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).
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
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"!
Monday, August 2, 2010
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.
If successful, bike valet parking will be extended to the friday market in Nonantum. We may even arrange for delivery of produce by bike.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
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.
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.
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.
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.
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