Boston bike czar Nicole Freedman breaks her goals into "five E's," from engineering the roadways to enforcing safety laws.
Boston is one of the world's worst cities for bicycling. I know; I used to live there.
But don't take my word for it. Bicycling magazine rated Boston worst in the America three times. In 1999--the year I moved away from the city--the International Federation of Bike Messenger Associations (IFBMA) awarded Boston with the first ever "Hall of Shame Award" as the world's worst city in which to work as a professional bike messenger.
"City of Boston officials have no Bicycle Program, no bicycle coordinator and the Boston Bicycle Advisory Committee stopped meeting last year. Boston is such an auto-dominated city that it's no wonder that motor vehicle break-ins were cited as the primary crime concern voiced by Boston residents in the 1997 Public Safety Survey," said the press release.
Ouch. But Boston bicyclists never took the state of their streets lying down. Organizations like Bikes Not Bombs and Broadway Bicycle School, where my wife was once a collective member and mechanic, have worked for years to encourage people to ride bikes and build a more shareable transportation infrastructure.
Their activism paid off when in 2007 the city hired MIT grad and former bike racer Nicole Freedman to serve as the city's very first "bike czar." Thanks to the webzine Inhabitat, this afternoon I participated in a live webinar with Nicole. She presented Boston's ambitious plans (you can view the powerpoint here) and answered questions from participants. Nicole described a staggering amount of progress:
- Boston has added 500 bike racks--in some cases displacing car parking spots--and plans to keep going;
- Published a bike map and sold ad space on the map--the money from which was used to fund youth bike programs;
- Launched a program to educate businesses on how to be more bike-friendly--and zoned many buildings to require secure indoor bike parking;
- Worked with police to enforce bike regulations, including a $100 fine for parking in bike lanes;
- Launched a "Bike Friday" program (copied from Oregon!) that involves free breakfast and a police-escorted bike convoy.
And much, much more... more than I can list here. The most startling evidence of progress, at least to me: Boston now offers a bikesharing program at eight city buildings where over 5,000 employees work, including City Hall and the Boston Police Headquarters.
This city bike pool is just a precursor to the main event: citywide bikesharing. Boston has hired a Canadian company, the Public Bike System Company, to bring a network of bike-sharing stations to Boston, with plans to expand the system into Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline.
Freedman's not stopping there. Surveys in Boston and New York suggest that safety concerns are the number one obstacle to more biking. In response, Boston has been reengineering its roadways, developing, marking, and painting bikelanes--and the next step, said Freedman, will be add at least ten more miles of lanes and widen them as much as possible. Ultimately, Freedman hopes Boston will have protected lanes where bikes are not adjacent to cars.
Nicole's advice for people who want to bring bikesharing to their towns and cities? “Do a lot of research," she says. "Learn if your city is already looking at it. City government has to be involved; it has to be a public-private partnership, because no bike sharing program can work without using public space. Anyone good in government is listening to the public; we’re hired by the public, and hearing people’s requests is one of the best ways to hear what's good."
The next steps? Organize any way you can to get people on bikes, recruit activists and leaders, focus on developing specific programs (e.g., educating people about safety), engage the media--and, most important, steal best practices from other cities. Who knows? Someday cities might be looking to Boston for ideas.
Comments
Paul Schimek wrote on 10.28.09, 5:16am:
"World's worst"? Is that not at least a teeny tiny bit exaggerated? Bicycling Magazine merely put the city on the list of one of the worst in the U.S., which is quite a bit difference, and anyway, they were only measuring effort, not outcome. In fact bicycling for transportation has always been much more common, and pleasant, in Boston than many places (for example, Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc., not to mention many places outside the country).
And Nicole is actually the second bicycle staff person on the city employ. The difference is that in her case, the Mayor had decided (through a personal conversion experience) that bicycling is not a ridiculous thing reserved for hippies, children, and crazies (bike messengers), as he previously had thought.
Can you please cite the source of this?: "Surveys in Boston and New York suggest that safety concerns are the number one obstacle to more biking."
Also, we might not want to be so quick to assume that bike lanes will make things safer. Most of the new Boston bike lanes are in the door zone. And "protected bike lanes" may not help matters: they will reduce mobility and increase danger (from turning traffic, errant pedestrians, and snow) at the same time.
Jeremy Adam Smith wrote on 10.28.09, 8:48am:
Hi Paul! I think a lot of the habitual antipathy towards Boston as biking city is rooted in a belief that the city could and should be a lot better than it is. New York is also terrible, almost certainly worse, but it's New York--people are trained to expect nasty streets.
I can't speak for the IFBMA or Bicycling magazine (I changed that from "world" to "America" by the way--you're right and my notes from Nicole's talk were wrong), but my experience in 90s Boston was bookended on one side by biking in Florida and on the other by two years of biking all around the world. And I must tell you that from that personal perspective, Boston suffered in comparison.
But all these perspectives date from the nineties (almost a twenty year span in my case; I'm getting old), and Boston has been changing for a long time now. It sounds to me like you're a veteran Boston bicyclist. I'd suggest that there are two things that might inform your perspective: a) you're used to it and you love your city, warts and all--few things deepen love of place more than biking around it; and b) you've seen years of incremental improvement. Those are all good things.
On bike lanes: I'm an advocate for them. San Francisco has developed an extensive network of bikelanes over the nine years I've lived here, and it has made a huge difference for me as a rider--and it's increased ridership in general. (You might be interested in this piece: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-more-bicyclists... )
On the surveys: Nicole cited the surveys in her talk. You might actually shoot her a note to find out more about these surveys; she's very approachable.
Angela V-C wrote on 10.28.09, 5:08pm:
I was just thinking as I read this -- hey, I don't think of Boston as such an unfriendly city to bikes, but then I realized that I live in Cambridge, not Boston, and it's a whole different world. Cambridge isn't perfect by any means, but I feel much more of a positive biking culture here than I do when I cross the river into Boston. Most of the people in my neighborhood ride and many commute on a regular basis. I get harassed on my bike very infrequently in Cambridge and it was a regular occurrence when I lived across the river in Boston.
I'm excited that Boston is doing a bike sharing program and working on bike safety -- I tend to avoid going across the river on my bike, but maybe that will change!
Alex wrote on 10.30.09, 9:21am:
What Boston, like most cities, completely lacks is any meaningful and visible enforcement against drivers who endanger cyclists (not to mention pedestrians).
All the bike lanes in the world aren't going to help if some dumbass in an SUV yammering on his phone remains oblivious to the cyclist he just cut off or drove dangerously close to.
Nothing a little $250 traffic ticket couldn't cure. Or maybe I just want to see asshat drivers get their comeuppance.
Pete Stidman wrote on 10.30.09, 12:50pm:
Paul is being modest. He was the first Bike czar, and one of the main reasons we did not have bike lanes in Boston of any length until the last year or so. In particular, I believe Paul was instrumental in ensuring there were no bike lanes included in the Rose Kennedy Greenway, an omission which caught many other cyclists by surprise and boggles the minds of visitors new to the city.
I am shocked to hear that Paul is still agitating against bike lanes when overwhelming evidence points to the fact that bike lanes encourage more cyclists to get on the road, and consequently that more cyclists on the road increases safety rates. Just look at the experiences of Portland, Ore., Davis, Ca., Boulder, Co. or even Cambridge, Mass. for evidence. It isn't about safety for you personally Paul. It's about safety for all.
It's about making cycling the solution to a slew of health problems, to air quality, and to transportation access. It is NOT about equal rights to the road, but equal rights to the facilities and infrastructure investment we want.
How bout you now bear the burden of evidence. Prove that the majority of cyclists do not want bike lanes before you go assuming you can speak for them.
The time of male-dominated vehicular cycling is over. We need to be inclusive now of all age-groups, all genders, all levels of experience. Boston is moving way way way beyond the era you represent.
mz liz wrote on 11.10.09, 6:44am:
I absolutely agree with Alex.
And I would add that cell phone use should be completely banned whilst driving. I ride my bike 15 miles a day in the sister cities of Boston/Cambridge, and on both sides of the river the most dangerous drivers are the ones who are using a phone. (There are also the few who are obviously lost, but there are fewer of them and they are dangerous for a shorter period of time.)
Many drivers around here have a really combative view of cyclists. I wish I could say I am not frequently harassed by (always male) college students, especially weekend nights. Male drivers are the most likely to verbally assault me, and when their threats are backed up with a vehicle that doubles as a weapon, it's pretty scary.
Taxi drivers are easily identifiable as trouble to cyclists. They should be required to pass some kind of course in how to drive around bikes. They regularly discharge passengers in traffic without pulling over or signaling, which leads to the lovely "doored from the left" syndrome, always an unpleasant surprise. They are really good at seeing people hailing them on the sidewalk but somehow don't see the cyclist before they hit them while pulling over for the fare.
Bus drivers have a similar blind spot for us, and both sides get frustrated when we end up playing "chicken" due to frequent bus stops. There are bus stops that cut off cyclists, such as the one in front of MIT just over the bridge heading into Cambridge on Mass Ave. Not only does this stop seem redundant since there's another one a hundred feet down the street, but it stops in a bike lane!
Yes, Boston and its surrounding neighborhoods have become much more bike friendly! I can't wait to see the launch of bike sharing--go Boston!