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New bike lanes on Beacon, Commonwealth praised by cyclists

Sean Roche goes so far as to declare the lanes, unveiled yesterday, reveal Boston as the new Portland - especially the lanes on Comm. Ave. from Charlesgate to the Public Garden:

... It's really tough to put into words how remarkable these bike improvements are and what a sea change it is to have Boston setting the standard for comprehensive bike accommodations. ...

Joe Ranft is also liking them:

... I especially like the lanes on Commonwealth Avenue that are not placed next to parked cars on the right side of the road, but on the left side, fairly well respected by drivers with no danger from opening car doors. ...

However, he adds:

... It's definitely progress, but you can still tell that bike lanes are only added where there is room, and not in place of parking spaces. ...

Mike Ball of Hyde Park, who keeps trying to get Mayor Menino to ride a bike with him to City Hall, reports on yesterday's formal dedication, which also included City Council President Mike Ross:

... His head's in the right place. He's the one who encouraged Menino to bike. He backed that up with a gift of a mountain bike ... and more encouragement. Ross was the catalyst, Menino has said repeatedly. ...

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Comments

Not the New Portland - Somerville has been working very hard toward Portlandishness, as has Cambridge. Boston has a very long way to go in that regard. Just, um, no.

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Roche actually munged the numbers from a report he waved. If you combine pedestrian trips (a lot in Boston) and bike ones (a few, but growing), he claimed we were the number one city in non-motor vehicle trips. Hmm. I suppose one could look at it that way.

I am seeing improvements on the south side of the Charles, though not enough and not fast enough to suit this impatient sort.

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When Davis, Inman, Union and even Harvard Squares are more difficult to navigate than Charlesgate, you have a problem. From this vantage point, the only thing Somerville and Cambridge offer bikers is Mass Avenue and a speedy ride into the suburbs. If I want to get to Bedford, there's nothing like Cambridge and Somerville.

When I can get from Rozzie to Back Bay with a minimum of stop time, Newton to the North End without hitting six-inch wide pieces of trail or six-inch tall root rises near the Harvard boathouse and JP to the Common without ducking doors, I've already avoided half the hassle of getting from Inman to Davis.

Either way, all three still fall way short of Portland. When bikes are so ingrained in the culture that you feel naked without one and it's a pain to get to Silly's, Bubba's or anywhere else without one, only then will any these areas be the new Portland. Until then, we'll just have to be content with being a major city.

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the like into a discussion? And how such immature snark detracts from the discussion? Do better.

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Being that I spent my teen years in Portland, that my father was a foreman on the crews that built the bike trails that were automatically installed when I-205 was built, and that there were numerous cycling lanes leading to and from my junior high and high school even in the late 70s and early 80s ... a few lanes in Boston and Boston = Portland, um ... no.

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I wasn't exactly being serious with the Portland v. Boston comparison.

But, I was sincere with the excitement. Boston's doing great stuff. It's cyclical. You build decent stuff in one part of town. That inspires better stuff in another part of town. Which leads to updating the old, decent stuff and putting in even better new stuff where you didn't have anything at all. Rinse. Repeat.

The next thing you know, Boston really will be on a par with Portland.

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I just got back from Portland (sigh) and I spend a couple weeks a year there and borrow my aunt's space age 1 speed to get around on. Honestly, I think Boston would do better to look to Amsterdam and Copenhagen than to Portland, and to start working with Cambridge and Somerville and Brookline to create a regional people movement plan.

Portland's changes and success are part of a comprehensively planned regional infrastructure package that started in the 1970s and has accommodated explosive population growth. (I mapped out and led the bike tour when my workplace held a conference in Portland last year, so I had to learn my tour guide factoids). Portland is also gridded out such that there are high car intensity non-cycling arterial roads and car-only bridges with parallel secondary arterial roads and bridges that carry the bike traffic. That might work in the Back Bay, but it would not be feasible in other areas.

There is much that Portland does that Boston really couldn't (or shouldn't) do - but Boston could do a better job at looking to other models from other medieval city plans and coordinating with its neighbors and other agencies like the MBTA - Dublin's mixed "bus only/bike only" lanes being one idea that might transfer and accommodate narrow streets on a non-grid plan.

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are they handing out bullet proof vests?

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These look good, but we shouldn't strive to be the new Portland. Leave that to lesser cities like Somerville or Cambridge. We should try for New York, which has an amazing and quickly growing network of bike lanes enabling uninterrupted travel over significant distance. Boston has a plan for this and is moving in that direction. Given a bit more time, and there will be seamless routes connecting most of the city via a web rather than the MBTA style Octopus.

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.... "let's be more like New York". Even if completely justified, that notion goes over like a wet fart with most Bostonians.

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I think the cyclist demographic may be significantly more receptive of New Yorkification, myself included

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I'm sure that a grid-style street pattern throughout most of Manhattan has got to help as well.

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Meant only in this one regard. Obviously, Boston is far superior to New York in almost every respect. But they are a tad ahead of us on cycling infrastructure.

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but shhhhh, don't tell anyone from Boston I said that!

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Well New York is trying to copy our public app development community so I think we can safely try to copy (and improve) on their bike infrastructure.

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Will anyone be enforcing laws for cyclists, like having them actually FOLLOW THE RULES OF THE ROAD and not try to run over people in crosswalks during a red light? If one more dbag from Slumerville does it to me again, they're getting slugged.

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Adam can you please just start appending each bicycle related post with an automatic comment about cyclists running lights and save morons like the one above the trouble?

Anon, you go right ahead and slug away Mrs. Tough Guy, I'd happily take a tickle from you if it meant getting you off the streets and in police custody (plus a tidy little payout).

I challenge any driver in the city who is up in arms about cyclist behavior to go to any intersection in Boston and count the amount of cars running red lights and the amount of cyclists running red lights and tell me what they find.... If you open your eyes and watch a few intersections I think you might be a little shocked.

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intersections on a daily basis, I see FAR more bicyclists run red lights than drivers do. For one thing, I have yet to see a driver pull into the opposing lane (or up on a sidewalk) to pass other traffic stopped for a red light and blow through the "all red" pedestrian phase, nearly running down the people LEGALLY within the crosswalk. Most of the "red light running" cyclists I observe do this sort of thing all the time.

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i ride from JP to south end every single day: centre street to sw corridor to Columbus to Warren to Tremont and I see my fair share of each, cars and bikes, running lights. Maybe morning/evening commuters are more responsible cyclists than the typical midday kid riding to class or delivering a package, I don't know, but I RARELY see anyone fully blow through a red light, usually they come to a stop, then when they have an opportunity they go for it, even though its red. That is common. Also common is the 2-3 vehicles per light cycle that gun it at yellow and fire through the intersection after red at 45mph. Without fail. Roadman, please spend some time at Ruggles and SW corridor, Mass Ave and Columbus, Tremont and Berkeley, and tell me if you see "FAR more bicyclists" running red lights.

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And let's use some common sense here. If an experienced cyclist comes to a full stop at a red light, then determines that it is safe to pedestrians and the other vehicles to proceed, we shouldn't kill him or her for doing so. It's akin to jumping on pedestrians who cross in the crosswalk against the light when there are no vehicles in the intersection and it is safe to do so.

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So you'd be ok with experienced car drivers coming to a full stop at a red light, determining it's safe to proceed, and then running the red light?

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KellyJMF, you are quite right, this is a logic than can't be extended: a world of cars without traffic signals would indeed be chaotic and dangerous.

Of course a world of pedestrians would not need these traffic signals, our slower movement and better control allows us to assess each others' movements better and proceed safely.

And in this realm, the bicycle is inarguably closer to the pedestrian in these terms. Look up "Utrecht Rush Hour" on youtube, see how well the bikes and pedestrians commingle. There must be traffic lights for the busses and trains, but look how the cyclists go right, left, straight, weaving with each other and pedestrians.

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In Osaka, bicycles are all over the sidewalks downtown. Some riders travel at a moderate speed, and ring a bell when approaching (especially from behind). A little disconcerting, but manageable. Other (mostly younger male) riders go faster and give less warning -- and can induce heart speams.

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but can we :

a) ride in the street -not on the sidewalk
b) ride in the bike lane (learning curve - the ones on comm ave are new - but they are pretty obvious and a lot of people are still riding near the cars)
c) ride with the traffic not against it (worst one - and I almost flattened the guy was on a bike on the sidewalk blasts through a bunch of pedestrians waiting at the light, going the wrong way, blew through the light right in front of me - 2 seconds later and he's a serious slice of road pizza)
d) wear your helmets! affects you on your bike a lot more than me in my car!

a lot of people out here are well behaved - can you speak to your colleagues in the street and self enforce a little

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I agree with your points on proper travel direction, staying off of the sidewalk, and helmet use. However, it's important to remember that by design and by law, bike lanes are to keep cars out, not to keep bikes in. There's no requirement that bikes stay in the bike lane, and there are often good reasons for a bike to be outside of them.

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Can you cite this? If more car drivers knew that bike lanes were intended to keep cars out and not bikes in, then maybe more drivers would be less ticked off at cyclists who don't use the new bike lanes. My impression has always been that some cyclists were too cool or too street to use them and deliberately scoffed them... especially on the Mass. Ave. bridge.

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My impression has always been that some cyclists were too cool or too street to use them and deliberately scoffed them... especially on the Mass. Ave. bridge.

The Mass Ave bridge bike lanes have "waves" in the pavement that are several inches high. That's why some cyclists don't ride in them- you can't.

Many of us ride at the very edge of the bike lane or outside of the bike lane because the bike lanes in Boston place us right in the door zone.

Also, the bike lane down Columbus Ave? All the water shutoff valves are located in the bike lane, and the city used an incompetent contractor to repave the road so the valves are all sunk several inches below the pavement. It hurts like hell to roll into one of them, they come in sets of 2-3, and at night, they're tough to see.

I also don't like bike lanes in Boston because in most of them, people consider it to be a temporary parking zone, and that means instead of riding a consistent position other traffic can expect, I have to constantly merge out into the road. People also like to use the bike lane as a right-turn-only lane.

<>P>The cops don't ticket for any of it because they don't want to stoop down to doing the job of meter maids.

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Just going to start posting links from Mass Bike whenever this argument comes up: http://massbike.org/srsr/myths-vs-reality/motorist...

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Bicycles blow through many many many more red lights than cars. Maybe it's a subset of cyclists who do it, and maybe they don't represent cyclists as a whole any more than drag racers represent motorists, but this isn't the kind of comparison a cycling sympathizer (which I am) really wants.

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I agree. I think it would depend on the data used for the "FAR more bicyclists" analysis. Stand at an intersection and review the car and bike flow. Most intersections would see more cars going through yellow and red lights as a purely numerical count. That would be due to the amount of total cars on the road. However, if another factor (say percentage) is used, that would be different. I would gather that the percentage of bikes going through red lights would be much higher than the percentage of cars.

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my empirical evidence suggests otherwise to me. Maybe some day I'll take an hour and count, until then we are doomed to forever disagree. But if anyone is interested to do a study, I would put good money on a wager that there are more motor vehicles running any given light than non-motor vehicles.

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But think about it. How many cars do you see stop at a solid red light, look both ways, and then just go through the light? Not many right? Then think how many bikes you see do that? Or how about a stop sign?

The whole thing with this is that as a driver, you have it ingrained in your head that you will be pulled over by the police if you drive through a red light, even if you can clearly see no one is coming. Bike riders have the mindset that they won't get stopped by the police because they never have before.

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You wouldn't count bikers who stop at red lights, look for traffic (find none), and then cross because that activity isn't dangerous. Only bikers who 'bomb' through the light are putting themselves and others at risk.

A motor vehicle, on the other hand, represents a real danger to all road users including other motor vehicles due to the number of driver distractions in the vehicle, limited sight lines, limited audio cues, size, weight, and speed. Therefore, any violation of a traffic signal by an automobile can be considered reckless.

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well yeah, no doubt that a larger percentage of cyclists run lights, who could argue that. But running a light is running a light, whether you stop and look or gun it and don't look-- my point is that as far as pure numbers, the latter is more prevalent and far more potentially lethal and damaging.

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I agree there is an element of that. When I drive it certainly seems normal and appropriate to wait for the light to change, whereas when I walk or cycle, I feel foolish if I make the choice to wait when there is no cross traffic. But I don't think it's simply an evaluation of whether we risk a ticket.

Generally speaking, I use safety and efficiency to guide my traveling choices. I don't think it is efficient for cars to ignore red lights because one going through leads to them all going through, which then blocks traffic on the cross street. on the other hand, I don't see that as an issue with cycling or walking. There just aren't enough bikes to disrupt traffic when one of us chooses to go through a red during a gap in cross street traffic.

A third element probably goes to the issue of speed. It takes a lot of energy on a bike to build up to a comfortable traveling speed when sharing the road with multiple cars and buses. It's easier to do that with a head start. If the intersection is open, the head start is very tempting.

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So when you're in your car, you're a normal, law-abiding citizen. Get on the bike and laws no longer apply to you - the rest of us should just trust your judgement. In other words, a typical bike-riding knucklehead.

Is it something about the bike seat that causes this? Or maybe the air blowing through your ear-holes?

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Now there's a nice ad-hominem attack. In some places, the behavior described is actually legal. It's called an "Idaho stop", after a state that has allowed it.

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A state with nobody in it, yes.

Here in Massachusetts, bicycling through a red light is called "Breaking the law".

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I wish that instead of things like organized bike commute days, we encouraged everyone, and I do mean everyone (except for me) to commute by automobile one day so that people like NotWhitey could see just how glorious the world would be if nuisances like bicyclists weren't slowing them down on their way into work. Traffic jams are caused by demand at the margins for road space by automobiles.

And I have really never understood the indignation some motorists appear to suffer when they see bicyclists treating red lights like stop signs. It's obviously safer for the bicycles (and please do not presume to argue this point unless you actually ride a bicycle regularly in traffic, i.e., have some semblance of firsthand experience) and it's even faster for the cars that way. Everybody wins! This should simply be stamped into law.

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Running or rolling through a red light IS BREAKING THE LAW! And, with respect, I wish more bicyclists would get used to that concept instead of coming up with dubious justifications for breaking it. Plus, if you are in a bike lane - ALL the arguments for rolling stop go right out the door. Why, because you are NO LONGER sharing the travel lane with the cars.

And if allowing rolling stops at red lights is such a good idea, then perhaps we should allow cars to do it as well.

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Did you really just compare a cyclist that stops at a redlight and assesses the safety of proceeding before doing so with cars that run red lights? (Because that's the discussion we're having here).

If you can't acknowledge the basic and fundamental difference between these two situations, there really is no hope for further discussion.

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You argue that bicylists should have the right to proceed through a red light after assessing the safety of proceeding. I merely pointed out that, should we change the law to allow this behavior (because it seems to me that bicyclists obviously don't have the patience to WAIT for a red light and/or the skills to properly control their vehicles in traffic - and YES, I am aware that this statement can equally apply to some drivers as well), perhaps the same rights of rolling stop should also be given to car drivers. After all, how many times as a driver have you come to a red light where the cross street is perfectly clear or there's enough of a gap in cross traffic that you could safely proceed through the intersection? As the saying goes, "Equal rights, equal responsibilities".

But here's what's wrong with the 'rolling stop' concept. Say I'm in a car approaching an intersection at speed on a legal green light, the last thing I should need to concern myself about is whether a cyclist is suddenly going to enter the intersection and whether they will clear in time. And if they don't, and I have to brake suddenly (because I'm responsible enough that I'm not going to risk hitting the cyclist) - resulting in the car behind me rear-ending me, who will be found at fault? Hint - it won't be the "self-important" (and also un-licensed, unreigstered, uninsured) cyclist who cried "unfair" and used their special interest lobbyist groups to get the law changed because they are too lazy or impatient to actually STOP THEIR VEHICLE and wait for a red light to change.

But yes, let's change the law to give cyclists yet more rights that vehicle drivers don't have.

And, as others have pointed out, Massachusetts state law does not presently allow cyclists to proceed straight through red lights after stopping. Therefore, and regardless of whatever "justification" they may give, cyclists who do so are still BREAKING THE LAW.

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Walking across the street within a certain distance of a crosswalk is against the law. And so is walking in a crosswalk when the nice red hand is up. Yet tens of thousands of Bostonians do it every fucking day. Just like thousands of Bostonians consider red lights to not mean anything until it's been displayed for several seconds.

I once watched a car run a red light so badly that he couldn't cross Brigham Circle completely, so he got stuck half-way across, unable to cross because of Huntington Avenue traffic. He then leaned on his horn (how dare those people with a green light enter his intersection!) So then the trolley he was blocking decided to play That's Not A Horn, This Is A Horn.

Let's stop pointing fingers, stop being "proud" of our reputation as Boston drivers (like that idiot Globe writer), and just start obeying the laws regardless of whether or not "the other guy" is?

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It's amazing that you think ONLY Bostonians (Boston residents) drive in Boston and thus are solely responsible for all traffic violations in the city. This is a university town... with MANY out of state drivers. Many people from other parts of Massachusetts, southern NH, CT, ME, RI work in the big bad scary city of Boston. In my experience, it's the people who don't actually live in Boston who don't know how to drive properly and legally in the city -- possibly because they're frightened that they're driving in a city as opposed to a cozy suburb or on their way to the mall. Just my opinion, of course.

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If you have an MA license, and took your initial test in MA, you cannot get a license in Alberta, CA unless you completely retest (paper, road, and vision). My Brother sent me the reciprocity sheet when he switched his over.

My nephew just got his license yesterday in Red Deer, Alberta - one of those places where livestock outnumber people and oil rigs probably outnumber livestock. He had to take a comprehensive road rules exam to get the permit, and pass a comprehensive road test lasting more than an hour. He was one of a minority of teens who pass on the first test - two to three tries is pretty common.

MA asks you 10 questions that don't change, and few are about actual road rules. The road exam is not comprehensive, either. Add in extremely lax enforcement of all the rules that people either don't know or that have changed since they started driving, and we get a total free-for-all on the streets.

One would think that the tough road conditions would demand that MA do a better job than most states at requiring drivers to verify their initial and continuing fitness to drive and enforcing the laws, but it doesn't work out that way.

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fair enough... let call a spade a spade and put bicycle light running in its class.

If you jaywalk, or you didn't press the button in time, or the button isn't working, and you cross against a "don't walk" signal, the laws also don't apply to you. You have broken the law.

Or if you enter an intersection on yellow. Or if you go 1 mph over the speed limit. Or you don't use a turn signal, any single exterior light is out, your emissions sticker is out of date, you forgot your driver's license, if you roll stop at a stop sign, pass a car waiting to turn left from the same lane as you going straight, double parking, parking in a bike lane, driving in a bikelane. I'm sure you've never done any of these.

Oh, and yes there is something about being in the bicycle seat that causes you to be able to better assess traffic situations: unencumbered senses: full range of sight and hearing. A greater concern for your surrounding, a better connection to the road and the world around you, and less distractions. Better control over your vehicle, shorter acceleration time/distance, shorter breaking time/distance, sharper turning, more immediate transfer of forces.

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How many cars blow through lights that have changed from yellow to red? At least one if not two or three along my commute, regularly. Those initial seconds are when bicyclists whose light has just turned green are most vulnerable. Or how about this one... how many drivers make turns or change lanes without using turn signals? That's one that seems to happen about 25% of the time and a move than can be a deadly one for a cyclist who can't tell what the car is doing next.

Oh and how many times has a cyclist running or rolling a red light hit or killed a car driver?

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And how many cars travel above the speed limit? 100% 150% Infinity percent?

A biker blowing a red light is dumb and dangerous. A biker treating a red light as a stop sign is less so. But a driver blowing a red light and/or speeding is several magnitudes more dangerous.

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If you have ever been driving on the e-way around detroit, speeding is the only option to survive. If you go the 70mph speed limit, you will get honked at and ran over... That is what is sad.

http://www.vietnamveteranscardonation.org

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As someone who uses a bike as a primary source of transportation, I think bikers should be held accountable if they're doing stupid shit like bombing down a sidewalk, riding the wrong way, blowing thru red lights.

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I think you're going to find one significant difference. A car that runs a red light is probably going to stop at the next red light it runs into. It's a one-off kind of thing for a car driver usually.

However, find a bicyclist who blew through a red and you can follow him all the way to his destination going through every red light and stop sign between point A and point B.

The other day, I saw a guy on a road bike at Commonwealth and Cummington near BU East. I was waiting to make the protected inbound U-turn and the light went full red for Comm Ave. It was red for about 10-15 seconds and Cummington had gotten its green light. A car started to pull out from Cummington when the bicyclist blew past the front hood of his car like he wasn't even there. This was one case where if the bicyclist had been in the bike lane, he would have gone right over the guy's hood. I watched as he also blew the next light before I got my green to make the U-turn.

The ones that stop, stop. The ones that don't, don't. However, most car drivers that you catch going on a late yellow or even rolling through a red aren't likely to do it at the next red light they come to. It also seems to be particular lights that cars push past the limit where traffic is usually the ugliest.

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this is a really good point, though i would point out that both probably run the same lights everyday, and that the vehicle may not run the next one, but probably runs every 4th or 5th one.

And I don't mean by all of my posts that I am somehow pro-lightrunning-cylists (though i'd much rather be hit by one of them than one of the cars running the same light). I'm all for "same roads, same laws", and personally I stop and wait at all red lights: it's so much easier to be smug that way, and you have it both groups of light-running morons.

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Long-time pedestrian commuter here.

It's usually easy to predict when a car's going to blow a light - if you never cross at a yellow without care, and wait a sec after the light turns red to cross, chances are you won't get hit by an automobile. Not a lot of cars run a light that's been red a while (at least during commuting hours). But I find bikes tend to come tearing out of nowhere regardless of how long the light has been red, making them unpredictable.

Likewise, cars are just easier to detect - they're noisy (except those stupid hybrids) and big. Bikes can come silently zipping out of nowhere, between stopped cars, on the shoulder, etc.

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I honestly can't recall ever seeing a bycycle STOP at a red light. Drivers are no champions of pedestrians. The number of drivers who blow through crosswalks is inexcusable. But them being wrong doesn't give bikers a license to be differently wrong. I have near-misses with bikes at least a couple times a year. And I'm not talking about someone just running through a cross walk or blocking a sidwalk, I'm talking coming within a foot or two of a bike going at high speed. I've had similar experiences with cars twice in the last 15 years. While there is no doubt that in a worst case scenario, a car will do much more harm to me, the risk with bicyclists happens about 1500% as often. This vastly increased incidence of risk makes bikes a far bigger danger to me as a pedestrian than cars.

And I'm so sick of cyclists ranting about how righteous they are for riding their bike. I walk or take public transportation. Why is it an outrage for cyclists to be endangered by drivers but the risk cyclists pose to pedestrians is not worth acknowledging? Stop thinking you don't need to be obey the law. I'm all for increased bike lines and getting drivers to share the road, but cyclists need to do their part, too. Because they can be just as much a menace.

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"Honestly"? Were you born earlier this afternoon? Just got a 30 year case of pinkeye loosened up? Only leave the house during Critical Mass? You should go spend 30 seconds at any downtown street corner this afternoon and see some things you've never seen before.

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You're defending the lawless behavior I simply observe. You've repeatedly justified and excused it. Yet you fly into a petty rage when someone simply sees the result of your self-important mindset? You can't both argue that cyclists have a righteous justification to break the law, and that its unthinkable that they are observed breaking the law. You're the one so eager to put the well-being of pedestrians at risk on the basis of your inflated sense of your own importance and capabilities. I'm just the pedestrian you wish to endanger who can see your lawlessness for what it is. If you want to have a widdle tantrum over that, you'll have to excuse me if I don't rush to pacify you.

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Your observations are questionable if you only "see" cyclists when they are behaving badly, and not drivers and pedestrians too. That's called "observer bias" in my line of work.

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Everything in this thread is anecdotal evidence with all of the expected problems therein. You cannot proffer such evidence in support of your case and object when contradictory anecdotes are offered in rebuttal. Pierce himself challenged people to offer this precise observational evidence. He has no honest objection when such evidence is contrary to his desired reality.

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They look nice and wide, from the pictures!! That's great. What cyclists need is room to breathe. Drivers often think that because a cyclist has A LANE, no matter what quality, they should stay the hell out of the road. In fact, it's really important that a bicyclist has room to stay out of the door zone. Just because it's a lane don't make it wide enough to accomplish that.

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For those who are interested, I'm going to be participating in the Ride of Silence on Wednesday evening to commemorate cyclists who have been killed on our streets. It starts at 7pm near the Davis Sq. T stop and goes about six miles to Boston Common.

Rain cancels. Here are the details.

(I hope nobody minds that I also posted this message on a previous thread. I just want to make sure that any cyclists who are interested will know about this event.)

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Look, it's not just one subset that is terrorizing the others. Bicyclists, pedestrians and motorists
all have some extremely self-entitled individuals amongst them. Nobody remembers the people who are
abiding by the rules, it's the assholes that stick out.

That said, I'm digging the Mayor's efforts to make Boston bike-friendly. Keep it up and he can say Ted Williams kicked it thru the uprights, I won't give a shit.

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I think we can all agree that scooters suck.

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And small motorcycles ridden by large teens.

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How's that old joke go?

They're fun to ride, but you never want your friends to see you on it...just like your mom.

Something like that.

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