Neponset Spring Cycle, March 20
It is the first day of Spring! Ride the Neponset Greenway – meet at the concession stand at Fort Independence/Castle Island, Day Blvd., South Boston
A 20-mile tour of Boston Harbor and the Neponset Greenway from Castle Island to Paul’s Bridge in Hyde Park and back. This is the first Neponset ride that includes some new Greenway paths along Truman Parkway! The ride is fairly flat, about 60% on-road and 40% on paved paths. Helmets required, a bit long for kids unless they’re in a trailer or on a trail-a-bike or tandem with an adult. Dorchester cyclists can meet up with the ride at Tenean Beach around 10:30 AM.
Leader: Doug Mink, dmink@masspaths.net
Web site: http://www.masspaths.net
This ride is cosponsored by MassBike’s Metro Boston Chapter and the Boston Natural Areas Network.
Help Get Money for Biking: Call Congress Today!
bike lane franklin park
Last week, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) introduced a groundbreaking new bill to support bicycling and walking: the Active Community Transportation Act (H.R.4722) creates a competitive grant program with $2 Billion to help communities build bicycling and walking networks.
For the first time, communities would be able to compete for multi-year funding to build active transportation systems, just as they do for transit and road infrastructure. And one of the seven original sponsors of the bill is Massachusetts’ own Representative Michael Capuano (D-MA)!
This new bill gives you the opportunity Continue Reading »
Biking in Franklin Park
View Biking Franklin Park in a larger map
Proposal to Allow Bicycling in Franklin Park – Starting in January 2010,
the Franklin Park Coalition, Dot Bike, DEHC and other local groups and individuals joined together to try and change the city of Boston’s rule that does not permit bicycling in Franklin Park. This new bike advocacy alliance hopes that the Boston Park Commission will officially allow bicycling on those paths that are wide enough to be classified as “shared use” between bicyclists and pedestrians. Shared paths with frequent use should be 10’, less used paths may be 8’. All paved paths in the park were carefully measured, recorded, and photographed.
While this rule is not enforced, and there are frequently bicyclists on the paths in Franklin Park, removing the rule will:
- Encourage bicycling as a healthy activity for children and adults;
- Offer bike commuters a safe cross-town route off of city streets for part of their ride.
- Enable park entrance and access improvements that will make it easier for bicyclists, wheelchairs, and parents pushing strollers to enter and move throughout the park.
Please contact the folks below with questions about biking in Franklin Park:
Christine Poff at the Franklin Park Coalition or Debbie Munson at DotBike
consider bike commuting…
Why do I commute by bike? For lots of reasons:
A Bike Cage at Ashmont Station
The Mass Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) has received $4.8 million in ARRA federal stimulus funding to improve bike parking facilities system wide. This money is for bike parking only, and is intended to boost ridership and give people more transportation options.
With this money, the MBTA plans to build
· 6 to 10 bike cages (accessed using a special Bicycle Charlie Card, issued by the MBTA)
· 50 bike parking shelters (helps prevent rust for the bikes)
· An unspecified number of bike racks
DotBike and the Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition are recommending that at least one bike cage be installed in Dorchester.
Ashmont Station is a priority location because it is a terminus station that also serves as a hub with connections to the Mattapan trolley and many bus routes serving locations in and outside of the city.
PROPOSAL
We have identified what we believe is a highly suitable location for a bike cage at Ashmont station – just south of the busway at the south end of the station between the existing entrance and the transformer housing.
OUR OBSTACLE
The main access to the bike cage would be via the existing bus way and the T’s safety department claims that allowing bikes on the bus way would be too dangerous. However, there is little evidence to support that bikes sharing a bus way would be more dangerous than a bus encountering a bike on a roadway during its normal route particularly if MBTA drivers are trained to expect cyclists is this specific location.
A POSSIBLE SOLUTION
Add a short bike lane along the bus way leading directly to the cage, and add appropriate signage to direct all bike traffic directly back to Dorchester Ave. The bus way is unusually wide even at its narrowest point of 21 feet, so there’s ample room for a 4 or 5 foot wide bike lane.
The MBTA is pushing a bike cage on the new plaza, which we feel is a bad idea that would put cyclists in potential conflict with other neighborhood needs.
We ask you to: Please let the MBTA know that this bike cage at this location is a priority for the Dorchester cycling community and would allow more people to ride to the station without fear of bike theft (which is the number one reason people don’t cycle in Dorchester!). The city is building a bike lane on Talbot from Ashmont to Blue Hill, so this will be part of a new network of facilities that will promote cycling. Cycling in turn promotes health, fights obesity and cardiovascular disease.
How to support:
· Call or write the MBTA, 617-222-3214, EScheier@mbta.com (please cc us at Stidman@gmail.com as well)
· Ask your organization to write a formal bike cage request letter to the MBTA:
Eric Scheier, MBTA, 10 Park Plaza, Suite 3910, Boston, MA 02116, EScheier@mbta.com, and
John Hynes, MBTA Red Line Chief, 45 High Street, 10th floor, Boston, MA 02110.
An open letter from DEHC to Boston’s Parks Commissioners
This letter supports a DotBike and Franklin Park Coalition campaign to erase an outdated parks regulation that prohibits cycling on the many paths and walkways of Franklin Park.
Dear Boston Park Commissioners:
Franklin Park has incredible potential as a recreation resource for people from all walks of life and all parts of Boston. But as it is currently configured, it has not yet fully become the magnet for fitness activities that it can be, and this is of particular concern as we face a global obesity crisis. Golfers, university and high school track teams and other sports teams use the park, but we at the Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition are concerned about the average Bostonian, and how they use the park.
Getting rid of an outdated law against cycling on Franklin Park’s paths is, we believe, a promising step toward a park that can welcome fitness seekers of all kinds. Cycling is a low-impact but high-intensity exercise that has been proven to aid weight loss and improve cardiovascular health. Many of the park’s paths are wide enough to accommodate both walkers and cyclists, and the more people that are welcomed into the park, the better park security becomes.
Franklin Park is also a safe place where parents can take their children to first learn to ride a bike, and where people of all ages who wish to improve their cycling skills can come with peace of mind for their safety.
In the future, when more funding is available, we hope the commissioners will consider improvements to paths and roadways that would more effectively welcome cyclists to the park. Conflicts between users, when and if cyclists arrive in greater numbers, can then be mitigated with simple signage and road striping that designates separate space for walkers and wheeled traffic such as bikes, rollerblades and other sporting goods.
If our parks and open spaces are not places where all reasonable forms of fitness are possible, to where do we turn?
Sincerely,
Rosanne Foley,
Director
Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition
Survey Says: Bicycle Theft!
A few months back we asked 362 people in the neighborhood why they didn’t cycle or cycle more often.
Some might expect safety in traffic would be the most common reply, but the survey tells the true story. Bicycle theft is by far the biggest deterrent to cycling in Dorchester!
Over 59 percent of respondents said they feared their bike would be stolen, and a third of the folks without a bike said their last bike was stolen! Other studies have backed up this finding, finding evidence that between 20 to 25 percent of all theft victims ultimately do not replace their bicycles.
By comparison, around 49 percent of respondents in Dot said they cycle less or not at all because of a fear for safety in traffic, 47 percent said biking messed up their clothes or made them too sweaty, and around 41 percent said they had a hard time finding bike parking.
DEHC and DotBike have done a great deal of work encouraging the city to paint more bike lanes in our neighborhood and improve bike parking, both of which directly address some of the deterrents identified. But this survey points out that it may behoove us to spend some time figuring out how to reduce bike theft.
DEHC reviewed the literature on bike theft to come up with a number of ways to reduce it. Here’s what individuals can do to protect themselves: Continue Reading »
Bike Lane-O-Rama Possible This Winter
The outlook is good for DEHC efforts to bring a bike lane to Blue Hill Avenue and also Warren Street, and with a strong grassroots advocacy effort, lanes may be possible on Columbia Road!
Earlier this year, the city’s bike coordinator Nicole Freedman raced against time with design consultants to add as many bike lanes as she could to plans for roads that would be repaved using ARRA stimulus funds. What she completed is only a fraction of what could have been done if there had been more time or more resources.
But striping of any kind cannot be installed during the extreme cold of a Boston winter, which now gives bike lane advocates a window of opportunity until at least March 15, when the city predicts warmer weather.
Continue Reading »
Tide Turning in Bike Cage Push
December is bike cage month in DotBike land, as DEHC’s Pete Stidman and DotBike’s Vivian Girard have been gathering support for a bike cage at the JFK/UMass station near Columbia Point. The MBTA is building six to 10 bike cages within their transit and commuter rail system as part of a $4.8 million chunk of stimulus money specifically targeted to improving bike parking.
DEHC used the Freedom of Information Act to acquire a list of all the stations the T is considering for the new cages, as well as 50 bike shelters they intend to build. What we discovered is a strange bias toward suburban stations, and the likelihood that there would not be a bike cage in Dorchester, where bike theft is the number one deterrent to cycling!
As it turned out, the proximity of other stations worked against Dorchester and other urban neighborhoods in the T’s assessment of need for bike cages. They didn’t prioritize the positive effect on bike-ability neighborhood density has, nor the fact that cyclists might avoid other nearby stations due to theft risk. And most surprising-they didn’t compare or even look at rates of bike theft for any station! Continue Reading »
