Boston Hauls A “First”

 When Citibike debuted in New York City eleven years ago, Hasidic Jewish leaders in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn tried to keep the bike-share program out of their neighborhood. Why? The same reason why another Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox community—Borough Park—stopped bike lanes from coming into their enclave:  They didn’t want “scantily-clad” cyclists rolling disturbing their “peace.”

Although the Hasidim tend to vote as a bloc (including, ahem, for Donald Trump), not everyone was against Citibike. And when it finally came to their neck of the woods, the Hasidim—the men, anyway—couldn’t get enough of it.

I think we saw so many black-hatted bearded men pedaled blue Citibikes down Kent Avenue and Havemeyer Street, their tzitzits fluttering behind them for at least one of the reasons why hipsters in tank tops twiddled along Berry Street Although they have a reputation for being trust-fund kids whose parents buy condos for them, many hipsters are living with roommates in cramped quarters. And the Hasidim tend to have large families which, even in a large apartment or house, doesn’t leave much room for anything else.

All of this came to mind when I read that Boston is about to become the first city to add cargo bikes to its bike share program. Planners hope and anticipate that this new service, like Bluebikes, will become popular and offer an alternative to cars for people who must haul cargo and children. If Bostonians embrace the shared cargo bikes as they have Bluebikes, I think it will be in part for the same reasons Hasidim in South Williamsburg and hipsters on the North Side embraced Citibike. If people can’t store a regular bicycle in their living space, how would they fit a cargo bike?

I would be interested to see whether my hometown of New York follows Boston’s lead—which it does more often than New Yorkers care to admit. (Example: Boston opened the first subway system, a decade before New York’s.)

Take A Bike Ride And Call Me In The Morning

Lately, there's been a burst of interest in "social prescribing", particularly in the UK.  In fact, the UK plans to implement it nationwide, as part of a strategy to combat loneliness, by 2023.

"Social prescibing" is a loose term of practices that draw upon therapeutic art-, hobby- or exercise-based programs to help patients with a range of issues ranging from dementia to lung conditions.  The idea behind it is that for many patients, particularly the elderly, their physical ailments are exacerbated (if not initiated) by their isolation.  Not surprisingly, depression and anxiety plague many who have outlived friends, family members, colleagues and neighbors and create a vicious cycle in which emotional conditions worsen physical ones--which, of course, make the people who suffer those conditions even more unhappy, and sicker.

As part of "social prescribing", general practitioners and, in some cases, other health care providers can prescribe any number of activities, including museum visits, cooking classes or walking tours for patients. These activities are not meant to replace medical or surgical treatments, though they may well reduce, or even eliminate, the need for medications to treat emotional and other conditions.

Those activities could include bike rides.

The Welsh National Health Service has just announced that doctors at two Cardiff medical centers can now prescribe free six-month prescriptions to a bicycle-rental service.  The intent of the pilot program is to not only improve cardiovascular health, but also to support overall mental well-being.  If successful, the program could be expanded to include other health care professionals in the city, and perhaps even the country.

Under the plan, patients will be given a code that will provide them access to an unlimited number of free 30-minute riding sessions.  These sessions, which will be made available by European bike-share company Nextbike, can cost 10 pounds sterling (about $13 at current exchange rates) per day.  

The announcement of this plan, the first of its kind in the UK, closely follows an NHS report detailing a 15 percent increase in obesity-related hospital admissions in the UK.  That is not surprising when you consider that five years ago, the city of Boston started a "Prescribe-a-Bike" program for low-income patients, in part to combat the obesity that disproportionately affects the poor.  It has since morphed into a discounted BLUEbikes membership program for people who receive government benefits.