Bike lanes on Mass. Ave. Bridge to become permanent

1. There is basically no benefit for drivers. For anyone on Storrow, crossing the Longfellow and looping onto Memorial Drive provides about the same benefit. There are not very many people who use this anyway. And the other ramps to/from Storrow in this location were closed long ago.

2. It is a left diverging movement off of Storrow from the higher speed lane at a time when there are a lot of diverging movements.

3. Despite being illegal, a lot of drivers make lefts off of the ramp which are exceedingly dangerous, crossing multiple lanes of traffic.

4. The ramp is short and ends at a stop sign on a curve with poor sightlines.

5. Speaking of sightlines, the sightlines are bad enough that drivers have to edge forward into the sidewalk to be able to see oncoming traffic. There's often enough bike-ped traffic that drivers get impatient and don't wait for everyone, but edge into this traffic, requiring people to go around the vehicle. This is also one of the highest bike-ped use locations in the state.

So basically there is very minimal benefit for drivers and a lot of risk for everyone, and especially with the new lane layout it would be a great time to put this ramp out of its misery once and for all.

The current ramp is not at all adequate to address current usage patterns. When I bike it, I dismount if there are a lot of other ramp users, but otherwise I will ride on it. The most dangerous spots are on the switch back turns, and how it enters the Esplinade path in a blind spot. A complete redesign and rebuild is definitely needed, but probably years away. In the mean time, the curb cut might make it slightly more usable.

When my kids were younger, they couldn't walk their bikes down that ramp (had to walk it with one hand on handlebar and one on seat, couldn't reliably control bike with one brake). We would slowly bike down. Friends who ride bakfiets with kids in it also report it's too tippy going down ramps with the bike loaded.

Granted we ride slowly, to one side, and are apologetic, and there's no reason for people to be flying up and down it like I've also seen, but yes, it's badly designed.

The sidewalk in this case is not that wide (and is heavily utilized). There is, in fact, a parallel bike lane, though not as robust as the one that will be installed soon. Finally, I'd point out that what MA law requires, and what makes sense, is not always the same thing. When I ride across that bridge, I'm aware that I can ride on the sidewalk, but I am also aware that it would be fairly reckless to do so. The safest option for this bridge is separated lanes for each type of bridge user, whether that be car driver, bike/scooter rider, or pedestrian.

We can ride on the sidewalk except in business districts, or we can take the whole lane. Motor vehicle drivers frequently yell at us that both are illegal, because they don't know the rules of the road.

MA law does not require bikes to ride on the sidewalk. So what's your point?

http://lovelybike.blogspot.com/2014/09/cycling-for-when-you-cant-walk.html

https://forum.mssociety.org.uk/t/can-run-and-cycle-but-cant-walk-properl...

https://www.bikeforums.net/fifty-plus-50/1108603-anybody-else-ride-prett...

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/health/01parkinsons.html

https://www.bicycling.com/news/g20011415/-16/

Thats pretty low even for an anti-bike crank like yourself.

Have you never ridden a bike, robo?!!!!
Okay, maybe you never have. My utmost sympathy.

spin has provided some excellent links.

I have been confined to a bike myself twice.
Once when I had a broken toe. Another time when a SCOFFLAW SPEEDING SUV DRIVER ran a red light, made a right turn without signaling and caused me to step backwards in fear as I was crossing the street. Which then caused me to stumble and fall backwards resulting in an excruciating sprain that required a week of bedrest and 4 more weeks of hobbling about with a hiking pole. It was not easy getting on and off my bike but once on at least I could get about with minimal pain.
After a kind passerby helped me up and out of the street, the driver took off, unsurprisingly. These experiences opened my eyes to the fact that many people use their bikes as a mobility device.

None of us are exempt from the possibility of finding ourselves temporarily or permanently hindered in some way from using bike infrastructure.

Believe it or not, there are times when people do need to drive across the river. Close the Harvard Bridge and the congestion on the BU Bridge and on the Longfellow (or at least approaching it) would get worse.

Fun history: in the mid-1980s when the Harvard Bridge was severely weight-restricted after the Mianus Bridge fell down, it was reduced to a single lane. MassDOT came in and said "let's build this puppy six lanes wide, wider is always better, right?" This is why the approach bridge over Memorial Drive is so dang wide.

Someone finally put their foot down and said "unless you are planning to knock down the buildings on one side of Mass Ave in Cambridge and Boston, it's going to be four lanes wide at either end forever" and they built the bridge 50 feet wide (and eventually squeezed in bike lanes about 20 years later). It would have been the right decision to build it 6 lanes wide because we could have had kick-ass bike and bus lanes, but of course at the Boston end it would neck down and be super-narrow, so who knows how much of a benefit it would be.

Bus/bike shared priority lanes work well when there is frequent stop spacing. The buses stop often enough so that they don't end up averaging a higher speed than a typical bike rider. The distance between the last/first stops on each side of the river is 3/5 of a mile. At that distance, the slower bikes will impede the faster buses enough, so as to render the lane not that useful for bus use.