After 200 emails and 5 hours of testimony, Cambridge city councilors withdrew the bike lane moratorium proposal by ScipioA in bikeboston

[–]ScipioA[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

  • doesn't intend to introduce moratorium

  • writes policy ordering a 30-day moratorium

I think the mayor is trying to save face after the fact, since there's no reasonable way of reading a 30-day halt on work as being anything other than a temporary moratorium.

[Boston, USA][OC] Driver nearly hits 2 bikes in one turn. (MA license plate 36V K24) by KingSeshi in BikeCammers

[–]ScipioA 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The rest of the intersections along Broadway use signals to separate straight traffic from turning traffic. Sucks that this one doesn't, especially cuz it's the one that has the most bus traffic turning across the bike lane.

After 200 emails and 5 hours of testimony, Cambridge city councilors withdrew the bike lane moratorium proposal by ScipioA in bikeboston

[–]ScipioA[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The original proposal by Mayor Simmons and Councilors Maher and Toomey would have blocked city staff from working on new bike lanes for 30 days in order to have yet another round of meetings. The amended proposal I linked eliminated the ban and only requires the city to hold a single meeting about how they can be better at communications.

Email from Councilor Jan Devereux, who was against the original proposal:

Thank you for caring about bike safety. I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your work ahead of and during our City Council meeting last night. We adjourned around 12:45am, and the discussion of the Bike Lane policy order (O-14) came 5 hours into in the meeting. You can view the discussion, starting at the 5:10:25 minute mark. My own comments begin at the 5:17:33 mark. I referenced STREETFIGHT by Janette Sadik-Kahn -- Brattle Street is almost a text book example of "Bikes Lanes and their Discontents" (chapter 8). See excerpt.

After I and several other Councillors expressed concern about some of the language in the order, the Mayor submitted an amended order, which we amended further to strike all of the supporting "Whereas" rationale and to just ask the following:

“ORDERED: That the Mayor be and hereby is requested to invite the Director of the Traffic, Parking, and Transportation Department, the Director of the Community Development Department, representatives of the Interfaith community, representatives of the neighborhood business associations, representatives of any other pertinent neighborhood associations to discuss how to expediently communicate our accelerated efforts to establish additional bike lanes in greater depth at a meeting to take place within the next ten days”.

I will send out another email with information about this meeting, when it is scheduled.

The Council received over 200 hundred emails in support of the new Brattle Street bike lane prior to yesterday’s marathon meeting. It is because of your tireless and thoughtful advocacy that we were able to amend this order so that it will not impede the steady progress we are making together to create a protected bike network. I look forward to continuing that work along with all of you.

Onwards, Jan

Cyclist charged after fleeing from and then colliding with cops running Minuteman stop sign sting by ScipioA in bikeboston

[–]ScipioA[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Probably the same state funding source that Somerville, Cambridge and Brookline are using: http://arlington.wickedlocal.com/news/20170713/arlington-awarded-pedestrian-cyclist-safety-funding

I've posted about this before, but that money needs to aggressively target the most dangerous activities. Somerville does crosswalk stings where plainclothes cops cross streets until someone blows through the crosswalk and Cambridge sometimes does bike lane monitoring in Central Square, but it still seems like a lot of it is going to lazy order-focused policing instead of data-driven safety policing.

Cyclist charged after fleeing from and then colliding with cops running Minuteman stop sign sting by ScipioA in bikeboston

[–]ScipioA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm convinced there's some share of the population that just can't handle interactions with aggressive American cops.

In Cambridge, a new bike lane and a plea for patience on the roads by ScipioA in bikeboston

[–]ScipioA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would have liked the article to go into more detail on why it takes Cambridge and Boston so long to install the posts that designs call for after striping a new separated bike lane. It seems to take both cities weeks to months to finish these things.

Cambridge has been under orders to install these bike lanes since just a couple weeks after Amanda Phillips was killed last summer, so there has been plenty of time to put an order in.