For What it's Worth

May was Bike Month, the month we celebrate all who crank through the urban landscape reducing traffic, helping save the environment and promoting a healthy lifestyle. But besides some flag waving, what do Bike Months really accomplish? Do more people saddle up the steel steed, do motorists become more sympathetic and aware of cyclists, are the roads somehow suddenly safer? Unfortunately no – it merely underscores the lip service municipalities and agencies put forth when they could better serve the biking community and public safety by putting real dollars into infrastructure, policy and traffic law changes.

For me, the month began with great optimism. I sent letters to transportation heads in Boston and Cambridge outlining 10 unnecessary hazards to bikers in each city where immediate improvement could be had. I ride a 15-mile round trip every day from Porter Square to the very end of the Seaport, and had hoped that, given the month, documenting these persistent areas of peril (unclassifiable on the wonderful, but limitedSeeClickFix app) might garner some attention and thought from those with the power to enact change.

What happened was fairly emblematic of bureaucracy, and embosses the truth that we don’t value cycling as much as we say we do. From Boston I got a cricket concerto (though the canyons of potholes I flagged by South Station did get filled within days). Separately, a call toBoston Bikes – a municipal department opened in 2007 – to ask about bike rack policies and safe passage around or through Boston Common turned out to be a frustrating do-nothing back-and-forth. At no time during the conversation did the young rep mention Boston Bikes doing something, anything; she just directed me to take up issues elsewhere at City Hall, or to use an app. It was disappointingly clear that she cared little about cycling and wasn’t in touch with the state of the roads or traffic conditions, let alone the community she served.  Continue reading →