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Stupid bike locked to stupid pole in the Back Bay


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Comments

I can sympathize if pedestrians were really inconvenienced, but I still had to laugh at what was clearly intended to be a joke.

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The usual "we stuck a pole there because we couldn't see past our own polyps" event, compounded by a non-mobile bike to draw attention to dual problems (lack of bike parking, pole in the middle of the frigging sidewalk). Then painted garish colors.

The bike is barely blocking any space a pedestrian could use, as it would be hard to pass between the pole and the wall as it is (judging from the size of the bike).

Effective trifecta of stupid! Bravo!

In addition to a NOT ART stencil, we would need a Citizen's Connect graffiti complaint about the NOT ART stencil.

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Hipsters screwing over handicap people, people with mobility issues, and the elderly. Yeah, that's cool. Jerks!

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Is anyone even thinking about the children?! the children!!

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suburbanite, go away.

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BPS has busing so children can't walk to local schools.

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The bike provides some scale on what the fools working for the city did. It doesn't make the situation any worse, really ... it just calls attention to the stupidity of the pole placement.

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Its a pole-ish gym.

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What would be really funny is if someone parked a truck in a travel lane of a narrow street and out a boot on it. Im sure the city would let that stay as long as they did this funny joke blocking pedestrians, right?

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It's been there for about a week and it's not blocking pedestrians. I hope it gets removed soon because it's garbage.

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http://velo-citystudio.com/

The bike is also positioned in an alley way.

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Oh, I know this street! Here's the Google street view that shows that the bike is squeezed in a small (~2 foot) jog-in between the pole and a bay in the adjacent building (as SG surmised). The front wheel extends maybe six inches into the main section of the sidewalk, and well out of the way of the nearby curb cut.

Btw, the alley street signs (that's what the pole is for) in this part of town are all placed close by the corner buildings and out of the way of the cuts. If the sign was placed out on the utility strip, as the folks at Bostonzest suggested, then it actually would block access. So the city is doing the right thing here with their signage, imo.

Anon (and Bostonzest) be goombahs.

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Boston Zest is stretching and wrong about the sign post location. It is set back to allow for potential damage from vehicles and snow plowing. Its even out of the way for nimble pedestrians to walk on the narrow strip out of the alley. Even visible in the background is a bent pole damaged while doing its job protecting the building and wall-mounted fire bell and hydrant.

The main agenda for the web site is to generate revenue, like much of the "walkable" agenda that makes public and private works projects more expensive while ignoring realities like snow. Roadway expansion projects are often too expensive in land acquisition, political, and legal costs, so civil engineering design and construction firms fatten reconstruction projects with "walkable" (but often lacking any data to show safer) features to increase revenue. For example, crossing bulb-outs may reduce pedestrian crossing distances (without data to show fewer resulting accidents), but they also remove road space needed for a bicyclist to ride between a MBTA bus and the extended curb, ending in death.

As for the exercise bike, well that looks like a friendly sidewalk amenity, giving pedestrians an opportunity for exercise at no cost. That's more in the spirit of public places than having private businesses use the public sidewalk for profit and outdoor dining.

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You really had me going until the part about the bike being a friendly sidewalk amenity.

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And I'm sure buses hitting cyclists has nothing to do with the bus passing too close (or as I prefer to say, illegally passing.)

Still waiting on that ignore button Adam :D

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