By adamg on Wed., 3/12/2025 - 11:19 am
As the city rips up the new bike lanes on Boylston Street in the Back Bay and Massachusetts Avenue in Dorchester, merchants along Columbia Road in Dorchester, now the focus of a city transportation study, are saying: Not on our street. The Dorchester Reporter reports.
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This should be a slam dunk
By sartreswaiter
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 11:36am
Hypothetically shouldn't need to remove any parking spaces for this project.
Columbia Road has a huge, basically useless concrete median running down the middle of practically the entire length. This is perfect space to reclaim to reconfigure the road to include bike lanes without any elimination of lanes or parking.
I personally think Columbia road COULD be improved in a lot of other ways, but it's a tremendous low-hanging fruit because of the already mentioned median, and that many people do bike on this road every day and the sharrow lanes are not safe. A minimum plan of eliminating the median and adding protected lanes should be a slam dunk.
Maybe...
By John Costello
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 11:36am
The people who live and work there are right.
I know it runs counter to popular opinion in certain areas of this city and the abutting cities where people think they live in Boston, but not everyone wants to bike.
What works in Cambridge might not work in Dot.
Everyone deserves to live
By cinnamngrl
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 12:25pm
This road was created with 2 lanes of traffic and a trolley in the center. There should be a bus lane. Half the HS students need to use the 16 and it is constantly slowed to walking speed.
The people who live there
By blues_lead
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 12:37pm
The people who live there seem to want and need a less car-focused street.
Business owners in basically all cities in the country consistently over-estimate the percentage of sales from people who drove a car to get there.
NIMBY 101
By Angry Dan
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 7:20pm
Translation: I don't bike, so nobody else needs to.
The first rule of NIMBY: "It doesn't matter if it works everywhere else. It'll never work HERE!"
From the article:
Those are the people that live there, not the people that tear through there on their way somewhere else. I don't have a problem biking on Columbia Road but I've seen lots of people who previously wouldn't dream of biking Boston streets start riding when they finally have a route where they feel safe. They just need the same access that motorists take for granted.
Im no Bike Lane fan but
By MyManMyMelo
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 12:39pm
this is a great place for a center bus lane or at least a like lane.
Large arterial Road in a place underserved by rapid transit. With a mix of residential and commercial and a huge semi-useless median. It shouldn't be a big deal.
But I think the fear is the city will take up more space than is needed. As is often the case.
A bus lane serves the most
By cinnamngrl
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 9:05pm
A bus lane serves the most people, and generally it is safe for bikes to share it.
Restore the original Olmsted design
By Ron Newman
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 12:56pm
Make it once again the parkway connection between Franklin and Moakley parks that it was intended to be when first laid out.
Boylston Street
By Ron Newman
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 1:00pm
I thought the city was removing only the bus lane (which is just paint) and not the bike lane (which is separated by flexposts)
That's my understanding, too
By HenryAlan 2.0
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 1:11pm
That's my understanding, too. As far as I know, it is only the bus lane that is slated for removal.
Wu is removing flex posts on some streets in Boston
By anon
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 7:32pm
She calls them her "pet peeve". She started out great but seems to have got a case of centrisitis. Why is protecting the bike lanes an issue once they are in place unless you are saying you want drivers to use them when its busy/they cant find a free parking spot, etc.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/07/metro/boston-bike-lanes/
Wu should remember how past democrats like Kamala lost assuming liberals would just go with her when they go against MAGA types like Josh Kraftmacaroni or Trump, trying to court conservative suburban democrats. Suburbanites who drive into Boston resent having to pay for parking and the traffic they create, and all blame has been based on the meager amount of bike lanes in Boston, not the MASSIVE amount of parking all the new offices have added in the last 25 years. Seaport alone has added 10s of thousands of spaces that drivers are using every day. 800 more are coming ON TOP OF SOUTH STATION!
Read The Article - It's Not About Bike Lanes
By CAP
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 2:00pm
The point of the story here, is the deep level of distrust in the community re how the City does business. You could essentially replace the words 'parking spaces' with 'White Stadium'. The concerns at the moment aren't bikes vs. cars - it's about the City possibly ramming through their vision of what's best regardless of what actual community stakeholders think may or may not be best. We're not even close to the point of bickering about bollards and landscape design on Columbia Road yet.
How about... instead of
By Rob
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 9:32pm
How about... instead of spending the money on changing the road, the City makes a deal with the T to underwrite the additional equipment cost to get a reasonable level of bus frequency on the 16? No more than ten-minute headway in peak hours and fifteen-minutes off-peak.
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