City Councilors Lydia Edwards (East Boston, Charlestown, North End) and Michelle Wu (at large) say they want to get the T to set aside one car on every Blue Line train for bicyclists who would ride their bikes to work downtown, if only there were a way to get them across Boston Harbor.
The council agreed to let them hold a hearing to discuss a possible bike pilot on the Blue Line after Edwards said that one of the biggest frustrations of East Boston bike owners is the inability to ride it to work unless they work north of the neighborhood, at a time when East Boston roads are increasingly clogged by car commuters.
She added that the company that wants to build a giant development at Suffolk Downs is proposing a massive infrastructure for bicyclists, which will only end in frustration if its users can't go any further than Maverick Square.
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Has anyone from the council
By anon
Wed, 08/19/2020 - 5:58pm
Has anyone from the council done any liaison with the T management?
For The Curious...
By Div2Supt
Wed, 08/19/2020 - 7:22pm
Restoring the Orient Heights/Bowdoin extras {Route 948, operated rush hours off-and-on since the 1960s; now just three weekday "pull-out" trips, including the first daily westbound} should have been done concurrently with terminating most North Shore bus service at Wonderland back in September of 2019.
Instead we endure{d} the hot mess of increased transfers from the bus system + a giant park-and-ride facility at Wonderland swamping the Blue Line. No one bothered to pick up the damn phone and give Blue Line Operations a heads-up.
The Zone 1A pilot for Lynn shall be a {intentionally designed} failure as NONE of the connecting bus routes are coordinated with the trains. MBTA railroad ridership has declined to a point that there are now more pigeons than humans at North Station during rush hours.
As to the bike car... Seats could be removed akin to the "Big Red" cars 01802 and 01803. But how many of the 94 Blue Line cars get retrofitted? What happens if the Yardmaster cannot guarantee enough bike cars due to too many being in the shop for repairs and inspection? Does the Yardmaster make up trains such that the bike car{s} are in the middle of the train? Making it the last car is fruitless as you have a full loop at one end of the line; but scissors crossovers at Wonderland.
The MBTA is headed towards a 1981-esque financial collapse next year. Now is not the time to ask for this, with drastic systemwide cuts looming.
/END RANT/
how far off the water
By geep9
Wed, 08/19/2020 - 7:35pm
would a bridge need to be? Take some money from the oversized northern avenue bridge (shrink it). Or maybe a draw bridge.
If you're going to build a draw bridge for peds/bikes anywhere
By Ron Newman
Wed, 08/19/2020 - 8:51pm
it should be from Charlestown to Chelsea. Because there used to be one there, before the Tobin was built.
Why not both?
By Bananarama
Fri, 08/21/2020 - 7:58am
Seems like they're both fucked geographically now.
Build some pedestrian way from Long Wharf to Piers Park.
And then just staple some path underneath the Tobin across the Mystic.
I'll take my $3.5 million planning fee via venmo, thanks.
How about providing more
By Rob
Thu, 08/20/2020 - 12:14am
How about providing more convenient, secure parking for bikes at outlying Blue Line stations and corresponding"transfer tickets" to extra hubway racks downtown?
Transfer ticket?
By Waquiot
Thu, 08/20/2020 - 10:46am
If you have a membership or even daily pass, you don’t need a transfer on with Blue Bikes. In fact, if you are opting of a longer ride, your best thing (at least back in the day) is to break the ride up by docking a bike, then taking a new bike (or the same bike, but technically a new ride). Holding on to a Blue Bike for 20 or 30 minutes while on the T could cost you money.
I was talking about
By Rob
Thu, 08/20/2020 - 11:45am
I was talking about facilitating/enticing people to ride their own bikes (if they don't live near a bluebike rack) to secure parking/storage at outlying Blue Line stations, riding the Blue Line as a pedestrian, then pick up a blue bike downtown.
Blue Line Bikes.
By Paul
Thu, 08/20/2020 - 8:24am
What a stupid idea!
Bikes taking up an entire Blue Line Car when all the cars are filled at rush hour is a huge waste of space that commuters need. Adding more bike racks at stations makes more sense or bicycle riders can continue to ride through Chelsea and Everett.
Folding bikes?
By anon
Thu, 08/20/2020 - 9:50am
Always allowed, even at rush hour when fully folded. Great for a smile from astonished onlookers every time you fold and unfold.
https://us.brompton.com/
https://usa.dahon.com/
https://www.ternbicycles.com/us/
Already been done. . .
By FLTD
Thu, 08/20/2020 - 11:11am
There's enormously less clunky ways of doing this than turning over an entire bike car. All the newer commuter rail bi-level cars have 2 wall-mount bike racks doubling as wheelchair berths by each set of vestibule doors. They're so easy to miss most riders pass them upon boarding without ever knowing they're there unless one happens to be in-use. Rapid transit cars worldwide have been available for order with the same option for years now. . .
Bombardier LRV on Minneapolis light rail:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thu...
Japanese subway car (heavy-rail like Blue/Red/Orange):
https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws....
The Minneapolis example is wall-mounted, the Japanese example seatback-mounted. Blue Line cars being narrower than average, the seatback-mounted method is lower-profile and would keep riders from getting bonked by handlebars while moving around in the aisles. As you can see from both renders these are combo wheelchair + bike berths just like the T does on commuter rail. All subway cars here already have the wheelchair berths at minimum 2 per every car. So you just target those pre-existing berths for retrofit installations of bike racks and turn them into dual-purpose wheelchair + bike berths. Wheelchairs obviously get priority, but since there are already 2 berths per car and there aren't many total wheelchair patrons there'll almost never be a situation where there's an occupancy conflict over one of the car's accessible berths.
That's it. We can easily retrofit using the wheelchair seat cutouts we already have. No need to make a big production out of it like cannibalizing seating (a la the "Big Red" cars on Red Line) on cars that have to be very carefully portioned across the schedule, or force someone carrying a bike on-platform to awkwardly race from one end to the other because the bike car might be Car #1 going one direction but Car #6 going the other and lack any natural train-to-train consistency. Keep it simple, low-profile, universal, and easily retrofittable to the accessibility berths we already have.
TLDR;...Councillors need to ride commuter rail more often and see what real on-vehicle bike accommodations are supposed to look like. This is so totally doable by thinking smarter, not bigger/harder.
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