Commercial Street getting better for bicyclists

I don't live there anymore, but had the opportunity to use it with the family on a daylong bike outing to the Pride festival and Greenway. What a beautiful separated bike path, with plenty of room for pedestrians on the sidewalk and about as many (as few?) spots for residents to park as there were before.

Something like this is needed the full length of the Rose Kennedy Truckway.

They're digging up portions of the sidewalk and outer lanes on Comm Ave between Packard's Corner and BU West. Hopefully it's not just for pipes but part of the improvement package they are working on.

All the major roads need to get this treatment, especially since normal bike lanes just end up being blocked by delivery trucks willing to pay the fine as an all day parking pass.

This is part of the “Connect Historic Boston” project - see http://keepbostonmoving.org/portfolio/connect-historic-boston/ and https://www.boston.gov/transportation/connect-historic-boston.

When it's done, it will offer a great bikeway around the North and West Ends, including by TD Garden, behind Lovejoy Wharf (to avoid the North Washington St. intersection), and along Commercial. I'm eager to see it completed, as I live and bike here multiple times a week.

Also, FWIW, there's been more than a few complaints from certain folks in the North End (over on NorthEndWaterfront.com) about the cycle track. The project has indeed been somewhat annoying during construction, but what construction isn't? This will be an asset for many years to come. The more people using and enjoying it, the better.

I have been using this as it has taken shape.

Best thing so far: kids wearing baseball uniforms, ball glove slung over the handlebars, riding to the park. If they can get across the road at a light, they can now get to the ball fields or the pool on their own.

Sorry to dampen the mood in these comments, but I'm just going to dig this back up:
http://www.universalhub.com/2017/north-end-cycle-paths-not-finished-already

And then I'm going to quote here what I wrote there:

I agree that it's unfair to judge its usage at this point, and I'll agree that it's marginally safer than most bike lanes in Boston, but I disagree that it's a fantastic connector

I've begun using this cycle track to get between my office on State St and the Charlestown bridge. I was very excited to start using it instead of braving Congress/Sudbury/N Washington, even though it's a full half mile longer, but so far I'm pretty disappointed.

It's obnoxiously difficult to get to it from the financial district (at least if you're someone like me who doesn't want to get another ticket and thus actually follows traffic laws).

It begins and ends randomly with absolutely zero accommodation for bikes getting back into traffic (northbound dumping you onto the sidewalk at Charter St, in the middle of a sharp curve is a horrible decision - it's difficult to look over your shoulder to see if there's any traffic coming while also trying to dodge the various street furniture and line yourself up with the wheelchair ramp; I've never even seen another cyclist going southbound, since the cycle track is on the wrong side of the street).

Too many pedestrians walk on it instead of the sidewalk, and are either oblivious or unwilling to kindly move. This is not helped by the fact that in several places they narrowed the sidewalk so much that pedestrians have to use the cycle track to pass one another.

None of the signals on it are turned on yet, and the sightlines make it difficult to see the vehicular signal, so you have to approach each intersection more cautiously.

There isn't enough room between it and the travel lanes to fit a car waiting to turn, and if drivers wait behind it, they can't see oncoming traffic. So many just block the cycle track.

It doesn't actually connect to anything useful. Even once the N Washington St Bridge is replaced and includes cycle tracks, the official plan still calls for the Commercial St cycle track to end where it presently does at Charter St, with only sharrows (!) for the ~600 ft between there and the N Washington St cycle tracks.

This cycle track remains a solution in search of a problem. This money would have been better spent adding a cycle track down the greenway (where there should already be one! Come on, that was the perfect opportunity to add one years ago!), or down Congress/Washington. Both of them would have been more useful, easier to access, connected more people and places, and provided useful bike infrastructure where there presently is none.

None of this has changed. Every day I'm still dodging pedestrians walking in the cycle track, and vehicles blocking it trying to pull out of driveways, and the cycle track still doesn't connect to anything useful, and there are still no plans to ever connect it to anything useful. I do see a few more people using it now, but I'd attribute that to the warm weather.

It's nice to have as a proof-of-concept, but there were so many places that needed this treatment so much more desperately.