The first time I went to Boston, I stayed in the Back Bay neighborhood. It was probably the best introduction I could've had to the city, as it's home to some of its loveliest and most historically significant buildings and spaces. It reminded me of some parts of Manhattan's Upper West Side and Brooklyn's Park Slope, two neighborhoods in which I lived before they became colonies for the uber-rich. But, of course, Back Bay's character was and, I suspect, is distinct from those New York neighborhoods.
Being accustomed to cycling in New York and having recently cycled in Paris, I didn't have any trepidation about riding in Boston. When I rented a bike, however, an employee in the shop admonished me, "Don't ride on Boylston Street."
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| Boylston Street. Photo by John Tlumacki, for the Boston Globe. |
Of course, I rode there anyway--and understood his warning. With two traffic lanes in each direction and lined with popular stores, restaurants and cafes, the constant streams of traffic often had to snake around double-parked vehicles and trucks darting in and out with deliveries and for pickups. I imagine there are even more of those today, what with Uber, Door Dash and the like.
Now Mayor Michelle Wu's office has announced a plan to install a protected bike lane along a stretch of Boylston between Massachusetts Avenue and Arlington Street. Predictably, business owners complain that a bike lane would take away parking spaces and further snarl traffic and therefore hurt business.
While a poorly-planned bike lane can indeed exacerbate traffic conditions, as it has on Crescent Street (where I live), there is no evidence that stores, restaurants and the like lose business because of bike lanes. If anything, I think that reducing traffic--a stated goal of bike lanes--would actually benefit business owners in a neighborhood like Back Bay that are popular with tourists and have a lot of foot traffic.
That is, if a bike lane is well-planned and constructed--and if regulations about who can use the lane are clearly defined and enforced. As I have mentioned in other posts, a narrow bike lane becomes a nightmare for everyone when it's used by riders of electric bikes that have only clutches and no pedal assist (which makes them, in essence, motorcycles) or scooters. And it's hazardous for everyone involved when signals and merges aren't timed and created so that, for example, cyclists can cross an intersection ahead, rather than in the path, of turning cars, trucks and buses.
I hope for the sake of Boston's cyclists (and me, if and when I visit again) that any bike lane is what too many other bike lanes I've seen aren't: safe and practical
