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?

Suburban Zipcar experience

Things worked out somewhat differently than I was expecting on my first zipcar use, but I give the experience a thumbs up. For starters, neither of the 2 Riverside T zipcars were available when I needed them monday. But the zipcar search turned up an available car at Babson College in Wellesley, 3.8 miles away - more than what I was expecting, but it turned out to be a nice bike ride there on backroads I'd never been on before (I saw a deer on the Leo Martin golf course on Intervale Rd). So that was kind of an obstacle turned pleasant surprise. It is an interesting how a minor inconvenience, if it can be recognized as a surmountable barrier rather than a deal breaker, becomes added motivation to make a plan work.

Note to zipcar: No bike racks near the zipcars at Babson College. I used your parking sign to lock up. A bike rack would be great.

The most ironic part of my zipcar day was the drive home from Central Massachusetts to Wellesley via Cambridge. My return trip involved being a cut-through commuter through Newton! And I made probably the same calculation as many a cut-through Newton commuter. I had to get from Cambridge (where I dropped off my colleague) to Wellesley. I cut through Washington St. from West Newton to Wellesley. No tolls! And not much confidence that freeways would be faster during rush hour anyway. A weird feeling being the person who I am usually looking at as a biker from the sidelines.

My take away messages from this experience: zipcar works for a suburban one car family needing an extra car from time to time. It takes a bit more effort than in a dense urban center, but not too onerous. I would love to have a zipcar parked in my village center of Auburndale, or another one at the Riverside T. In fact, I would love there to be a zipcar in each and every village of Newton. I trust (hope) zipcar tracks requests vs. car availability and member locations to site cars in new locations where they are needed, or where the demographics suggest they would be used. I can't see zipcar going wrong with a car in Newton Centre, for example. What I don't know is how Newtonites could 'vote' for a zipcar in their village centers. I put in a comment/suggestion to zipcar to find out. A question for Newton: could Newton be zipcar friendly by subsidizing the parking space(s)?

Can Newton downsize its number of cars?

59% of households in Newton are multi-vehicle. Can families go single car in Newton? This often seems impractical, if not impossible. In my household we are trying to make it work, but not without challenges. Last week, embroiled in a logistical dilemma involving my need to travel to central Massachusetts while my daughter was scheduled for a dental appointment in Needham, I looked into zipcar. I found there are 3 locations in or very near to Newton - 2 cars at the Riverside T, 2 at the Woodland T, and 2 at Comm. Ave and Lake St., next to the end of the B line. Riverside is a 5 min bike ride from our house; I have my zipcard now and plan to try it soon. I'll report back here.
If any Newtonite wants to sign on, I can refer you (email nathan@bu.edu) and will give you the $50 driving credit and keep zero for myself. Full disclosure: I have no financial interest in zipcar.
Embryonic in Newton, where could zipcar extend here? What about one or two cars in each village center? Would this allow your household to car-downsize? Are there other possible models for car sharing appropriate to Newton? (I wonder if neighbors with compatible needs could share an extra vehicle).

Bike-Powered Garden, Garden-Powered Bike

Today I biked to our little community garden plot at Nahanton Park. That's not, by itself, unusual. I get there by bike most of the time.

But today, I was putting in tomatoes. The plants were a donation from our upstairs neighbor, some nice heirloom cherries, and they'd sat in the yard in their little containers for, um... let's just call it a few weeks. They'd gotten a little leggy. In fact, one was bearing fruit. So there were these rather tall tomato seedlings, the tomato cages, a set of onions...

I resigned myself to driving.



Then inspiration, bungees, velcro, and a bike bag led to this:

Here's a better view of how I attached the tomato cages:

Incidentally, everything on that poster is in our garden, except the potatoes. And instead of green peppers, chilis. Call me a traditionalist. (Or call me an unwitting dupe of WW2 propaganda posters!)

So far, the garden is bike-powered. When I start harvesting, the bike will be garden-powered.

Once Upon a Time

... it was patriotic to conserve.  Americans were united against a common enemy.


These days, it seems as if what unites Americans is a right to go anywhere at any time, using any and all resources, at any expense.

It's time to put a flag on my bike.

"The Car is No Longer King in ...

Boston."

Those words were Mayor Menino's in introducing the Boston Bike Safety Summit last month. It drew a sustained ovation. I was taken aback by the lack of political calibration. It was a political masterstroke, but refreshing to hear nonetheless.

In Newton we need our own bike safety summit. But unlike Boston, Mayor Warren cannot truthfully say what Menino said. Indeed, the Car IS King in Newton. But maybe acknowledging this could be the first step toward making the changes we need.

Given that Newton is currently at "zero" for bike facilities, the Warren Administration has a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to claim alternative transportation facilities and its mantle of sustainability as a legacy. And a legacy that comes at bargain basement prices, compared to a legacy built on, say, a new high school. But the "Car is No Longer King in Newton" legacy will not be sealed by a bold 5 or 10 year plan that might be implemented and claimed by a successor; it will be sealed by highly visible road markings - bike lanes and sharrows - that start going in TODAY.

Bike Newton Board Member Bike Accident: OK, but Shaken

Here's the email the that the Bike Newton board received this evening from Molly Schaeffer, who commutes across Newton by bike daily:

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to let you all know that the Newton Police did a super job tonight.  Those of you who know me know I ride with very bright lights front and rear, day and night + safety yellow clothing (and always helmet).  That still didn't prevent me from nearly becoming another statistic.  

A Sunday Poem

I saw the chipmunk's coat
Had slid off the meat
On the gray pavement,
As I coasted to a stop.

The napped fur matched
A liver-spot on my hand,
Which I rubbed, noting
How my skin slid

Over the fine bones.
This place will be marked
By a leathery array
For a week or more

Then a light stain.
If gods populate
The vacuum around us,
May they note the loss

As they pass over
At great speed,
Propelled onward
By muffled explosions.

Biking Laws: Same Roads, Different Rules II

Thoroughfares often intersect cross streets without stop signs or signals. Cars, not stoplights, check traffic. They stop and signal to turn, backing traffic up behind them, sometimes abruptly. Rear-end collisions happen. Should bikes act like cars here?

Same Roads, Same Rules suggests so. This is dangerous advice. Advocates of Same Rules: what say you?

(Case in point: intersection of Chestnut St. and Fuller St., an intersection on my commute. I want to turn left from northbound Chestnut St. onto Westbound Fuller St. on my way home (usually during the obscene evening rush hour that violates a once sleepy residential lane*, but I digress).)

*and which some casually suggest as a automobile commute option:
Bruce Henderson on June 10th, 2010 10:45 am: "I recommend that everyone use Chestnut or Centre." in response to this.

Biking Laws: Same Roads, Different Rules

For the curious, here is Massachusetts Law regarding bikes, much of which was changed in April, 2009:

Highlight from Chapter 90, Section 14: It shall not be a defense for a motorist causing an accident with a bicycle that the bicycle was to the right of vehicular traffic.

Biking Rules

My wife is a dependable reality check about biking. (She doesn't bike, owing to a host of athletic injuries from her youth.) She listened last night to what I had to say about the discord between bikers and drivers, and offered her perspective as a driver contending with unpredictable and frequently reckless bikers:

They drive me crazy!

More specifically, she said she really, really doesn't want to be party to injuring

Re-Cycling Trifecta

You can be part of this: donate your empty soda cans or plastic bottles (email nathan@bu.edu). We'll pick them up by bike, redeem them, and donate the coupons to the Newton Food Pantry, at the same time we make our weekly bike trips there to deliver surplus food. On the way home from the Food Pantry, we take compostable items and recyclable cardboard back to the Rumford Ave recycling center. Bikes, food, recycling - an awesome combo!
If you want to be part of the bike delivery fleet, that can be arranged too.

Newton Crash Data Online

Bike Newton is assembling bike crash data for Newton from Mass Highway reports and loading it up to Google Maps.

View Bike Accidents, Newton '03-'07 in a larger map

So far, we've loaded 2003-2007. 2008 and 2009 will be loaded as soon as we get the reports for those years. Bike Newton and BPTF will use this data in upcoming discussions with representatives of Newton Police, the Mayor's office, Public Works, and Aldermen about how best to maximize safety for the increasing number of bikers on Newton's roads.

Garden City or Gridlock City

"if the bicyclist would have just waited in traffic like everybody else, we would all be talking about something else right now...traffic was stopped or just about stopped, so not really moving in the travel lane. Sounds like a good old fashioned rush hour traffic jam to me." - JD71, Newton Tab comments, referencing the May 27 run-over cyclist on Comm Ave.

It is amazing and disconcerting what degradations in our quality of life we are trained to accept. Bicyclists see the looks of resignation every day in Newton gridlock. The car commercials sell us on the idea of cars as freedom; yet we willingly enslave ourselves, addicted to convenience and unsafe, risky, and unsustainable fossil energy.

Gridlock in the garden city is an unstated assumption in many Tab comments and blog posts: Given gridlock, cyclists should also get in line and subject themselves to the gridlock. No thanks. Let's think instead how we can reduce Gridlock in the Garden City. Lets show some civic duty, some patriotism, some real freedom, in our energy choices.