Boston To Get Bicycle Pool For City Employees, Increase Parking At T Stations

According to this (pdf), Boston will be getting:

The Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) awarded $142,000 in April to support four transportation demand-management (TDM) projects that will help improve air quality in the region by reducing transportation- related emissions. The largest award, $67,000, went to the City of Cambridge for the launch of a pilot social-marketing campaign
aimed at encouraging Cambridge residents to switch from driving to using other transportation modes. The City of Boston received $40,000 to start a bicycle pool that city employees can
use to reduce driving trips within the city.

Could this mean that not only Mayor Menino but a whole train of city employees will be riding bikes to meetings, riding bikes to events, riding bikes to lunch etc? I sure hope so, the best possible way to clue in city planners to some of the problems facing bikers is to experience them first hand. We can only hope they actually use the bikes.

The PDF is a good read, it also states that T stations in Boston have seen a 79% increase over the last 4 years…

The Boston Region MPO has posted online the results of its most recent inventory of bicycle parking spaces at MBTA facilities, which was conducted in 2005 and 2006. The previous inventory was done in 1999, 2000, and 2002. The MPO staff collected data on the number of MBTA-owned and municipally owned bicycle racks and the number of bicycle parking
spaces being used at 123 rapid transit stations, 124 commuter rail stations, 4 commuter boat terminals, and 3 major bus stops in the region. Since the previous inventory had been done, the number of bicycle parking spaces at MBTA facilities increased by 79 percent and 25 more stations had bicycle racks. The inventory also identified locations of underutilized racks. MPO staff made recommendations for improving bicycle parking at those stations. Both the recommendations and the inventory results can be found at www.bostonmpo.org/bostonmpo/resources/CMS/cmsbpark.htm. This work was conducted as
part of the MPO’s Mobility Management System, a program for collecting data for use in analyzing the performance of the region’s transportation system.

Of course they didn’t really start off with much bike parking (and much of it was poorly lit, in corners easy for thieves, and inconvenient), but an increase is an increase. Hit this link to see the hard numbers.

It’s progress, small progress, but progress none the less.

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