Comments on: Boston Rising: Boston Bikes’ Nicole Freedman

By: eric

eric — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 02:40:06 +0000

IS it true that the bikesharing project is being postponed? I love the shared system in Montreal and was thrilled to think we'd soon have it in boston...

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:33:59 +0000

Another great film by Clarence.

JJJ,

Actually, folks in Newton agitated for Boston to paint the bike lanes in order to put pressure on Newton. Proves your point about competition and comparison.

By: JJJ

JJJ — Fri, 28 May 2010 23:20:11 +0000

JamesR, the lack of coordination has sort of helped by creating competition and comparison.

Brookline painted bike lanes to their southern broder with Boston. Soon after, people in Boston began to demand that Boston have them as well, and now they exist. On the northern border, a movement in Newton was born to connect with the bike lanes too.

Nobody wants the neighboring city to be better, so everybody races to match and exceed what the neighbors are doing.

By: JamesR

JamesR — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:05:24 +0000

I'd be curious to know the extent to which Ms. Freedman is working with the staff of the neighboring municipalities, like Medford, Somerville, Brookline, Cambridge, etc to build a coordinated bike route system. The entity people commonly refer to as "Boston" is really a conurbation of a million people divided into a bunch of autonomous local governments, much as it would be if Brooklyn and Queens were independent cities rather than part of the greater metropolis. This really complicates the efforts to make Greater Boston a bike friendly area. If a cyclist has to spend 20 minutes riding through hell in Revere before reaching the safety of bike lanes and sharrows in Boston, then the battle is only half won. I wish her and her fellow advocates all the best in making this happen.

By: Andy B from Jersey

Andy B from Jersey — Fri, 28 May 2010 18:00:05 +0000

These delineated sharrows were Prof. Furth's idea?!?! That explains why I like them as much as I do. He takes the best principles of vehicular cycling when thinking up new bicycle specific infrastructure.

I've read his paper on the idea of a "bicycle priority lane" which are already used in many places in Europe. I highly advise everyone to take a look.

https://myfiles.neu.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-5458369_1-t_BQRThjqj

Oddly enough people were just talking about them today on the APBP listserv.

By: brooklinebiker

brooklinebiker — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:21:45 +0000

Here's the explanation from Northeastern University's Prof. Furth regarding the Longwood Ave. pavement marking experiment: http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2009/12/dashes-in-brookline.html?showComment=1261521867984#c8655304978755459930

He also links to his paper on the same subject.

By: Herzog

Herzog — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:53:09 +0000

Another great Streetfilm!

By: jass

jass — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:53:14 +0000

The sharrows you folks are talking about are actually in the city of Brookline, Nicole has nothing to do with those. They are experimental, and do indeed look good.

By: Clarence Eckerson Jr.

Clarence Eckerson Jr. — Thu, 27 May 2010 22:25:39 +0000

Regarding the Sharrow treatment - I really enjoyed riding in them. Would like to see those used in some places in NYC.

By: Andy B from Jersey

Andy B from Jersey — Thu, 27 May 2010 22:16:29 +0000

I also really like the Sharrow markings that ddartly points out.

However, there are some other things I saw that I guess I'm just gonna' just have to bite my lips about till they bleed since the seem to becoming standards despite going against what they teach you in LCI training (nice run-on sentence).

By: ddartley

ddartley — Thu, 27 May 2010 18:10:53 +0000

Another advantage Boston's share markings have over ours:

The sharrows are bordered by pairs of dashed lines that are longer than the sharrow itself. That makes the markings much more visible to motorists. NYC should improve its sharrows that way too.

By: ddartley

ddartley — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:51:04 +0000

Couple things they have that beat NYC:

The “share” markings at :18 and :20 are how sharrows should really look here in NYC: in the *middle* of the lane, not off to the side and *just barely* out of the door zone (because that doesn’t really say “share” at all, but rather, “keep out of the way.”). I think BicyclesOnly has commented similarly in the past.

To me, the bike lane at 1:28 is superior to ANY on-street bike lane I've seen in NYC (yes, even the physically separated ones), in that it’s wide enough for cyclists to pass each other, and to safely pass any driver who parks in it. Why can we never have that in NYC?

Go Yankees.

By: cycler

cycler — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:35:33 +0000

Nichole is a force of nature-It's incredible what she's been able to coax, cajole and finesse in a couple of short years! We in Boston are so lucky to have such a fun and dedicated advocate working for us