July and August saw Dotriderblog have a couple of little incidents that left some pieces of skin on the sidewalk. We were feeling about 12 years-0ld with scabs on both knees and elbows AND the palm of one hand… We smushed our nose a little and had a black eye of a few days, but hey it wasn’t that bad… Guess we gotta work on being safe, but that 12 year-old is just in there wanting to get out so… No other vehicles or people involved.
Cudos to the Dorchester Reporter for their piece on the Hubway Bike Share program. Balanced, highlighting the lack of service to Boston’s biggest and most heavily populated neighborhood. Good quotes from a person in Mattapan feeling equally left out. Nice pitch by Ashmont Cycles owner saying bring more riders!
The Boston Globe had a piece reporting on the 60 warnings BPD issued over a short period of time and how the RMV has no way to enforce payment of any ticket. Well would there be an opportunity for a ticketed rider to go to court to defend themselves? We didn’t ask that question at the time, but hey it’s a good one no? We did get a letter in suggesting that to be fair, thousands of warnings should have been issued to automobiles over the same time. We can all agree that there are thousands of auto-scofflaws out there breaking the driving laws everyday. Same with riders, only we’re a fraction of the picture. Perspective no? We hope that the Globe works on theirs…
Our last post speculated on the half assed nature of the city’s Roll It Forward program. We got to witness it first hand yesterday at Dot House. The van showed up an hour late leaving the volunteers to go over safety tips and hand out locks in an effort to stall. The bikes were handed out in a very uncontrolled manner. They weren’t all given out and the young lads on the BMX bikes they were given (really giving out bmx bikes?) had already ditched their helmets and were screaming the wrong way up the street or sidewalk doing tricks… The girls in the group seemed to disapear and no one got an opportunity to ride around in a controlled group in order to get a feel for the road. Nice folks, good idea, piss poor execution…. Anyone who volunteered for that and got the service from the city they did deserves an apology… Doubt it will happen though.
We posted a picture on the dotbike/flikr site of a Share the Road sign in front of Andrew Station. Cool. Now when is the paint coming? Of course now we’ll have to wait for all 10 of the 10 intersection solution intersections to be completed…Then it will be fall and the punch list will include more bike lanes and sharrow chevrons than ever. Since few left over from last year have been accomplished (and what was done still is lacking), what would make someone confident the City will succeed this time? It’s Dorchester, so what!?! Glad I could end up on such a positive note…
