A Bicycle Safety Parable
I. The Artful Advocates and the Fair City Once upon a time in the land of the Massachusett, the streets of the Fair City of Cambridge were dominated by great an...
Category: Bike Lanes
Unsurprising Surprises on the new Comm Ave
The new “protected” bike lanes (between the parked cars and the sidewalk) on Commonwealth Avenue along Boston University are finally (mostly) usable...
How Protective are Protected Bike Lanes?
Protected bike lanes are popping up everywhere in the Boston area and around the country. These newfangled facilities, where the bike lane is separated from tra...
Dooring is Real. So Stop Putting Bike Lanes in the Door Zone
I have been doing some research about bike lanes and on-street parking over the past few years and have found: Most crash data sources do not include crashes wh...
Lessons Not Learned
[Note: This post was originally written in 2013 but never completed until now.] I first came across the tragic story of Alice Swanson when reading this letter t...
Out of The Frying Pan
In a recent column, Derrick Z. Jackson of The Boston Globe makes this observation about city cycling: “But for the most part, the streets still belong to ...
Centre/South Bike Markings Plan
This bicyclist had to swerve as the oblivious motorist flung open her door on Centre Street in the heart of the business district where parking turnover is high...
Door Zone Bike Lanes Again
John Ruch finally published his story about bike lanes in Jamaica Plain, only half of which made it to the print edition. As usual, Ruch mangled the quotes. The...
Save the Bike Lanes on Concord Ave!
Concord Avenue north of Fresh Pond in Cambridge has perfectly nice, five-foot bike lanes. They’re not even in the door zone, since there is no on-street p...
Useful and less useful signs
I remember seeing these signs in Berkeley some years ago. They are in complete violation of the MUTCD (wrong color, symbols, and font), but they do convey a use...