BU Bikes

If you’re on our mailing list you received an e-mail last week about tonight’s Community Meeting where the City of Boston will be proposing bike lanes on Comm. Ave to the Public Garden. I regret not posting this sooner, but if you are seeing this for the first time please consider attending to show your support for bikes lanes:

Monday, August 31, 2009
6:00 PM
Boston Public Library Central Branch
Mezzanine Conference Room
700 Boylston Street

Here’s the official flier put out by the city:

Of course, I will be attending to report on and offer input as necessary, so stay tuned. See you there!

It’s that time of year: College Move In. This past May I moved out all my belongings from my Myles Standish dorm room in Kenmore Square into my summer apartment in Allston using only my bike. Here’s what that looked like:

This is my homebuilt Xtracycle longtail cargo bike, whose inadequate axle actually broke after carrying the load seen below:

So I used my mountain bike outfitted with wald rear baskets to tow my crippled longtail to my apartment which in turn carried my snowboard:

From then on I used my rear baskets and a baby stroller turned makeshift bike trailer to carry more of my junk:

And here’s my bike carrying my office chair:

It took a total of thirteen trips to move all my belongings out of my dorm and a bit of creativity to affix some irregularly sized items to my bike.

As you can tell I am a huge fan of cargo biking, but less obvious is my fanaticism for the video game Katamari Damacy, so I was less than thrilled to miss last weekend’s Katamari-cat, a Katamari Damacy Themed Alleycat bike race/scavenger hunt that required riders to carry irregularly sized items with them on their bike. Needless to say, that Alleycat would have been right up my alley

Since the BU semester starts in a few days, I’ve decided to bike-move again back into my new dorm room in Myles Standish. What’s a senior doing in a predominately underclassmen dorm, you ask? Why, enjoying the luxury of a spacious single to house me and all my bikes, of course. So for the past few weeks I’ve been borrowing and using an electric powered bike since my knees have been giving me trouble. After attaching my Wald baskets to the rear rack, I began round one of my slow but steady bike move back to the dorm today using my camping dry bags and some bungee cords:

Unfortunately, I almost forgot that college move-in day meant a nightmare of traffic and illegally parked vehicles. While I didn’t see cars parked in the bike lane outside Warren Towers, there were two moving trucks hogging the lane:

It only got worse when I got to Kenmore Square, where the outbound bike lane, the only place I’ve personally ever been doored, was lined with parked cars:

But the real nightmare was the intersection of Comm. Ave and University Rd, where during rush hour even with a green light the bike lane and the green linewas blocked by cars coming off the Carlton St. Bridge trying to get onto the BU bridge and Storrow Drive. Over the summer this was less of a problem since less people were in town, but seeing this intersection today as the new school year takes off was a stark reminder of what I am likely to see on a daily basis all year unless something changes:

As you can see, the cyclist above is not very happy about dangerous mess she has just waded through. And as school will soon be in full swing and swarms of bicyclists and pedestrians pass through bu BU bridge intersection, we can only hope to see something done about it soon, especially when actual BU Bridge renovation begins.

Farther down Comm. Ave at Agganis Arena, Cirque Du Soleil was scheduled to perform, and Boston Police detail was making sure traffic was running smoothly. Giant electronic traffic alert displays were also displaying messages to drivers to expect delays. What if those displays also said to watch out for cyclists? Wouldn’t that be nice?

BU’s currently working on installing a ton of new bike racks all around campus. Most noteworthy and exciting so far are:

the wonderful new bike rack bars at the Guitar Center 730 Comm. Ave/General Classroom Building Parking Garage:

Which nobody realizes is actually a bike rack yet:

and the nine new hanger style racks installed in the rear parking lot of CAS, which as of this morning, had my bike and BU BIkes faculty advisor Seth’s bike locked to:

Apparently nobody realized these racks existed either as the only other bike rack crippling away behind CAS was packed:

It’s really great to see the university respond to the previous lack of bike parking, and its obvious the next step is education to let people know about all these great new racks and how to use them (you can expect more on that from us later). I do have concerns about people actually safely and conveniently accessing the rear parking lot, but I guess we’ll see how that pans out in the next few weeks when school is in full swing. And of course, I will continue to keep you all updated on new bike racks across campus as I discover them.

At today’s A-B Bikes meeting, Chris told me she spotted three cars with parking violation tickets on North Harvard Ave, which, in case you haven’t heard, was freshly repaved, repainted with bike lanes, and marked with no standing signs:

I was a bit skeptical of what Chris told me she saw, since I had yet to see any car ticketed for parking in a bike lane in Boston, let alone North Harvard Ave. where the bike lane’s been used as a constant parking lane since its existence, (though I have seen cops whisk away drivers parked in the Comm Ave. bike lane) so I decided to check it out myself. Upon arrival, I found two cars parked in the bike lane:


I was surprised to see two tickets affixed to each vehicle; one orange ticket under the wiper and one white ticket shoved on the outside of the driver’s window.

Upon further inspection, this is what the white ticket said:

It was indeed an official City of Boston violation citing a $75 fine for parking in a no standing zone. Hmm, the new bike ordinance states a $100 fine for parking in a bike lane. They must have not updated the tickets yet. So if this was the actual violation ticket, then what was the orange ticket? Whipping around to the windshield, this is what I found:

A fake parking violation ticket with a sense of humor! I’ve seen this idea on the internet before but never in action.
The note was definitely a nice, informative touch. And In case you’re wondering, the Lincoln did have a nice big Harvard U bumper sticker in the rear.

Speaking of fake parking tickets, I’m a fan of NYC-based Times-Up’s Bike Lane Liberation Clown Brigade, a ride that dresses up as clowns before giving out fake tickets:

So props to both the rogue biketivist for the awesome fake ticket (As far as I know, whoever wrote it wasn’t a BU/A-B biker) and BPD for actually being on top of writing parking violations with the addition of the bike lanes. We’ve seen a lot of skeptical feedback about enforcement of the new ordinance, but hopefully what I saw tonight is indicative of what’s more to come.

Update: It seems we have a very likely suspect for the “rogue biketivist” leaving fake parking tickets on cars parked in the North Harvard Ave bike lane: fellow Bostonbiker blogger Zero Combustion, who has not only been ranting about the bike lanes all summer, but yesterday actually mentioned wanting to leave fake tickets herself. The tickets she bought online match what I saw last night. Though at $4.99 per fake ticket, handing out more will likely be a very costly endeavor.
And thanks m2mayer for pointing this out.

Update 2: yeah, it was Zero Combustion. And apparently you can buy 100 packs of those tickets on Amazon for $15.

Last week, friend, BU student and cyclist Christina Genco completed her cross country bike tour from Boston to Santa Barbara with Bike and Build, a charity ride where riders not only bike across the US, but make stops along the way to help build affordable low-income housing. Here’s a shot of the Boston-Santa Barbara group’s touchdown in the pacific ocean.

Little did I know that there were also other BU students and alumni who also partook in this summer’s Bike and Build on other routes, so a huge congrats to them too. You can actually check out each rider’s profile/blog/photo section to read more about and see photos of each of their epic rides.

Christina Genco- (SHA ‘10) – Boston to Santa Barabara Route

Jonathan Moore (ENG ‘11) – Northern US Route

Beth Haley (CAS ‘09)

Jaqueline Watts (CAS ‘10) – Boston to Santa Barabara Route

P.S. In the above photo, Beth is in a pedal-powered paddle boat. Could this possibly be a hint of something greater to come?

Yesterday, from the Mayor Menino Boston Bikes Committee Facebook Page:

The Other Side Cafe on Newbury Street gets a new on-street bike rack this morning. Removing one metered parking space, has made room for 12 bikes. Special thanks to Richard and Sarra Lederman of Lederman Engineering, Boston Transportation Departmen, Boston Public Works for the work this morning.

This, folks, is another huge step for a bike friendlier Boston, especially for cyclists who frequent the Other Side. It’s a great day when 12 bikes can now use space formerly dedicated for use by a single car. If you get a chance to bike by the Other Side Cafe, don’t forget to check out the sweet rack. We can only hope to see more of this in the future.

Yesterday BU bikes member Melody and her friend Paul arrived in Parsippany, New Jersey after five epic days of riding their bikes from Boston.

This is the route they took:

View Boston to NYC….er NJ in a larger map

You can check out Melody’s blog and twitter feed for more about the ride.

Some of my favorite bits,

From her blog:

On the downside, the bike’s back tire mysteriously popped last week. I took it to a shop to get it changed and also to get a crash course on changing tires and the like. When I nonchalantly mentioned the trip, Bike Dude stops his work and mumbles something about getting a new bike. I asked him if my bike would make it all the way and he goes, “aueahh…I mean sure, why not? back in the day people did all sorts of trips on worse bikes…with fixed gears and…sure”
“Would you do it on this bike?”
“AhhhhhI’d get a new one.”

and from her twitter feed,

first day riding outside Boston:

The hills are alive with the sound of Take-your-bearded wife-on-motorcycle-day

their arrival to Manhattan :

5 punctures, 1 hopped fence, 100 wrong turns, and many delays later, the day ends w the sweet taste of free iced mochas in a nyc mcD.

and her last twit after arriving home is Parsippany:

Celebratory ice cream. Many thanks to the bewildered construction workers, locals and tourists who shared this adventure with us.

Since I did my first bike tour from Boston to New York back in March, it’s been really great to meet other cyclists who also felt inspired to ride their bikes to far away and beyond. On my tour, it was especially funny to see the looks leather-clad motorcyclists gave me while I was pushing 4mph up a steady incline and awesome to see the excitement in the faces of people who learned of my trip along the way.

So a big shoutout and congrats to Melody for completing her first bike tour. I hope there are many more bike tours for her to come.

Yes, that deserved all caps.  Now we may actually be able to use that bike lane they striped down Comm Ave.  FedEx trucks be warned…

The long and short is that the City Council just passed an ordinance prohibiting parking in bike lanes.  It empowers BTD and BPD officers to ticket any violators.  The tickets are for $100.  Wow.  The full ordinance is posted below.

This was passed with the help of a few influential bike organizations, namely LivableStreets Alliance, BU Bikes, Allston-Brighton Bikes, Bikes Not Bombs, Institute for Human Centered Design, Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, Rozzie Bikes, JP Bikes, and Dot Bike.  Thanks to all the groups that helped push this badly needed legislation.

AN ORDINANCE PROHIBITING PARKING IN A MARKED BIKE LANE

OR MARKED SHARED LANE

WHEREAS: The City of Boston is lacking an effective method to ensure public safety as members of the public not only travel in motor vehicles in marked bike lanes and shared lanes but also park in said lanes; and

WHEREAS: This Ordinance shall establish the following guidelines for parking motor vehicles in marked bike lanes and shared bike lanes; and

Ordained by the City Council as follows:

1. Purpose. The purpose of this ordinance is to establish guidelines for parking motor vehicles in marked bike lanes and shared bike lanes.
2. Prohibition from Marked Bike Lanes and Shared Lanes. No driver shall stand or park any motor vehicle in a marked bike or shared bike lane in the City of Boston.
3. Penalties. Any person violating the provisions of this section shall be subject to a fine of one hundred dollars and no cents ($100.00) for each offense. This fine shall increase by thirty-three dollars ($33.00) if it remains unpaid at least twenty-one (21) days after issuance of a notice of the violation.
4. Exceptions. Nothing in these sections shall prevent standing or parking a motor vehicle in a marked bike lane or shared bike lane: (i) when necessary to avoid conflict with other traffic or pedestrians; (ii) in compliance with the lawful direction of a police officer or official traffic sign; or (iii) unless authorized to do so under existing regulations (including but not limited to designated residential parking lanes or parking meters).
5. Enforcement. The Boston Transportation Department and the Boston Police Department shall have the authority to enforce this section. The provisions of Massachusetts General Laws c. 90, s. 20A1/2 may be used to enforce these sections, and the adjudication provisions of this chapter and of Chapter 190 of the Acts of 1982 shall apply to this section. The Boston Police Department and Boston Transportation Department shall have the authority to impound any motor vehicle in violation of these sections.
6. Regulatory Authority. The Commissioner of the Boston Transportation Department and the Commissioner of the Boston Police Department shall have the authority to promulgate rules and regulations necessary to implement and enforce these sections.
7. Severability. If any provision of these sections is held as invalid, then such provision shall be considered separately and apart from the remaining provisions, which shall remain in full force and effect.
8. Implementation. The provisions of this section shall be effective immediately after passage.