I bike to work!

Gotta love the Stimulus! Everyone has been complaining that Massachusetts has taken its time spending the Stimulus cash. Well here it comes in Dorchester. We all know that the 15 intersection answer (after years of neighborhood meetings completing a plan for the ENTIRE AVENUE got dumped for the Stimulus funded 15 intersection answer which hopefully the city won’t forget to finish the in between spots…oops I was trying to post a compliment), has started on Dorchester Avenue. Well there has also been work to get Talbot Ave repaired with adding bike lanes as part of the job. Check out the dotbike flickr site for photos of same HAPPENING! Yahoo! I’m not up on the official story, but I had heard second hand the stripes were in. It will be tough for a bit to ride on, but hey it wouldn’t take to go another way thus avoiding the construction for now. Yahoo! If only the City had striped Bowdoin Ave from 4 corners to Geneva Ave and Glenway from Blue Hill to Harvard, then we’d be getting service somewhat in line with the rest of the city. Remember we’re 20% of the area and population of the city of Boston out here in Dorchester. With over 750 Streets, ANY artery road should be subject to more modal transportation marking and signage. Oh yeah I was trying to post a compliment. Thanks Boston transportation planners! Keep it up and bring us more!

Wow! If you ever wanted to see the folks dotriderblog is trying to promote just ride/walk in the Dot Day Parade! Dot Bike had a dozen or so riders, but there were Dotbikers along the ENTIRE route watching! We even had a number of them join us for various stretches. Perhaps the best one was a small girl with training wheels booking it against the parade right up the middle of Dot Ave! It’s on the dotbike flickr site (link on the side of this page). Hundreds of maps, stickers and bike info distributed. I guess next year we’ll have to invite others in the biking community to come along for the ride. Mark your calendars for the first Sunday in June! Dot Day! Boston’s biggest parade for Boston’s biggest and oldest neighborhood! Now if only the service we get from the city and state would reflect that fact… (which will lead to my next post analyzing Boston City Hall bike politics). All the swells were in the front of the parade feeling good about themselves for sure.

So looking deeper into the dotbike flickr site we determined there are 197 shots of riders on the road or side walk not on foot or in Franklin Park or another off-road situation. Of those 134 or 68% were riding with the traffic on the road. The balance were either riding the wrong way or on the sidewalk. So legal riders outstrip misguided riders by 2 to 1. Of the 134, 69 weren’t wearing helmets and 65 were so plenty of helmetless riders understand the other aspect of riding safely. The problem is with the bad riders. Of the 91 riding the wrong way or on the sidewalk, 83 or 91% of the riders not riding properly were without a helmet. Only 8 helmeted riders were captured going the wrong way or up on the side walk. Conclusions? Bike leadership’s emphasis on helmet wear is the place to start… That’s good. Only how are they going to get the word to the helmetless whether they’re road scofflaws or not?