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Boston bike czar pedals off into the sunset
By adamg on Fri, 03/20/2015 - 3:47pm
Nicole Freedman, appointed by then Mayor Menino to gear up Boston's bicycling efforts, is leaving next week for a transportation job with the city of Seattle (to which we also recently lost our chief of detectives).
She writes:
I am proud of how much we have accomplished together for cycling here in Boston. Since launching we have added 92 miles of bike lanes and nearly 2,000 bike racks. We have an award winning Community Biking Program which has donated 4,015 bikes and trained 23,000 youth. And of course, the New Balance Hubway system has become a new Boston institution.
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Comments
This is very sad, Walsh has
This is very sad, Walsh has slowed down/stopped a lot of projects that were moving forward, I wonder if she was fed up. I don't we don't start regressing to even more car centric when we were just starting to get going.
Marty Walsh's top bike project
Olympic Velodrome
Don't blame her. Walsh has
Don't blame her. Walsh has made it clear the car is still King. The expansion and maintenance of bike lanes has slowed to a crawl under his administration.
Big thanks
She's helped make the city better. I especially love the the work that has been done for the kids, the education and donated bikes from many area shops.
deja vu?
This isn't the first time she's announced she's leaving. She left back in April 2012 as well, to begin a "new position as the Executive Director of Maine Huts and Trails in Kingfield, Maine" (quote from her 4/20/12 "Farewell" email). Hopefully she'll be back again, as Nicole has done a ton for the cyclists in the city!
Lost in the upper left pocket
We can't count on her return from a cycling paradise. She admitted that the ideal of extreme rural outdoors was far superior to the reality of rural Maine.
In Seattle, she gets a very bike-friendly populous and great cycling infrastructure (and a much bigger budget). I bet she'll get to implement the tweaks we're many years from being able to do here. Plus, the political will is there in Seattle. Marty Walsh seems indifferent. Perhaps most important, the residents are thoroughly accustomed to sharing the streets and roads with cyclists.
Amusingly enough to me, my oldest son is moving from Mountain View to Seattle as I type this. He's an avid cyclist. His wife bikes too and he has been tooling around with his young son on the bike. A daughter is in the works. There, Nicole already has four more supporters.
Indifferent is an understatement
Our new mayor seems indifferent to pretty much everything, save for a parade in the middle of snow season while the rest of the city is gigantic snow pile. Oh, and to rent out the city for an Olympic spectacle that will benefit who or what? God knows not you, me or the city.
That gig didn't last long
She returned just months later in January.
http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/Default.aspx?id=5918
I'm not sure if her departure
I'm not sure if her departure has to do with the change in mayor as there is still much to do here in Boston but I wish her well. She came back in 2013 after taking some time with Maine Huts & Trails in 2012. I wish her well in Seattle, hopefully she'll find an administration conducive to fostering biking and alternative transportation.
bike czar
who cares? nobody rides bicycles in Boston.
People do
But, hey, the way we are welcomed coming across the Charles after five continuous miles of bike lanes means that we will just be using the entire the lane in front of you when we do.
Men do, and a minority of women
The gender gap is more than 2:1 male:female. Perhaps 2% total ride bikes to work in Boston, at least when the weather doesn't suck. http://www.cityofboston.gov/bikes/statistics.asp
The bike lobby has been waging a campaign to get more women to ride, but its going as well as luring women into computer science programs - not very.
Yawn
Irrelevant comment is irrelevant.
Did you have point to make?
Or just more ranting and raving about the evil BIG BIKE LOBBY!
Bicycling has limited appeal
Its simply a niche transportation mode. I could argue that if more boat docks and Boat Share rentals were available, more people would then commute that way instead of via cars!
Even in the bike capital of the US, Portland, bicycling has failed to increase since 2009. Thats it. topped out, despite investments, much like many consumer products that never caught on massively despite advertising and other investment.
I hope Wash doesn't waste money filling her position, which seems likely since she is leaving.
Marrky you cite the 2% all the time
As if thats the only metric to measure why we should be laying out more bike infrastructure.
Study after study after study after study after study, time and time again points to the economic benefit to local business that are brought on by better cycling infrastructure.
http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-business-case-for-...
But if you want to get into numbers and waste, maybe we should start to speak about some other numbers. How about we start charging drivers for the real cost of the driving? Can you start paying the $1.6 trillion we spend each year on road maintenance?
Since bikes only make up %2 of the usage, our share should be pretty small. Oh but some of us drive too, so were gonna need a tax break for people with bikes. BIG BIKE to the rescue!
Cherry-picked anecdotes with meager results
in the bike blog article you cited. The last anecdote in the article even contradicts the other anecdotes - showing drivers spend more than cyclists in that instance.
Nationwide, bike popularity is 0.6% according to the US Census Bureau, since you want to use a claimed $1.6 trillion national figure, rather than an apples and oranges 2% claim.
Keep spinning those tales!
Boston not built for cars
So, lets get rid of all the cars, except on major freeways.
Simple.
Because we can't let anything ever change.
2% statewide
Currently 2% state-wide, and the statistics of 2% in Boston are from almost a decade ago.
Try again.
Citation?
US Census ACS data perhaps?
What do you win if you win here??
For Pete's sake. I know this whole bike thing is your favorite leg to hump but do you really want to just get rid of all the bikes? Let's just say you do. And now ALL of us jerks on bikes who you despise so much will now join you sitting in traffic twice a day like a lummox. 2% more traffic. 2% more cars. Happy now??
Tired of bicycling LIES
Like the fictitious 2% state-wide number. Its 0.6% nationally, and at most 1% state-wide. Spin, spin, spin. Downplaying the risks of being unprotected on a bike instead of safely inside a vehicle, and downplaying actual crash numbers, many of which do not involve motor vehicles at all, and are thus under counted.
This is a 100% inflation of the data, another popular distortion of statistics by bicyclists. "Cycling has increased 100% in the past n years" sort of thing. Well, yes, going from one bicyclist to two is a 100% increase, but hides the fact that the actual number of people are very meager and overall insignificant.
Then there is "moral license" where people who think of themselves being green get a free pass to do "bad" things like run red lights. Of course, motorists and MBTA bus drivers running yellowish lights are also being green for idling in traffic less, reducing pollution.
Tired of your spin
The risks of being on a bicycle instead of a car are primarily the responsibility of the car. What you highlight isn't a reason not to bike. It is a reason to enforce driving laws. What are these "many that don't involve motor vehicles"? Bike-on-pothole?
Furthermore, you like to claim that nobody bikes so why should we care or spend money on biking lanes and safer biking. How about the fact that we've spent so little relative to cars the proportion of riders per dollar is huge! The fact that there's a critical mass where if we spent enough, people would feel safer and more comfortable biking instead. The fact that some people bike for more than commuting and that gets underrepresented.
But you just want the numbers to tell you biking is a waste of time...so don't bike. Do you think the "wasted money" you find biking to be would improve your driving in any way? What grand project would you do instead of bike lanes? Because whatever it is would cost more and produce less effect on the current situation. So, go find a new horse to beat.
This
Cyclists pay in far more than they get out. Drivers pay in far less than they get out - less than 60% based on links that I have posted before.
40% of people in Boston do not have cars, yet pay taxes that are used to plow streets into sidewalks and bike lanes and bus stops and disability access ramps. That shit has to stop.
When motor vehicle owners (including me) pay their fair share of what their preferred mode uses, and are not subsidized by other users, we can talk about wastes of money. Meanwhile, car dependence causes many direct and indirect problems in the city, including cars hitting people and pollution, and needs to be reduced as much as possible, whenever possible.
Cars are a problem, cars cause problems, cars do not fit and their use should not be encouraged in urban environments. Period. Europe gets this. Boston and Marty Walsh need to come to grips with the fact that we are NOT in fucking Texas.
No point in arguing with MarkK
He'll never admit when he's made a mistake, even if you present him with incontrovertible evidence that he's done so. Any admission that he or any pro-car voice has made a mistake or misled people or even misinterpreted data, not to mention killed anyone, cannot be countenanced in the world of Mark. Drivers are shining paragons of law-abidingness (regardless of what your eyes tell you about them running lights and stops, texting while driving, speeding, killing pedestrians in crosswalks, and using their cars to intimidate pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers) and all cyclists are juvenile scofflaws (who are also somehow both ridiculous hippies and also affluent middle class athletes).
We see this all the time on the Arlington town email list (well, when he's not on moderation for putting his foot in his mouth in an incredibly offensive way). He'll just take the conversation to private email or scream about censorship or say he's bored of the conversation. And don't forget the petulant "LIES" in all caps. You see, Mark is convinced that he is both incredibly smart and the only rational person in the room, so why should he listen to anyone? Combine that with having literally nothing better to do than comment on stuff online and you have the perfect recipe for frustration.
Mark also has literally no idea who cycles around here, and for what reason, and how that might be different from the huge swaths of the US where you're basically arrested as soon as you sit on a bicycle. All he knows is what he learned from Google, although he claims to have ridden a bike in Europe decades ago, so he's clearly an expert on everything. This made him the perfect mouthpiece for Eric Berger, the tool who spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money fighting the Mass Ave Corridor project, and then decided to head to Florida because Arlington didn't love any of his crew enough to even elect them to the 200+ strong town meeting.
Mark also apparently failed logic 101 and is a poor critical thinker and tends to discount almost anything not printed by the car lobby. Bikes sales are level, like they've been for a long time? Obviously the cycling industry is in major decline. But registrations of new drivers are down? Obviously a temporary fluke. If we aren't seeing a total shift to cycling amongst drivers (regardless of how silly that expectation is) then cycling is clearly pointless because it isn't "winning". He can't see cycling as part of a system of transit -- if bicycles can't fill every niche in the transportation market then they are clearly pointless. But projections of car traffic consistently wildly overestimate actual miles driven? Nothing to see here. Oh, but look over here where Portland's mode share is dwindling (it's actually more or less flat for most of the last decade) and never mind all the cities where mode share appears to be increasing. Constantly shout that Boston cycling mode share is only 2% but ignore nearby areas where it's over 3x as high (you can see why he grumbles about Arlington becoming like Cambridge so often).
Save your breath for the non-zealots. You're just feeding Mark's need to annoy you.
P.S. If you're ever in Arlington, be sure to wave at the frumpy dude in day-glo on the sidewalk: that'll be Mark.
I am so flattered
for the attention, but you got many things wrong. I clearly must have hit a nerve.
People don't have to choose between believing you or me because I've provided links to the facts on many of my posts. Believe the data.
I am pro-democracy, not pro-car. Democracy is not just how people vote, but what they choose to do. People overwhelmingly want to ride on motor vehicles, be it cars or MBTA buses, so, that's what should be supported. Its the anti-car people who call their schemes "demand management" who want to dictate how people travel, Ala communism.
I never claimed that motor vehicle operators are without sin, just that laws need to be fairly applied to all road users and that racing equipment and such behaviors have no place on public roads.
Cycling being flat in Portland for the past 5 years is one of the few true claims you made. Its down in NYC. Its likely down or at best flat in Seattle and SF, but we can't be sure because bike advocates are withholding the data reports from the public. Oh, and CitiBike membership has also been flagging, requiring a bail out. Bicycling on Mass Ave in Arlington also seems down this past year, but data isn't available.
As far as Arlington goes, as far as I know, I am the only Town Meeting member to lose a seat who opposed the loss of a travel lane on Mass Ave to create bike lanes right near a bike path. Yes, I do wear a reflective jacket to encourage pedestrians to take responsibility for their own safety by choosing to wear more visible outerwear. Its far less expensive and infinitely more effective at increasing safety than millions of dollars wasted nationally on curb bump outs. Just a couple weeks ago, the Town also advocated pedestrians wear conspicuous clothing with an informational flyer included with excise tax bills. Oh, right again.
Bicycling is declining
with the drop in gas prices, and flat in previous years, despite all the bike lanes and tracks added in NYC. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/nyregion/commuter-cycling-in-new-york-...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2013-all-year-and-winter-ci.pdf
NYC delayed releasing numbers when they saw them counter to their desired spin, and San Francisco is doing the same. Oh, and their new bike coalition head suffered a traumatic brain injury after hitting a pothole when working in NYC and had to go through a long recovery and off his bike for a year. He doesn't like to talk about that, because he can't blame cars for it, nor does it further the lie that bicycling is safe except for those damn cars and trucks and buses. http://www.transalt.org/sites/default/files/news/magazine/046%20Spring/0...
U2 lead Bono is another high profile example of how dangerous bicycling is, even when not run over by a truck. His severe accident was trying to avoid another cyclist in NYC Central Park. He is going through much physical therapy following multiple surgeries. Being in a car is much safer.
Bono got in a bike accident therefore...
Bikes are not safe? Seriously? This is your argument?
Buddy--stay in your car, or rather the basement from which you type all this nonsense.
Over 30,000 dead each year
Over 100,000 injured.
What was that about cars being safe?
See what I mean about spin nonsense from cyclists?
30,000 dead in how many trillion miles traveled per year by how many hundreds of millions of people compared to how few miles traveled by cyclists?
I work in the bicycling industry
The demographic figures around transportation cycling is rapidly changing. All of the latest data nationwide is painting a different picture to the traditional image of a bicycle commuter.. If one looks at bicycle commuters by age demographic women are becoming more and more represented. Some studies of millennials actually indicate that women are more likely than men to be bicycle commuters. I'm sorry not to have a link to share with you, but this is definitely the talk within the industry.
disappearing bike lanes
most parts of the "92 miles of bike lanes " in Brighton are pretty much faded away by now.
The only way to make Boston a biking city is to build isolated bike lanes or between the curb and parked cars, like they do in Europe. Even at the cost of part of sidewalk space or street.
That's a good way to make
That's a good way to make sure bike infrastructure will be blocked by piles of snow much of the year. For a great example of this, see Vassar Street by MIT. The length of the bike paths *still* aren't totally useable.
On the other hand, if an on-street bike lane has snow in it, you just merge left into the general lane.
I biked on the Vassar Street
I biked on the Vassar Street bike lane in the middle of February a couple of times.
It was cleared enough for use, dunno what you're complaining about.
It was the portions that are on-street that were cleared less well.
She will be missed
Had a few bits of correspondence with her over the past year regarding blocking of the bike lanes along Comm Ave. particularly in Kenmore Square.
I had only opened the cases via Citizens Connect but after a few dozen posts about the same issues, I finally got an email from her regarding the cities efforts in the area.
What was pretty clear was that her hands were tied from doing what actually needed to be done (ie pushing BPD/BTD to enforce the parking laws) and instead had to speak about education efforts, handing out lights/helmets to bikers, etc.
Good luck to her in Seattle, she'll at least have the support and resources to making cycling safer and grow further.
Is it the new norm to write
Is it the new norm to write humblebrag email blasts when you leave your job?
New?
This has been going on for many years. I remember it back in the early 2000s, possibly earlier.
Another Walsh failure
Nicole is one of the best bike advocates in the country, and she managed to get a tremendous amount done with relatively few resources in a city legendary for its hostility to cyclists. And barely a year after taking office, this clown had lost her.
It's not really surprising after the way he failed to support cyclists on Comm Ave and the complete failure to make the city work for anyone not in a private automobile this winter. But it's still disappointing. This guy clearly has no vision for the city. Losing Nicole is a blow not just for cyclists, but for anyone who wants to see Boston keep pace with other top cities. Bikes matter to a lot of people who aren't daily riders, and they matter to the young entrepreneurs that our city is so desperate to get and keep here.
Sigh. When's the next election, again?
A few months ago the director
A few months ago the director (David Watson) of the Mass Bikes organization stepped down. He's a fantastic and very experienced bike advocate, so hopefully he is in the running to be the new Boston bike czar.
Cycling Statitistics
1. Davis, California 19.1%
2. Boulder, Colorado 12.1%
3. Palo Alto, California 9.5%
4. Eugene, Oregon 8.7%
5. Cambridge, Massachusetts 8.5%
6. Fort Collins, Colorado 7.9%
7. Berkeley, California 7.6%
8. Santa Barbara, California 6.9%
9. Madison, Wisconsin 6.3%
10. Missoula, Montana 6.2%
11. Portland, Oregon 6.0%
12. Gainesville, Florida 6.0%
13. Chico, California 5.7%
14. Mountain View, California 5.5%
15. Evanston, Illinois 5.3%
16. Santa Monica, California 5.2%
17. Miami Beach, Florida 5.1%
18. Ann Arbor, Michigan 4.9%
19. Flagstaff, Arizona 4.7%
20. Minneapolis, Minnesota 4.5%
21. Tempe, Arizona 4.5%
22. Washington, D.C. 4.1%
23. Seattle, Washington 4.1%
24. Provo, Utah 4.0%
25. Bloomington, Indiana 3.9%
Somerville, Massachusetts 3.7%
Boston, Massachusetts 2.4%
Note that Boston is not on this list BUT CAMBRIDGE and SOMERVILLE both have much higher rates of cycling because they have facilities for cycling. It is a fictional joke to look at Boston's lower rates and draw meaningful conclusions from that in any way. Boston also sees a solid share of commuters from Somerville, Cambridge, and other communities and it is good for business and congestion to accommodate those people.
If Somerville and Cambridge were not separately listed, the area percentages for the core urban area are much higher.
Compiled from the American Community Survey for 2012. http://bikeleague.org/sites/default/files/ACS_report_final_forweb_2.pdf
(Census data - presented by the League of American Cyclists)
The crazy thing is: Cambridge
The crazy thing is: Cambridge has piss-poor cycling infrastructure compared to the heavy-hitters in the commute by cycling world like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Munich, Rotterdam, Munster, Berlin, Malmรธ etc...could really just pick any moderate-to-large size town in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, or the Netherlands and it puts Cambridge to shame. And yet, there's still clearly the desire to bike to work and brave the piecemeal infrastructure; if there was a proper layout, built according to well-established models in the cities I described - biking as a modal share would become a barn-burner.
Somerville as well
One reason that the rebuild of Beacon St. through Somerville includes a cycle track: mode share is very high.
450 bikes an hour at rush hour and about 850 motor vehicles means that bikes can reasonably command 1/3 of the pavement.
That's 35%, and it will likely go up with the new facility.
Symbiotic relationship
One of the nice things about Copenhagen and it's surroundings is that the Danish Ministry of Transport forces all municipalities to adopt a certain standard the requires both bike lanes and stipulates/normalizes the design. There's no difference therefore between going from one city's infrastructure to the next unlike the ridiculously balkanized approach to city/transit planning in Boston and its environs. So Somerville and Cambridge could really do a number of good things with just basic, run-of-the-mill coordination. Making sure that a bike lane remains when crossing from one city to the next, f.x.
The only other thing I'd add is getting rid of the word "cycle track" from our vocabulary. It's a bike lane; and a bike lane is either a grade-separated or sufficiently buffered traffic lane dedicated to bikes. It isn't two white lanes painted on pavement. That's not a bike lane, that's paint on the ground and irritates me to no end when Cambridge touts their x-number of bike lanes, 80% of which are worn-down road art.
Symbiotic relationship is students
Not infrastructure so much. Cambridge inflates its numbers with ANTI-infrastructure! Yes, zoning and other limits on parking to force more people to not use their preferred transportation, but biking and public transit. Anti-car zoning also supports higher rents by increasing demand for housing in Cambridge for shorter commutes and money otherwise spent on parking lot fees.
If you look at cities for biking, they are college towns, or for Somerville, right next to one with lower rents.
Not students
While there are people like my son who live at home and attend college in Cambridge and get there by bike, the vast majority of the people I see on the roads day after day are people who are adults. Most students live on campus or near it, especially in Cambridge.
Get further out, and the commute through Somerville and Cambridge is a combination of people in their late 20s/early 30s and late 40s/50s. The demographic used to skew old through the 2000s, and then the millenials started doing stuff that Gen-X prototyped, but in much larger numbers, including cycling to work (and many of us GenX folk never stopped). Check out the scene at Aeronaut sometime when they hold an event.
Naw, that would require getting out of your car, seeing art, getting a life ...
http://nymag.com/next/2015/03/what-will-be-americas-first-car-free-city....
I'm guessing
no real evidence--that the stark difference between percentage share between Camberville and Boston is more people who live closer to work. Boston must have a hugely larger share of people commuting from far away whereas the students, techies, and generally younger, more localized Cambridge-somerville population have a shorter, more bikeable commute.
Beacon Street Stupidity
After a $22M project to put bike lanes on Somerville ave that get meager use, Somerville is removing much needed parking spaces on Beacon street for pointless sections of bike track, just to claim they have a bike track. The City waited over 10 years to restart the project because the hotel building permit bid would have failed if the parking were removed first, well, that and some more digging up and badly patching of the street by utilities.
So, throwing more good money after bad is being done on Beacon, which more than anything just needs simple repaving.
Meager use
The city did a traffic study with traffic counts before decisions were made.
At peak hours, 450 bikes to 850 cars is "meager use"
Really?
REALLY?
I have sat in "meager" packs of THIRTY CYCLISTS, all of whom get through the light in 20 seconds while cars back up.
There is no room for additional cars on that road. There is room for additional bikes. The ONLY WAY to increase capacity is to GET MORE BIKES! Also, cyclists do this thing called "parking" too, only it takes 1/20th of the space. The city also did some investigation that showed that cyclists are also a lot more likely to stop and pick up groceries or dinner or whatever, and spend a lot more money on Beacon St. than people from Arlington who are just driving through on their commute. That's why Whole Foods put in a ginormous bike rack in their private lot, and keep having to put in more.
Go shove it in your tailpipe already.
Read carefully this time
I wrote "meager" about the $22m project on Somerville ave that put in bike lanes and increased congestion. That was a waste considering Beacon has much more bike traffic, which I acknowledge. Bike lanes were a waste on Somerville Ave because bicyclists are more heading to and from parking starved Kendall Sq. in Cambridge.
Bicyclists totally make bullshit statements about space efficiency that IGNORE motorcycles. Motorcycles should be promoted instead of bicycles because they are far more practical when it comes to going longer distances, carrying a passenger, and going longer distances. Federal safety nannies have a double standard, where they discourage motorcycling as unsafe, yet bicycling is equally as unprotected. Its not like motorcyclists get no exercise - there is quite a bit wrestling one around parking and even driving is much more active than driving a car.
Money should be spent on infrastructure, zoning, and laws to encourage more MOTORcycling than bicycling if you want efficiency. Compared to Asia, we're very far behind when it comes to affordable transportation for the masses, via scooters and motorcycles, which vastly outnumber cars.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Bar_of_cars_motorcycl...
Topic related: Best wishes to Ms. Friedman, as Seattle has catching up to do with Cambridge. The infrastructure most needed there to promote cycling would be sheltered bike lanes because driving a car is so much more pleasant than being out in the rain.
Hyperbole
For someone who whines so much about "spin," you should do your best to control your own spin.
"$22m project on Somerville ave that put in bike lanes"
That $22MM project was for full roadway reconstruction. Full depth pavement, utility replacement, drainage, sidewalks, curbs, new traffic signals, etc etc etc. The cost of the bike lanes is the paint. I'd hazard a guess at $50k at $1 per foot of paint.
More than paint this time
Because cyclists are already a third of the traffic, and there is room for more, Somerville is putting in an actual fully separated bike facility on Beacon St.
I remember riding Beacon street with many, many other cyclists in the early 1990s, because it was wide enough to have a good space, but not so wide that cars tried the two abreast thing that they do in Arlington. Also, even then the motorists were used to cyclists. I am not the least bit surprised at the heavy cycle traffic.
True
Beacon is a different story, a much higher slice of the cost is going to the bike infrastructure there, but it's still probably in the range of 5% of overall cost. Even Markkk seems to be unable to twist the stats in his favor on that street, where peak hour bike share is in the range of 1/3.
Somerville Ave lanes are heavily used
Counts at Park and Somerville are up around 300 per hour.
Somerville is somewhere between 8 and 10%
plus a lot of people in all neighborhoods around the city - the most vocal tend to be yuppies, but there are many within more marginalized groups that bike as a main mode of transport. I know several homeless people who bike around the city - and I've seen people out biking in dorchester all winter.
If the mayor isn't interested in bikes - then he obviously doesn't care about the very poor, the city's families, and the "new Boston" - I still haven't figured what his game is. Maybe he's gunning for higher office?
Again, more than 2x inflated figure
See chart above, where Somerville comes in at 3.7% commute by bike according to the US Census Bureau.
Mayor Curtatone of Somerville wants to attract more hipsters to Somerville, so is behind bicycling for the Spandex set to bring higher rents for apartments and office space. Not so much for the homeless population.
Boston should mostly focus bike infrastructure in East Boston, where the low income people need to ride bikes. Instead, the bike infrastructure is focused where the affluent, professional, educated, vocal, male, bike riding voters live. Even HubWay caters to the same demographic, with NO stations in East Boston.
"Spandex set" is the Godwin's Law of any bike argument
Someday during one of your periods of apparently infinite free time, I'd like you to go station yourself at the corner of say, Mass. Ave. and Prospect St. or maybe Beacon and Kirkland. Count the bikers and then let us all know exactly how many were wearing spandex. Because the answer will be somewhere around the same number of car drivers who are driving Maseratis or Rolls Royces.
Sorry but it's just another dead giveaway that you have no idea what you're even talking about.
And exactly how
are these bicyclists in East Boston supposed to bike to their jobs, schools etc in the rest of boston--over the magic harbor bike bridge?
Somerville is not on the list
I mean, it's a top 25 list, and Somerville's numbers are below Bloomington, Indiana at number 25. Technically, both Somerville and Boston are at the level of, to use sports polling language, "also received votes." It's just that Boston got less votes.
Votes?
It wasn't a list of votes, per se, its a list of highest percentages of places where people bike to work. Its only votes in the sense of voting by making claims on a Census survey about one's primary mode to work is. People do lie, and the numbers are probably inflated where its more politically correct to choose other answers over driving alone.
You miss my point
Which was that although Somerville has greater bicycle use per capita than Boston, neither "made the list." Technically, every city and town in the United States is "on the list."
So, are you saying that every survey done is wrong, since people lie?
Oh, and one more thing
Since the number is for commuting only, doesn't that mean the actual number of bicycle users are more, since recreational cyclists and those biking for small errands closer to home would bring a higher figure, even for 18+ only?
I'll accept the commuter numbers, since the ACS is a reliable survey, but still.
Bicycling in decline since 1995
though the biggest year was 1973. In the US, bicycling ranks just below bowling in popularity, and yet government invests practically nothing in bowling infrastructure!
According to the National Bicycling Retailers Association, which has an interest in tracking bicycling trends. This is reflected most strongly in declining recreational riders, women, and especially children, who are down 20%. Enthusiast riders, who are ones most thought of at Uhub, are the group most fighting downward trends, though getting older. Bicycling remains 85% non-Hispanic white, along with male, and affluent in character. When looking at numbers, keep population growth in mind because slight increases in some numbers are actual declines relative to the US population as a whole.
http://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2014/04/01/opinion-single-b...
http://nbda.com/articles/industry-overview-2013-pg34.htm
http://savethebikebiz.com/intro/
http://www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-analysis/2012/06/05/light-end-tun...
There are more, just google "us bicycling decline".
Interesting safety data here: http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/data/factsheet_crash.cfm
especially concerning drunk pedestrians and bicyclists killing themselves.
So what?
Markk, you point out the lack of interest in biking as if that is relevant to the discussion. You think it indicates that we shouldn't spend money on biking because nobody will use it. However, how about if you don't spend money on it, it won't be there for anyone to have any interest in using.
Since the 1970's when it peaked, you know what trended? Everyone moving out of the city and into the suburb. The MALL became a big deal and you had to DRIVE to it. You started to see 30+ minute commutes to work. Previously bustling mini-metropolises became husks at 5 PM and everyone would drive to a cookie-cutter commuterville in the surrounding ring. Cars started selling like mad, highways were overdeveloped, and the whole of American society decided if I can't drive there, then it wasn't worth going.
It wasn't until recently (like the last 15 years) that people began moving back to cities, that bikes, scooters, buses, trains, and other non-car transportation became bigger than before in dense urban centers. Except the people still find no infrastructure for these things. We still build like cars matter most. America diverged from Euro-style development and it's had a lasting effect. Except we're starting to learn that a lot of what makes European cities healthy and great are things we can adopt right here in Boston and other very similar Euro-styled cities particularly on the East Coast.
We get it. You will take any opportunity to defend the requirement that cars come first and that bikes are useless wastes of time and energy to even think about. SO NOTED. So fuck off already unless you're actually going to do a new trick. In the meantime, we'll keep working towards improving things instead of just trying to pave the world for you to drive on. Thanks.
Bowling infrastructure more lacking
Bowling is more popular than bicycling, yet consider how little government spends on infrastructure for all the people who participate in bowling. Walking, hiking and camping are more popular than bicycling, yet get enormous government spending. Consider all the sidewalks and national parks government supplies and how few bowling lanes.
So, bicyclists are getting far more than their share of infrastructure, while bowlers are getting so unfairly treated! So enough bullshit about underfunding of bicycling infrastructure - its already far larger in proportion to its popularity thanks to small cadre of loudmouthed proponents. Bowling is far more deserving and practical considering bowling infrastructure gets use in hot, cold, rain, snow, night, and day.
Movies are far more popular
Where are the state movie theaters!?
Shut up, Markk. If you can't have an honest discussion, don't bother trying to have one.
Big screen bowling movies could outnumber bicycling movies
Lots of movies with bowling scenes, below are one set of picks:
http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/films/10-greatest-bowling-scenes-...
Kaz, the list that puts walking, hiking, camping, and bowling ahead of bicycling is of physical activities, so, movies don't count.
Move to Texas
Shut up and go away. You like cars? Plenty of places where people like cars.
You don't drive in the city much, so just stfu.
I bowl my way to work
I also hire a kid to reset the pins so I can bowl my way to the grocery store, bank, etc.
In other words, bowling is not relevant.
Shouldn't you be out driving somewhere
Why do you even live in MA? You seem to be far more interested in making life hell for people where you do not live and never go because CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS than moving some place where people drive everywhere all the time already.
Why don't you just move and just shut up and stop demanding that places other people live look like goddamn Texas hell.
Olympian too
Nicole is not only smart and committed, but her creds include being an Olympic cyclist. Mayor Walsh put her on the Boston2024 advisory group from the city, which makes sense. Wonder what she thinks of the bid.
Best of luck, Nicole, you'll be missed.
OK, but are we or are not
OK, but are we or are not supposed to be able to ride through the Common? Because that's probably the biggest issue for me, commuting-wise. And, after somebody painted little icons saying no, and there was supposedly some hearing or whatever, the whole issue has disappeared.
--gpm