I bike to work!

Well we’re heading into the dark time of year. I actually enjoy it to some degree outside of being on the street in some places in the dark. The ride through Franklin Park in the gloam is awesome. You hear the geese and the ducks settling in on Scarborough Pond. There is a mad rush of squirrels and chipmunks skittering through the forest. Who knows, I might get a shot at the coyote I’ve heard has been seen in the park. I hope he gets a few geese!

Dotbike continues to deliver new riders and good results whenever we have a ride or community event. Perhaps most noticable during Saturday’s Dotbike Art ride were all the OTHER riders we saw. Riding up Geneva Avenue and down Bowdoin Street was new territory for a number of riders in the group. When we stopped at Nonquit Park on Dudley Street one comment I heard was in amazement at how many other folks were out riding. YUP! That’s what we’ve been saying all along is that there’s no typical Dot rider. I wish those who made decisions on our bike infrastructure would come out and hang during the day sometime and really see how importants bikes are in our neighborhood.

The bike count along the Dorchester part of the Harbor Walk that we call the Missing Link was pretty interesting. I got to count at perhaps the busiest spot at the base of the Neponset Bridge. We saw folks riding in both directions on the bridge and quite a number of folks zipping along underneath. The pathway users tended to be those in stretchy suits. The folks riding into Quincy were going to work in their work clothes… One non-bike related observation was how many of the folks who work at the ambulance company walked to work. I guess they spend enough time in a vehicle during the rest of the day…

So, we’re waiting to see a rush of late season activity toward reaching the city’s goal of another 15-20 miles of bike lane. So far it’s been low hanging fruit. The 10-intersection solution continues to defy a full length treatment of the Avenue. Throw in a collection of steel plates along the entire stretch and who can blame the city for delaying any lane or sharrow installation. We continue to see paving jobs where sharrows or lanes might have worked. Sadness in that Mr. Timlin and his crew still haven’t lived up to their talk and begun to think bikes in EVERY road project. We’ll continue to hope their actions get caught up with their rhetoric.

The winter riding through Franklin Park appears as though plowing will continue up Pierpont. It may not go down Glen Road. Parks smoothed out the plow bumps on Pierpont Road. Since I don’t go down Glen myself as a regular practice we haven’t seen any indications that Parks is planning to go down there. Let us know if we should try to make that happen or not?

Over the past month dotriderblog has gotten letters in both Boston dailies (sorry if the Monitor is still out there) decrying their reports on scofflaw bike riders being ticketed and the accident rate in Cambridge… Our points being:

If you’re ticketing bicycle riders where are the 50 car driver tickets for each bicycle ticket? As IF folks in their cars are any LESS scofflaw or apt to break the law than any bicyclist… For that matter throw in pedestrians and the cops will be in traffic court for years.

Hey car folks, guess what? Every rider isn’t someone else in a car jamming up traffic! More riders = less drivers! D’uh! One might think some drivers would like that advantage no? I want a back pack sticker reading “If you think I’m a bad rider you should see me drive!…to which one friend said that’s too long just put “Boston Driver” on and that will say it all

The media isn’t doing us any favors through their coverage. How about something about how to be a safer rider? Jeesh the past two weeks drivers have been more scofflaw aggressive and nasty to riders than EVER! Coincidence? Perhaps. It has been a warm September and dotriderblog has been known to be too aggressive (in some circles) related to expressing his opinions of someone’s driving habits. Hence the folks with their windows open hear me and often respond with a series of four letter words. At least the papers ran my letters.

Which brings me to the second half of my post title: Where was the Mayor’s Boston Bikes on this one? HEY! The Globe and Herald didn’t take my letters thinking I’m a kook. The guy from the Globe said it was a great letter when he shredded my assertions based upon the stats I’ve gleaned the past few years as a pseudo bike advocate… HOWEVER wouldn’t it have been nicer if my letter had been displaced by a nice note emphasizing safety and civility when riding signed by the Mayor or his minion? Other bike organizations missed for that matter, although I’ve been led to understand that for one it may well have not been from a lack of effort…

What’s with Cambridge letting police harrassing riders? Let’s get organized and hand out MassBike Share the Road flyers to bikes AND cars at the most jammed up intersections in the area. Where’s that effort? Education is key. City leaders are missing these teaching moments as the media doesn’t seem to be getting the point that riding bikes is with us now and it won’t go away until we have 10 years of $1/gallon gasoline (and it will happen just like it did before). And by the time that happens it may well be too late as a generation of folks have gotten used to the idea that it’s usually faster, cheaper, healthier and less stressful to ride your bike somewhere in town rather than to use your car.

Now that it is obvious to even the hardest case nay sayers that the Hubway bike share system is going to be a success, isn’t it time for the city to ramp up its public relations FOR bicycles? One suspects that we’ll see a new roll-out in this regard in the spring. Let’s hope so.

So as we head into October and the evening ride gets darker, be sure to get all the blinkers and head lights tuned up and ready. Get those light colored close out and be ready. We’ll see you out there one day! Peddle on!

Summer is winding to a close and dotriderblog has begun riding across a wider spectrum of Boston Streets than usual. It’s funny how much more one sees on a bicycle rather than in a car. Here’s a few of the things we’ve noticed in just the past week.

The one that made me smile the most is the Hubway station on Yawkey Way. We’ve been chronicaling (and will do so with yestereday’s photos as well on the dotbike flickr site) the dire need for bike racks by Gate D on Yawkey Way at Fenway Park. We’ll show a continuing daily need for bike racks as there were a couple chained to trees and fences and just a half block later there’s the Hubway….Can a private bike use Hubway bays  for parking?

There were only two bikes  in the bays and the more time I spent in town the more I saw them riding around. So Hubway will be a success and I’ll be proved wrong (as predicted here or at least wished for). My criticism that it was miss timed and there is much to do around the city to make the infrastructure safer for riding for all of us still stands. We thought doing the safety stuff first made the most sense, but no one listened. Hopefully that will get more attention going forward.

Mass Ave compromised with Sharrows in a few spots and nothing’s happening north of Columbus Avenue really.

The Dot Ave Ten Intersection Solution continues to be a drag and as of now there are fewer Sharrows as south of Route 203 was paved and the sharrows have yet to return. It’s been over a year since they put the ‘temporary’ paint on Dot Ave from Old Colony to Broadway and there’s still no bike lanes… Any sharrows or lanes anywhere else have already been obliterated. Plus the turn lane from Dot Ave to Park Street heading west is an accident waiting to happen. It’s too bad State planners didn’t take our observations seriously. The road design still reeks of increasing automobile flow instead of promoting safety and traffic calming…

Parks got pounded in the hurricane and they’re still out there cleaning up. They got things barely passable but need to back through and clean up the smaller messes. Once Franklin Park was voted the second most beautiful park in the world, but Parks seems to see it as a great dumping ground for snow and brush… No doubt Franklin Park will get more than its share of brush dumped within it’s confines.

We’re still seeing more riders than ever on our short route to work. We’ve refound our camera and have filled up the memory card in recent days, so one day we’ll have to update the flickr site. The range and diversity of folks continues to be astounding. Add to that where you see folks and for this Dot-ite veteran it’s is heartening to see the old lines that separated us blur. While that may be happening with folks living in different spots it is way cool that bikes are leading the way in getting folks to ride into parts of town fearful folks might deem as “No go”. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions about that…

Dotriderblog posted the comment, “I put some air in my tires and I have a whole new attitude” as his facebook status the other day and someone asked me if it was meant to be a metaphor.  Good question. My answer is definitely! My new approach on any issue will be to see how we can get some air in the tires of the project at hand. Despite my post a while back suggesting it isn’t easy to be a crank, it really is. Hindsight is easy as is being critical. So….

Instead of pointing out the mundane things that have been done that shouldn’t have and bemoan what isn’t getting done, we’ll try to figure what needs to be done and who might be able to provide the air in the tires to get the job done! After all the evidence is pretty clear that investing in improving the infrastructure for bicycles is good for automobiles. Every biking denizen is someone who’s NOT in a car. They’re not cutting you off, running the light or taking your parking spot with their car. The more people who are on bikes means less people in cars. Less cars jamming and wearing out the roads.

We’ve all heard the lip service from state and city transportation officials that clearly show they understand expanding our transportation options is a good investment. Despite that there is an institutional prevailing wisdom that cow tows to the forces advocating for more automobile access.  By getting more air in the tires of those open to promoting bicycles and bike culture, perhaps the incremental changes that we see might begin to move a little faster.

So it is obvious that the Mayor’s Bike Program could use some air in their tires through the addition of more staff and resources to promote safe bicycle use around the entire city. The Roll it Forward program needs to expand the educational element as part of its distribution efforts. Hubway could use some more air too in order to expand its service area to all Boston’s neighborhoods as well as across the river to Cambridge and Somerville.

Since I’ve adopted my new attitude we attended DCR’s presentation of their new proposal for a Bike Path along the Neponset River from Lower Mills to Mattapan Square. I liked it! I came prepared to be po’d at the Milton Fear and Loathing Crowd and instead I came out feeling sorry for them since they’re going to miss this awesome new resource. The folks in Mattapan will get most of the pay off! Great! Plus it was an ingeneous and wonderfully esthetically pleasing plan that will give riders awesome views of the Neponset River. Kudos to the planners at DCR for that one!

Then on August 31, as I was zipping down Talbot Ave to a meeting in Dorchester (my usual 10 minutes late) I couldn’t help but notice the Bike Lane Chevron Guy had been installed in front of the Harambee Play Ground heading east and the Sharrow Arrow in front of the Lee School heading west had been installed! HOORAY!!!!!!!!!! It must be my new attitude!

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…

The question today is it easy to be for something or against it? What happens when no matter what you say it becomes steeped with criticism? Is it impossible to change that trajectory? What happens when you become so for one thing that anything short of that is subject to your complaint?

Generally those you are criticising begin to tune you out. Then it gets worse and you feel like complaining more. A vicious circle ensues and not much gets done. That’s where we’re feeling we are now. Who cares if my complaints are spot on, what the Mayor’s Bike Program isn’t doing is clear and the Hubway Bike Share program is a supreme waste of time treasure and talent? That’s just that crank dotriderblog…

The over 500 photographs of riders at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dotbike have not been seen by the folks who decide what happens at the Mayor’s Bike Program. Other bike advocates hear from the City that there aren’t that many riders in the neighborhoods when here’s proof. In fact if we began the site all over again and concentrated on it as much as we did last year we’d have well over 1000 images. Today sans my camera we saw over 20 bikes during our 4 mile traverse from Dot to JP. Few if any were headed down town. Most were going across town.

Meanwhile the City’s community outreach remains an after thought or has become a charity program, not an empowerment program. Folks will find the money for bikes if they feel empowered to use the roads. Meanwhile we’re passing bikes forward to folks who might not be confident or competent enough to deal with Boston’s streets. Hey have this used bike and stay on the side walk where we won’t count you…

Total focus on Hubway has pushed traffic enhancement efforts and their needed constant oversight on the backburner. Some jobs get done but there seems to be little enthusiasm on the contractors part to do the job right and no obvious effort from the city to encourage a better job be done.

So, we’ll try to keep quiet since no one’s listening anyway. We’ll see if things improve. We’ll fall back on my brother’s advice, “Don’t get involved in promoting bicycling because that will make it not as free and more regulated than it is now.” Hmmmmm….we’re thinking my brother is onto something….

The Globe did a fine piece pointing out that Boston’s neighborhoods were being left out of the bike share. However there was nary a mention of Boston’s biggest neighborhood. We tried to be positive in pointing that out, along with providing some nice suggestions for how Hubway could creep it’s way south. I even failed to mention the bike trail that folks were advocating for along the Purple Line but hey there’s already some pretty good bike infrastructure (gulp) in the north end of town… Here it is and later I’ll update what we’ve seen in town for progress… 

We all saw the outlandish piece in Friday’s Boston Globe by Brian McCrory suggesting it would be better to remove all bicycles instead of promoting more. Here’s dotriderblog’s response. Doubt it will be run, but hey it felt good to press that send button….

As the mercury rises into the 90+ degree range we’re amazed by the ever increasing number of folks out there riding every day! I don’t have my regular camera in hand so I haven’t been able to chronicle them as much as I’d like but here are some highlights:

Tons of white women all over Dorchester. They’re even in neighborhoods where not long ago seeing any white person on the street was very unusual… Increasing numbers of black women out there riding. More minority riders wearing helmets. Of course the BNB groups riding are always a thrill to dotriderblog.  Saw a rider heading South on American Legion Highway for the first time ever! ALWAYS riders all over Franklin Park.

Lowlights? A traverse of Dot Ave to see how the Ten Intersection Solution is working starts it off. Having seen NO SIGN of signs on Talbot Ave or any attempt to address the Punch List left over from last year shouldn’t be a surprise. Missing opportunities like Morton Street because of a reticence on the Mayor’s Bike Program to push transportation planners to actually THINK and come up with viable solutions finishes things off.

Hey! Where’s the Bike Share? Year three and counting. Each time it gets smaller and less ambitious and seems to cost more money. Too bad such great time and talent has been wasted on something that is so obviously premature. I can even say “I told you so” since I did, three years ago when I first heard of the idea… Meanwhile neighborhood infrastructure gets the half-baked treatment and the Menino administration is becoming more sensitive than ever. Menino-sensitive is a new term. It’s somewhere near hyper-sensitive….. you pick which side of it.

Good to see more cops out on bikes lately. They should have been out on them BEFORE the neighborhood BS started to come down. Well d’uh! It’s amazing how much more folks see on bicycles instead of air-conditioned, computer equipped cars… Keep it up! Get them out ALL YEAR ROUND as part of an integrated patrolling approach. It’s amazing how much fitter the officers on the bikes look as well. Wonder why eh? Plus it will help reduce crime and save money at the same time. Fixing a flat on a bike is a lot cheaper than replacing a cruiser that’s been sitting around idling for 24-hours a day…

Well a week away hasn’t softened much of dotriderblog’s hard edge. It’s odd how being on an island with no paved roads and no external infrastructure should remove you from the day’s issues. Well, over 100 mylar balloons later and nearly being flattened by a young lad joy riding on the family ATV kept it real for me.

This is not bike related, but if you EVER get a helium balloon don’t ever let it go! There are literally thousands of them floating around the ocean. Is Helium a green house gas too? It’s amazing how interconnected we are…

The other observation I made is that hardly anyone walked or rode a bike on this island. Everyone rode, even a few doors on their ATV, golf cart or broken down pick up to do the most mundane things. This makes me think that our overall society is so motor vehicle centric that it will take $6 gasoline to break the cycle and it has to be ther for a long time. The idling DPW vehicle in front of the sub shop today on Centre Street is the same to me as these folks riding everywhere. One would think they’d want to save the gasoline they have to carry over to use… The DPW guy? Just wasting tax payer money and he doesn’t care…

On my way home a week ago last Friday I was riding by Franklin Field (sorry Harambee Park) and I was watching the hoard of scooters dominating the pathway across the park from Talbot to the Housing Development across the way. I was thinking, ‘who’s coming down on those guys? It’s starting to look like trouble to me…’ Well sadly my suspicions proved correct and now the Mayor and the Cops are doing mia culpa let’s fix this reaction to something that ALREADY happened instead of trying to be proactive. Now we’ll get more cops on Talbot Ave, while the punch list to finish the the parts of the lane that the contractor forgot to install won’t happen…

Which brings me to the question of why would the Mayor want to add more laws controling scooters? There are plenty already. How about getting the Cops to enforce them! Simple request no? They are hard to catch, especially when you’re sitting in your cruiser oblivous thanks to the computer and other distractions that remove you from the outside world that are inside.

Well that was a rant! Sorry it’s all over the place. I guess the week off did something. Now for another! Peddle on!