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Pro/con: Boylston Street bike lanes

By adamg on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 1:18pm

First up, we have the Globe's Brian McGrory, who argues Boylston Street bike lanes are a major mistake, that even pedestrians love the sheer exuberance of a traffic-clogged thoroughfare full of life and the essence of Boston, and man, who doesn't love just driving down the boulevard looking up at all the tall buildings and it's where the Marathon bombings were and besides, there are bike lanes on parallel streets, leave Boylston Street alone!

Gone is the broad-shouldered appeal of a proud urban thoroughfare, replaced by something decidedly hunched.

In response, Commonwealth Beacon's James Aloisi says the only congestion he's seeing on McGrory's supposedly ravaged, post-apocalyptic street is all the scooter deliverers clogging up the sidewalk in front of Chick-fil-A - and they were there long before those City Hall bureaucrats ordered new lanes striped down the street.

I call on the naysayers to stop complaining and to rise to the occasion by supporting and improving the introduction of new things. We used to call Boston the "livable city." That’s only going to be true in this century if we accept and respond to the changes in how people are moving about, including the rise of cycling as a preferred mode of travel.

Neighborhoods: 
Back Bay
Topics: 
Driving
Free tagging: 
Bicycling
Boylston Street


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Comments

By adamg on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 1:20pm.

I always thought Boston was "the walkable city," but that would work just as well in Aloisi's argument.

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By thomas mccusker on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 2:37pm.

I am quite sure his aunt Mary would not agree.

By Ari O on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 1:50pm.

What is this, Chicago?

Gone is the broad-shouldered appeal of a proud urban thoroughfare, replaced by something decidedly hunched.

Saying that McGrory argues is surmising that he has an argument beyond "I'm an old white guy and you hurted my feelings waaah." Someone at the Globe really needs to take away the keys, although since Jacoby is still around, there's precedent. (At least McGrory's kid hasn't run away yet.)

McGrory is really full of it. The most regal commercial street in the city? That would be one block over on Newbury (which really should be pedestrianized).

Boylston Street is a place to spread out, to think big, to feel what brings us together and know what sets Boston apart. It is — or was — a place of wide lanes and broad sidewalks that flow from the grittiness of Mass. Ave. to the cosmic beauty of the Boston Public Garden.

Okay, Brian. First, they didn't change the sidewalks, so really, this is about the lanes. Second, the lanes aren't any wider than they were (11) although they probably could be narrower. And what, can people riding bikes not think? Is thinking only allowed for those walking or driving (but really only driving; walking hasn't changed). Are we only allowed to dream big dreams on Boylston Street.

And right now, we are a city filled with Uber drivers and riders, with Amazon Prime vans, with DoorDash workers, and with regular old delivery trucks. On a place like Boylston, specifically on Boylston, they cause outsized havoc wherever they park — and they are not going away.

Downtown is a traffic jam, and McGrory has tried nothing and is all out of ideas.

What used to be this city’s grand boulevard can feel like a narrow path.

You know, Brian, if you ride a bike, it's the opposite.

Meg Mainzer-Cohen has run the Back Bay Association from her Boylston Street office for the past 24 years, and run it very well, but it’s only been this summer that the chaos — in the form of constantly beeping horns — has caused her to shut windows, mute calls, and even work more from home. “It’s completely dysfunctional,” she said.

Because of the, uh, bicycles, all honking their horns and causing traffic jams?

According to Mainzer-Cohen, the city no longer leaves enough time for pedestrians to cross Boylston at a pair of key intersections, at Dartmouth and Berkeley streets. The result: “Jaywalking abounds,” she said.

Jaywalking? In Boston? Good heavens! (But if there are short signal cycles, lengthen them. Which has nothing to do with bike lanes.)

We are all dumber for having read McGrory's screed.

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By John Costello on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 2:23pm.

You would make out with a bike lane if you it would let you.

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By Ari O on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 2:29pm.

Some of them are damn sexy.

(I'd make out with the ones on the Harvard Bridge but that would be a little too close to home, but, damnnnn.)

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By CopleyScott17 on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 5:28pm.

Don't be ashamed :-)

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By anon on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 2:54pm.

Don't know what white has to do with it, but otherwise, this is spot-on.

By anon on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 4:00pm.

Of course bicycles aren't honking. The honking is done by drivers reacting to the traffic conditions caused by a reconfigured roadway.

It's possible to have bicycles without this road configuration. Maybe even preferable for bicycling.

As far as the traffic light timing dis-favoring pedestrians, it could be because of the need for separate phases for the bike lanes. Or it could be pure wasteful stupidity, given that this is BTD we're talking about.

By Waquiot on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 4:28pm.

Someone at the Globe really needs to take away the keys, although since Jacoby is still around, there's precedent. (At least McGrory's kid hasn't run away yet.)

You are a much better person than bringing up the Jacoby thing.

As for the substance of anything, I'd say that the Square proper benefits from no one caring about the bus lane. I still need to look more at the Fairfield to Exeter block to see if this is a nothing burger or armageddon. I walk, so I have no skin in this fight.

By Angry Dan on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 1:55pm.

I'm liking the way the new hunched Brian sprinkles these qualifiers in his latest bike-hate column:

Let’s stop here and understand what this isn’t. It’s not a screed against bicycles, because more and more, good, everyday people are cycling in Boston, which is a truly great development.

And this is not a shot at our mayor or her aides. They are trying to make Boston a more forward-looking city with better and cleaner transportation for all.

He is clearly making some kind of incremental progress from his old bike-hate columns:

Make Boston bicycle-free
9 years ago
By Brian McGrory
Boston.com Verified
As Mayor Tom Menino prepares to roll out an ambitious bicycle-sharing program on the streets of our great city this month, offering hundreds of bikes for short-term rental all across town, I might urge him to go in a slightly different direction. Ban them as in, here’s the city line, Lance, there’s a bike rack. Lock it up, and flag yourself a nice air-conditioned cab. Maybe you won’t be sweating so much when you walk into work.

Keep plugging away Brian! We are rooting for you to eventually catch up to the 21st century!

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By GaryC on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 2:04pm.

Lets add bike lanes, bus lanes, and maybe some dedicated high speed lanes for food delivery riders. 90 year old granny with her 3 speed Raleigh can use the low speed lane when she pedals down to get her groceries in January.

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By u-hub-fan on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 3:17pm.

that Brian McGrory was an idiot.

By Rwgfy on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 5:31pm.

As long as they enforce the actual traffic laws on this street with the same force and zeal as they did with made up city ordinances on public alleys off it.

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By anon on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 6:45pm.

The Globe seems to be trying to be Boston's version of the NY Post.

Just a few days ago they made a transphobic headline pulled right from the 4chan and Fox News, and now they have another "Why do we need bike lanes? Regular folks hate bicyclists, they drive pickup trucks and SUVs down Bolyston like patriotic Americans should."

Next up will be an article about a secret pedophile ring in the basement of a Dunkin Donuts in liberal Cambridge.

By Frelmont on Tue, 08/06/2024 - 11:49pm.

It’s the latter. A quid, pro quo with progressives and effort to de-Bostonize Boston. (Sure that may be responsive government, but is it responsible governing?) There is something afoot and the Boston Street Tsar was at the scene. I think McGrory is spot on as the Brits and hipsters say. (As is Flynn) I use bike lanes. There’s a lot of great biking in the Boston area. They save lives, but Boylston is a bit much, as is the Hammond Pond Parkway project. Four lanes to two lanes with un mountable curbs. How can emergency vehicles get through? No place to pull over in a breakdown and what about as a diversion or evacuation route? (When do they start work on the bridge?) Will people bike the HPP, or just couriers on gas and electric mopeds use it as a delivery route? On the happier side, I am over the moon for Gov. Walz!!! What a speech-giver. I’m a curmudgeon on the process, but I like the ticket!