just for kicks - that retain the existing number of parking spaces at Riverside (960), but no new ones. Then please estimate how much this design would shift commuting to the site by the T rather than the estimated 8,230 additional vehicle trips per day estimated to come via I-95. Feel free to comment on whether you are skeptical that a sufficient urban workforce exists to staff the new development from the D line corridor and associated public transit links. Also, feel free to estimate how much money would be saved by not having to create new roadway infrastructure - ramps, roundabouts - for all that non-existent parking.

Parking at Riverside is the Single Largest Allocation of Space

Total area of Proposed Riverside Development: 1,091,162 square feet.

Retail: 14,800 square feet
Residential: 260,000 square feet
Office Space: 595,000 square feet
PARKING*: 748,000 SQUARE FEET

*2,720 parking spaces at ca. 275 square feet per parking space

**area estimates from http://www.riversidestation.info

How to vote for a zipcar in your village

I contacted zipcar to ask how people could lobby for a zipcar in their neighborhood. Go to www.zipcar.com/notify-me and put in your home address (or an address near where you want a car). Zipcar uses this information in guiding their placement of cars. Maybe Bike Newton can spearhead a get-out-the-vote campaign for a village center - any village nominations?

(Full disclosure: I have no financial interest in zipcar - I am interested in reducing the % of Newton households which have multiple vehicles)

Film tonight

JUNE 28 (Mon) 7 pm Film: “Beyond the Motor City”, Newton Main Library, co-sponsor: green decade newton

Here's a preview.

An alternative model for car sharing

An alternative to zipcar is a non-profit model that partners with municipalities and transit agencies, like citycarshare. This bay area organization appears to beat zipcar on a $ per hour basis. Zipcar seems to have Boston covered pretty well, but could a non-profit model work in 'burbs like Newton?