A Perfect Example Of How Cars Don’t Work For Boston
Written by Boston Biker on Feb 03
Yesterday our fair city got a good dose of snow, a sizable storm in its own right, but combined with the big ass blizzard we had last week, the entire city was struggling to keep up. Today the city woke up to an public transportation system crippled by yesterdays snow, the head of the MBTA actually told people to drive to work…
Anyone unlucky enough to drive into the city today (or drove in any of the cities around Boston) knows that without the MBTA to carry most of the folks to work, driving simply is not an option. Snow or no snow, there are just too many cars, and not enough road. There was bumper to bumper grid lock for both the morning and evening commutes today.
This truck was stuck like this, cars were backed up for a long way in both directions, I just got off my bike and walked around.
I have been riding through this weather, and a lot of my coworkers have been telling me just how crazy I am. But the only thing moving on wheels today was people riding bikes.
Not only did the cars fail to get people around, but they made removing the snow a lot harder as well. They also slid around crashing into things, getting stuck in snow banks, and potentially killing or harming people or property.
It doesn’t have to be this way. If even 20-30 percent of people rode bicycles (levels many snowy northern European cities accomplish), the roads would be relatively unclogged, allowing the folks that absolutely needed to drive the road space needed to do so. It is also a lot easier to clear space for cyclists on the road, as they need much less of the road clear in order to cycle safely. The lack of cars parked on the road would also allow for more area to place the snow.
Sure it sounds like pie in the sky thinking, but as today’s epic traffic jams illustrate, the current system isn’t working for anyone.
Add to Reddit. Tags: boston, cars are the problem, snow, traffic
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
6 Responses
to “A Perfect Example Of How Cars Don’t Work For Boston”
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.
By Annabel on Feb 4, 2015 | Reply
I applaud your biking devotion, really.
However, as someone working in the very center of Boston (corner of Mass Ave and Albany, Boston Medical Center), I can see that NONE of my immediate co-workers (10 people) who drive to work could use biking as an option. For all of them, it would be 10-20 miles of commute, which is unrealistic in such a weather. People in northern European cities have an average commute of 2-4 miles max, often less than that.
My commute when biking is 8 miles and I am not doing it in this weather, period. But if it was 2-3 miles I would consider walking, not biking. There’s barely enough space on the streets to walk around the heaps of snow and parked cars, I can’t imagine biking being really efficient.
Look, 4 feet of snow in a week and no means to collect and evacuate it from the streets (piling it on the sides of the roads doesn’t help) would paralyze any city. It’s not about biking vs driving.
By Boston Biker on Feb 4, 2015 | Reply
@annabel I think you are missing my point slightly. The point I was trying to make was that because of the MBTA shutting down people were forced to take cars, thus creating an artificially high car use day, which resulted in total gridlock. Proving that adding more cars to Boston city streets isn’t just a bad idea but impossible.
It is a very useful thing to keep in mind when redesigning streets. Cars are simply not a good long term solution.
The points you bring up are one of design as well, because we have built big old highways out into the burbs people can live very far away. If we instead spent our effort building affordable and desirable dense city housing people could live 2-3 miles from work.
By Brian on Feb 4, 2015 | Reply
I agree with both of the above comments. Clearly, the post shows how poor an option cars are as urban transport. I’m out in Worcester, but we’re experiencing similar here of course.
My 3.5 mile commute home in my car yesterday took just shy of an hour. I haven’t been biking since most of the surface streets still have solid snow cover and I would have had to take the lane and wait with traffic anyhow. I’m going to try a different route tonight, but if it takes anywhere close to as long, I’m walking tomorrow.
By Chris on Feb 6, 2015 | Reply
There are kind of two different topics mixed up here….
One is that Boston traffic would be better if more people rode (or took transit) instead of driving their car.
The other is about on-street car parking. If that was banned outright, the whole snow removal situation would be a LOT better (although Boston doesn’t really “remove” snow, they just push it aside). Plus, in the summer, there would be ample space to have a bike lane on every street in the city.
I still don’t understand why my tax dollars go to subsidize a nice paved parking spot in front of every car driver’s house. If people don’t have enough space on their own property to store all of their possessions, maybe they should just get rid of some of them?
By Winnie on Feb 12, 2015 | Reply
.. but but but Chris …. it’s a CAH! Ya need ya CAH! Don’t take away my CAH!
By Ken Cheeseman on Feb 13, 2015 | Reply
I have managed to successfully bike commute from Newton (a distance of 8 miles) into my office near downtown crossing through the recent spate of storms. I also have evening performances I have to get to in Watertown and have managed to get there when driving or the T would have made me impossibly late. It’s certainly not for everyone, it isn’t easy but basically my bike commute has been slowed by about 10 minutes as opposed to a car commute, which would be slowed by an hour or more.