Hubway reports highlights inequity & Montreal Bon!

Wow! What a nice puff piece in the Boston Globe last week highlighting the stories of the biggest Hubway users. One MBA student, a hospital worker and a case worker were highlighted and they were thrilled that there was a Hubway near home and work. Wouldn’t that be a nice perk for ALL Boston residents?

I can see the guy from Mattapan riding to his hotel worker job in Kenmore Square in 25 minutes instead of taking the series of buses, trolleys, trains well over an hour to get there.

Or how about the Savin Hill based dude with a restaurant job in Chinatown who now has an after hours ride home?

Perhaps we’d see the JP Groover girlĀ cutting through Franklin Park onĀ a Bixie over to her job in Codman Square?

Thanks whoever thought of using their data to highlight that regular people actually use Hubway and for $85 ($60 if you hang in there) a YEAR your commute is covered for half the time. I wonder what positive impacts that would have in neighborhoods with the largest share of the working poor?

Sure the working poor would benefit, but so would the other couple of hundred thousand of us who work but aren’t poor. Everyone says Somerville and Cambridge are denser, but oddly when one looks at population and area the density in those towns run about the same as Roxbury, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain and Mattapan. A lot of Roslindale would fit as well until we got out toward West Roxbury and Hyde Park. And at that, one suspects we could find pockets of those neighborhoods that are as similarly dense as anywhere.

We’re working on some form of this question for the State of the City event tonight. Where’s the equity? Not in the City of Boston’s planners heads that’s for sure.

** Post State of the City comment: I never did ask my question, but it was as though Boston Bikes read this post. Equity was used by everyone several times and we’re being heard. Hopefully funds for another 20-30 stations out in the neighborhoods will be found for this year. Isn’t there a shoe company out in Canton who might want to sponsor in their direction? I guess it might be a conflict with the other deal that helped secure Hubway out in Allston…

Otherwise I’d ask where the Sharrow guy is on Dot Ave by the end of Mather Street (oops! it showed this morning looking pretty fresh) and is there a plan to return the Sharrow guys to Dot Ave south of Gallivan Blvd? It was resurfaced and painted sans sharrows… But it’s only one detail no? And it’s in Dorchester so who cares… I’ve heard that one before…

We were in Montreal last week and despite the Bixie’s being put away for the winter there were ample signs of an active bike culture in operation. Nice lanes, good signs, a welcome sign for bikes on the Metro, parking meters with bike lock spaces on them and lots more. The issue bike advocates are fighting is that anyone cited while riding their bike has points put on their auto-driving record. That might sound fine, but you don’t need a license to ride a bike so anyone who doesn’t have a license can’t get points. Anyway, it’s going to court so we’ll keep an eye on that. Otherwise it’s Three Cheers to Le P’tit Bar on Ave St. Dennis!

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