Lets Talk About Your Commute

Gather round folks, its time to harp on traffic…yes again.

Have you noticed anything about the commute in this town?  If you ride your bike every day you might not have, but if you take the bus, or ride the T or drive you probably have noticed that its getting worse, a lot worse.  A new poll shows that its getting so bad a significant number of people have considered moving to escape the fresh hell of a Boston commute.

Commuters with longest commutes are being pushed to the brink. Among full-time workers who commute more than 45 minutes every morning, 71% report having been late for work recently. About half (51%) of those same workers have considered changing jobs to improve their commutes and 30% have considered leaving their area altogether.

“These impact numbers, especially among those with the longest commutes, should be a red flag for the business community in Massachusetts,” says Steve Koczela, President of The MassINC Polling Group, who conducted the poll. “The levels of frustration we are seeing in this poll suggest a significant portion of workers are reaching a breaking point when it comes to their commutes.”

People in cars…are pissed…all the time. They honk, they drive aggressively, they do dangerous and foolish things.   In fact if you read the poll above, folks are so fed up they are even willing to raise taxes!

• Voters also support specific polices to raise money, reduce congestion, and fight climate change, including:
• The Transportation Climate Initiative: 68% support Massachusetts joining with other states in a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by charging a fee to gasoline importers.
• Regional ballots: 55% support letting cities and regions hold votes to raise local taxes to fund transportation projects.
• Regional rail: 80% support increasing the frequency of commuter rail trains running to and from Boston to every 15 to 30 minutes throughout the day, at night and on weekends.
• Off-peak toll discounts: 82% support giving drivers a discount if they drive outside of rush hour, to reduce congestion.

The studies done on this find that even taking just a few cars off the road can really improve things.  Want to know a really good way to take a couple cars off the road.  Ride your bike. For those that can, you will find that its much less stressful, healthy for you, healthy for the planet, and you will save a lot of money.  You will also be increasing the general well being of everyone else who uses the road with you.  But that is only a very small part of the solution.

The problem of commuting is not just about how many cars are on the road.

Its also a problem of equity.  The folks with the longest commutes are the most miserable so you have to ask yourself, why do they put up with it?  Why do they live so far from their job?  Why can’t they afford to live closer to their job?  Why are there no good jobs where they live?  Why is there no affordable housing close to the good jobs?  Why is there not enough public transit?  Why is there no bike infrastructure on which to feel safe riding a bike?  Why don’t they get paid enough to live close to where they work?

Maybe there is a lack of controls on the price of rent.  Maybe they are out of shape because they live in a food desert and can’t get healthy food.  Maybe they don’t have enough public places for leisure and activity?  Maybe we have allowed the super rich to treat properties like investment portfolio instead of a place to live.  Maybe they are working two jobs and don’t have time to learn to bike to work.  Maybe we allow unregulated taxi services like Lyft and Uber to crowd our streets while abusing the people who work for them.  Maybe they have bad health insurance and are worried about getting hurt. Maybe they have kids and have no way to safely bike with them.  Maybe the level of crime in their area makes them reluctant to walk or ride a bike to work.

If we want to solve any of these problems we will have to solve all of these problems.  Living wages, environmental justice, ending the war on drugs, getting racist cops out of the police force, medicare for all, raising taxes on the rich, ending subsides for giant profitable corporations, investing in our infrastructure, building affordable housing, all of these are required to solve the traffic problem.  As a bonus doing all of this will also solve a lot of other problems as well.

With the specter of catastrophic climate change looming closer and closer, and with the waters around Boston rising higher and higher, its far past the time when small measures will solve our problems.   We need bold and intersectional answers to our problems.

So if someone asks you why traffic is so bad, don’t just say “because people are not riding their bike” 

Tell them its because we give tax breaks to Amazon instead of building affordable housing.  Tell them its because we subsidize oil and natural gas instead of bicycles and public transit.  Tell them its because we don’t have a living minimum wage.  Tell them we don’t tax the rich enough.  Tell them its because we don’t support unions enough.  Tell them that we allow racism to infect our justice system.  Tell them its because we value everything based on how much money it can make, and not on how much it contributes to human thriving.

When they ask you how they can fix such huge problems, ask them if hey know their state rep, did they vote, have they called their senator, have they considered running for office, do they want to ride their bike to work with you.  Tell them that individual actions are great, but collective actions change society.

Because at the end of the day no one person or politician is going to save us.  Only a political movement based on human thriving, equity, and justice (FOR EVERYONE), is going to solve our problems.  That movement starts with us, getting involved, demanding change, and holding our leaders to account for their failure if they don’t do what we demand.

Let me get you started:

Contact info for all the legislators in MA

Contact information for the governor

Contact information for the mayor of Boston

Contact information for the city council

Give them a call, mention some of the issues in this article, tell them you want bold coordinated plans that deal with ALL of them at once.  Tell them you wont vote for them unless the solutions match the scope of our problems.  Then when it comes time to vote, remember who did a good job addressing your issues, and vote out everyone else.

It might seem like a lot of work, but just imagine how nice life will be when your morning commute is a great part of your day, instead of the worst.

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The New Longfellow Bridge “Bike Path” Is Horrible

(Please forgive me for the first 30 seconds as I wasn’t paying attention).

So whats wrong with the situation depicted in this video?

There are giant “NO PEDESTRIAN” signs at both ends of the bike path, and yet the path is full of human pedestrians (and some dogs).

The path is far too narrow for bi-directional cycling, let alone strollers, dog walkers, joggers, etc.

The green stuff on the side billows out in the wind, catching on your handle bars (I almost crashed avoiding a walker).  I am guessing that stuff is put up to stop debris from the building site from flying into the water, but the zip ties have come loose and it now poses a serious hazard to cycling traffic.

The surface is very uneven, to the point of discomfort.  You can actually hear my bike rattle as I hit each bump, and see the camera shake.

The approaches have received all sorts of marking and road paint, but they are still horrible.  Filled with curbs to fall off, ramps to miss, and in general hard turns that put you into conflict with lots of traffic (car, bike, and pedestrian).

I still think that the bridge should be closed to car traffic, and opened up to cycling/public transit/emergency traffic.  The bridge is one way as it is, and gets modest car traffic even at rush hour.

The traffic patterns approaching and leaving the bridge have already more or less adjusted to not having the bridge.  This elaborate and poorly constructed bike path is a solution that was only necessary because we are so car-focused in our thinking.

I can say with some certainty that far more people cross the Longfellow bridge in ways that don’t involve cars, and in fact always have.  Even when it was two travel lanes in both directions the amount of walkers/public transit/cyclists users of that bridge far outnumbered the amount of folks moving over it in cars.  The fact is that the bridge would be far more productive if they just took the cars off it during the time of the construction, freeing it up for emergency/public transit/walkers/cyclist traffic.

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The Longfellow Bridge Sucks For Cyclists, Let MassDOT Know We Are Pissed

The longfellow bridge has gone from pretty awesome (one lane of traffic and two lanes of bikes), to bad (wrong side bike path on the pedestrian walkway), to atrocious (one very narrow bike lane, and a bike/pedestrian traffic heading north).

Personally I see a lot more people going over the bridge on foot and on bicycle than I do in cars, shut the car traffic down and reserve the road for emergency and bike traffic, at least until the end of construction.

From The BCU:

The current conditions on the Longfellow Bridge are unsafe and unacceptable for people on bikes.  As you may know, the outbound bike lane was removed and cyclists are being asked to walk their bike on the sidewalk heading into Cambridge.  The inbound lane was narrowed so that large vehicles cannot safely pass cyclists in the bike lane.  Please see our letter to MassDOT, below, and send in your own!  Tell your story of traveling on the Longfellow and tell MassDOT and your elected representatives that this is an untenable situation, and cyclist accommodations must be addressed!

Watch this VIDEO demonstrating unsafe riding conditions!

(See the full letter here: Longfellow Phase 2 Comments-2)

Please write to MassDOT at [email protected] and CC [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] so we can see that you’ve taken action and can help amplify your voice!

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Please Comment On Casey Overpass/Forest Hills Bike Access And Safety

got this in the email, I ride through here every single day, and every single day it sucks.

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Do you ride/walk/drive under or over the Casey overpass? Community meetings around the impending removal and replacement of that span are coming soon, so I’d like to use this blog post to solicit comments from JP Bikes members on how they feel about the current effectiveness and safety of that entire multi-road intersection. You are also welcome to comment on how it works as a pedestrian, driver, or transit user. Here are a few questions you can use to get started, but feel free to comment on whatever aspect of the project you want to. Use this link to the blog post to comment:

http://jpbikes.ning.com/profiles/blogs/please-comment-on-casey

(you’ll need to join to comment. Please do! If you would really rather not, you can send your comment to me and I’ll post it)

Do you ride through this intersection regularly? What time and how frequently? From where and to where are you typically going?

In what ways have you optimized your route or your schedule to avoid traffic or other inconvenience?

Do you ride on the sidewalk at any point?

Have you found it useful to ride over the overpass?

If you are going to/coming from the Southwest Corridor path, how do you get there?

Comment on where you see the most traffic backed up

Describe specific dangerous or confusing crossings

Describe any accidents you may have had

Please stay tuned for announcements about meetings. We expect there to be a lot of talk about car traffic and flow, so to advocate for bike accommodations and safety, we need input from as many actual users of that area as possible. Thanks!

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Public Meeting: Green Line Extension Project

Got the following today, perhaps someone could go tell these people that we would like to see some way to take bikes on the green line, especially if they are going to take an already woefully bad line and make it bigger…

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Monday, March 9th Brooks elementary school, 388 high street Medford
Wednesday, March 11th Somerville High School, 81 Highland Ave somerville

5:30 project open house
6:30-8:30 meeting presentation and questions

The Green Line Extension Project is an initiative of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation in coordination with the MBTA. The project will extend existing MBTA Green Line service from Lechmere station through the communities of Cambridge, Somerville, and Medford with an extension of the main line to Route 16 and an adjunct line to Union Square.

EOT will present an overview of the project, an environmental analysis, recommendations for station sites, and the preferred project alignment.

You are invited to attend either of the meetings public input results in better projects.

To request access of language accomodations, please call Regan Checchio at 617-357-5772 at least ten days in advance.

Directions and more project information are available at www.greenlineextension.com

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