As it turns out, according to Boston city law, bicycles are considered vehicles, so parking a bicycle in a metered parking space is perfectly legal.
With that knowledge, Galen struck a brain-chord in thinking of starting some guerrilla on-street bike parking. Re-purposing parking spots isn’t anything new, as the global-wide existence of PARK(ing) Day will attest to, and neither is on-street bike parking, but to our knowledge it had never been done in either Newton nor Boston, so Nathan Phillips, mentor of BU Bikes and active member of Newton Bikes, ran with the idea over in Newton a few weeks ago. It was so successful that he wanted us to try it out in Boston, so last Friday, before the start of Boston’s Critical Mass ride, we did.
After paying a meter for a spot on Boylston, Nathan and I invited passing cyclists and Critical Mass riders to join us, and though only a few did actually join us, they reacted positively to our efforts, even if it was after luring them in with Clif Bars:
Eventually we moved to a second spot, and a curious Motorcyclist even joined in on our two-wheeled parking party. Before leaving, we left him with the meter ticket for the space which still had 40 minutes remaining.
Before I arrived Nathan had one confrontation with a parking meter attendant, who after leaving to report him to her supervisor never returned. One police officer told me we couldn’t leave our bikes in the space and stumbled away befuddled when I told him we actually paid the meter and that what we were doing was legal.
As far as we know, this is the first time anyone’s ever attempted any kind of on-street bike parking in Boston. Though, rumor has it that a certain bar/cafe here will soon be the first establishment to have the city convert a metered spot into on-street bike parking. I’m guessing it’ll look something like what they’ve done in Portland:
Considering said rumor, upcoming PARK(ing) day in September, and the fact that bicycles are considered vehicles under Boston law, expect to see more fun and useful re-purposing of city metered parking spots for people-friendly usage right here in Boston in the foreseeable future. And even if we weren’t the first to take over a parking space in Boston for on-street bike parking, we were certainly the first BU Bikers to do it.
I think that in a University setting, it’s got to be easy to convince people to move about campus by bicycle. Taking that ideal into a full urban setting, however, is a bit difficult. But this bit of news is quite inspiring. I got this story from Bike Europe:
News
Amsterdam: More Trips by Bike than by Car
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands – The bicycle is the means of transport used most often in Amsterdam. Between 2005 and 2007 people in the city used their bikes on average 0.87 times a day, compared to 0.84 for their cars. This is the first time that bicycle use exceeds car use.
In 2006 the inhabitants of Amsterdam engaged in some 2 million trips a day, an 8% reduction compared to 1990. This is due to the number of trips per person per day falling from 3.6 to 3.1%. The number of transfers has fallen in the old city within the ring road in particular.
The number of trips by car, compared to 1990, has fallen in all districts (-14%), whereas the number of trips by bicycle has only risen within the ring road (+36%). The bike is used most often in the town centre (41% versus an average of 28%) and the car least often (10% versus an average of 28%). This can be attributed to the restrictive parking policies enacted here since the 1990s.
‘Dienst Infrastructuur en Beheer’, the infrastructure department of the city registered approximately 235,000 car movements in both directions at the city centre in 1990; by 2006 this had fallen to 172,000, a decrease of over a quarter. Over the same period the number of daily movements by bicycle rose from 86,000 to over 140,000 (+60%).
For those who may still be in town, we want your support. Next Tuesday, June 30, is a public meeting about the BU Bridge. “They” are going to release the plans, and the timetable, for the reconstruction of the bridge. We’re hoping they’re going to include bike lanes in the designs. We’re also hoping anyone who is interested will attend the meeting, and make it known that they want bike lanes on the bridge. The more bodies in attendance, and the more voices speaking out, the better our chances for “them” actually listening to us.
Time: Tuesday June 30, 6:30-8 pm
Where: Photonics Building, 8 St. Mary’s Street, big auditorium
Who: Put on by the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) (they’re rebuilding all the bridges in the Charles River basin except Mass Ave)
Why: Because we need a bridge that allows for the mass amount of bike traffic (many hundreds, maybe thousands, of bikes) that crosses BU Bridge every day.
* work is expected to begin in the next couple months. it could last potentially 3 years. this is smack in the middle of our campus. please spread the word. *
At the end he suggests in possibly putting together a “bike-estra.” Little did he know that Frank Zappa actually did put together a wonderful little “bike-estra” over forty years ago in 1965 on the Steve Allen show. [also via laughingsquid]
This past weekend while visiting a friend in Virginia I had the opportunity to be part of the very first wave of cyclists to ride on the brand new Woodrow Wilson Bridge Trail across the Potomac river, a big deal since bikers and pedestrians in Alexandria, Va looking to cross into Maryland can now cross a 1.1 mile bridge instead of looping 15 miles up into Washington DC then back down into Maryland.
The path opened at 1pm, so some friends and I met up with the first mass of a few hundred bikers in Alexandria headed for the bridge. It was great to see the mish-mash of cyclists all coming together for the event-I was pleasantly surprised to see so many different types of bikes. Aside from the usual road bikes and hybrids, I spotted plenty of recumbents, folders, touring bikes, and even some wacky looking RANS bikes. The local bike shop offered free bike rentals for people to cross the bridge that day on a first-come, first-serve basis, so a good number of people biking who wouldn’t have otherwise biked.
Ignore my poor photography skills and you can see that behind the fence is a whopping ten lanes of I-95 and the adjacent path.
When stopping at a lookout point, I was excited but puzzled to see that they included a bike rack with cable to lock up my wheels- I don’t see a reason to lock up my bike at a 50 square-foot lookout point on a bridge where I will be literally standing in front of my bike while I’m there. Oh well, at least the designers did something to take bikers into consideration.
Aside from me and my friends being perhaps the first BU Bikers to cross the bridge, there were other firsts. This man was perhaps the first man to ever cross the bridge wearing fancy Crocs and sit on that rock to smoke a fancy cigar
and perhaps this is the first man wearing a One Less Car t-shirt to ever slump on his bike and read the history plaques.
The trail on the Maryland side doesn’t connect to other bike paths yet but this gravel path did take us to National Harbor, where we were forced to dismount from our bikes and walk into a $65 wine and food festival complete with blasting smooth jazz, so we turned back and crossed back into Virginia.
So I can’t help but compare this memorable event to what’s going on in Boston. Things have really started to pick up this year, with new bike lanes sprouting up everywhere, plans to close off Newbury for cars, and BU bridge reconstruction. A slow and steady process, but hopefully one day Boston will have a day as glorious as Alexandria did.
In just two semesters, BU Bikes has come a long way from being just an idea to a tangible organization of some very dedicated members, and looking back, we’ve accomplished quite a bit-It was especially great for us to hear that BUPD was befuddled by the sudden sharp increase in bike registration last fall until we let them know of our efforts to encourage more students to register their bikes.
Before I continue, I’d just like to thank Galen, Jack, and Sonya, three of our officers retiring from the club this year, for the tremendous effort each of them put into getting the club to where it is now. Without them bike-powered smoothies would just be smoothies and BU Bikes would just be a bunch of bikes at BU.
With that said, Galen covered most of our first semester accomplishments here at the beginning of the year, so I thought it would be appropriate to mention two significant goals we accomplished during spring semester.
-Bike-Powered Smoothies! (yummmy)
You may have seen us at the GSU or on marsh plaza handing out delicious, free(free as in carbon-free emitting self-sustainable energy) bike-powered smoothies. We have to thank Professor Phillips for his home-built contraption that converts energy from a spinning bike wheel into electricity (covered previously here). Using his borrowed bike and generator to power our blender, we were able to yield endlessly delicious bike-powered smoothies. Our smoothies were so delicious that we won the award for best self-sustainability demonstration during National Green Week. If you missed our smoothies this semester, don’t worry, you’ll get a chance to pedal power you own smoothie next year.
As an economics-related aside (sorry, as an econ major, I cannot resist), we did not charge a monetary price for the smoothies. Instead, we told people that they must pedal as long as they wanted to contribute to the electricity which powered the blender to make the smoothie. It was interesting to see what lengths of time people chose to pedal. Some people on their way to class biked for less than a minute. One man, who realized he was enjoying the exercise, said he could pedal all day. The man in the photo above seemed to have stumbled upon our table during his leisurely walk. He pedaled the longest and almost refused to get off, after he realized that he not only enjoyed the exercise but enjoyed our company. One problem we did run into was that powering the blender required quite a bit of electricity, and the minute or two that most people rode just didn’t provide enough electricity to power the blender for the minute it took to blend about six cups of smoothie (Our club officers picked up a lot of slack to generate electricity needed for the blender to run). We didn’t really have any way to gauge the required electrical output of the bicycle wheel to generator, or the required input of electricity from the blender, but if we did (I’m sure it isn’t a very difficult physics problem), it would have been interesting to see how long people would pedal knowing the exact cost(in pedaling time) per cup/ounce of smoothie. Perhaps we could explore this the next time we make smoothies.
-We’ve got tools! (Look how blue they are!)
And thanks to the generous folks at the BU Womens Center we also have a dedicated space to use them. If you brought your bike to the Womens Center during their skill share to have Arnie of Bicycle Bills check out your bike, you’ve had a taste of what’s more to come. We’re still in the process of working out the details, but we hope to make the space and the tools available for the BU community to use, so if you’ve always wanted to work on your bike but didn’t have access to a some space and complete set of bike tools, you should look forward to the coming year.
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands – The bicycle is the means of transport used most often in Amsterdam. Between 2005 and 2007 people in the city used their bikes on average 0.87 times a day, compared to 0.84 for their cars. This is the first time that bicycle use exceeds car use.
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