Following the Urban Revolutions event on April 28 (see previous post on this blog), Cambridge resident Jessica Eckhardt spoke with Boston’s Bicycle Program director, Nicole Freedman. They had known each other as members of the bicycle racing community. Eckhardt also spoke with Jeff Rosenblum, who works in the Cambridge Community Development Department and who was a co-founder of Livable Streets. Following (you may have to click on a “more” prompt just below this) is Eckhardt’s account of the conversation.
May 4, 2010
“Urban Revolutions” event at MIT
What follows here is a very long post, but Robert Winters has given me a free rein. I haven’t seen any other news coverage of the “Urban Revolutions” event, so here goes. Despite its length, this is not a transcript — though I quote the speakers liberally, I have summarized much of the session. If you see a “more” prompt just below, click on it so see the rest of my account. Thanks Robert!
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April 30, 2010
Concord Avenue: City’s position, and comments
On April 27, Kelly Dunn, Community Relations Manager of the Cambridge Department of Public Works, sent the e-mail below to a number of people. One was Jessica Eckhardt, who lives near the project area. The sections below in quotes are Ms. Dunn’s e-mail and the other sections are Ms. Eckhardt’s and my response.
Dear Jessica,
Thank you for your input and suggestions regarding the cycle tracks on Concord Ave. I hope I can address some of your concerns.
A few years ago a comprehensive planning study of the area was completed. The Concord-Alewife Study examined the current support system for pedestrians and cyclists in the area, and looked at how we might enhance access through additional connections in the Alewife Quadrangle. I encourage you to take a look at the study: http://www.cambridgema.gov/cdd/cp/zng/concalew/concale_plan_all.pdf
We like what that study says, but on the other hand, your statement changes the subject. That study contains no mention of “raised bike lanes”.
As projects move forward, we hope to be able to implement some of the connections noted in the study. Regarding the overall design of Concord Avenue, there are a few things to note. The reconstruction that will happen is a complete right-of-way reconstruction, with reconstruction of sidewalks, curbs and drainage systems; this would happen in any case and is not being done specifically to create the raised bike lane.
So, the “raised bike lane” just sorta happened? No, the City is consciously taking advantage of the need to reconstruct the street and sewers to create the so-called “raised bike lanes”.
Why the quotes? By definition, both technical and vernacular, there is no such thing as a “raised bike lane”. Any lane is part of the roadway, at roadway level. A bike path is separate from the roadway, and standards for safe design apply to it too. Under the proposed design, neither the street nor the paths meet design standards that apply in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The raised bike lane is just that: bicyclists will be in the exact same location as they are now.
That statement turns attention away from the issues by discussing location instead of behavior. The statement makes a host of assumptions, first of which is that cyclists only need to ride in the bike lane. Yes, you can be in the exact same place, but your options are very different if you are behind a curb.
Consider access to and from the eastbound “raised bike lane.” To reach it from most entrances on the north side, cyclists will have to cross most of the way, dismount, lift their bicycles over a curb and remount. Eastbound cyclists on the south side will have to hop down a curb at most places to turn left. The difficulty and danger of crossing the street will strongly encourage wrong-way riding, a practice which Cambridge has correctly disparaged in the past and is ignoring with this project.
Also, cyclists may now merge out of the bike lane to allow motorists to turn right without conflict. This option is denied with the “raised bike lanes”.
This is not a sidewalk path and bicyclists and pedestrians are separated by a street furniture zone, where street trees and street lights are located.
We do anticipate pedestrians spilling over or choosing to use the “raised bike lane” for travel – also cyclists using the pedestrian strip. In some places, the available width for both is only 10 feet. Still, the most disturbing issue with riding on a sidewalk-level facility is not so much the conflicts with pedestrians. It is the conflicts with motor vehicles — when riding the right way and much more so when riding the wrong way.
No matter what the design, the north side of Concord Avenue cannot be a safe location for the novice and child cyclists the City wants to attract. There is heavy turning and crossing traffic, at way too many locations. We have suggested extending the multi-use path on the south side — which has its benefits and drawbacks — the most notable benefit is safety for the inexperienced and child cyclists, with only one driveway crossing in the same distance.
At intersections and driveways, the facility is a regular in-street bike lane.
This is inaccurate and reveals a serious misunderstanding. The design drawings show the facility coming down to street level within a few feet of each street or driveway. To operate as a bike lane, it would have to come down at least 100 feet farther away, so that cyclists and motorists could negotiate lane position before and after the intersection. The City is not unfamiliar with this concept, which it used in its Vassar Street project. With, on average, one driveway or street every 100 feet, allowing merging distance around intersections and driveways would leave the westbound facility a bike lane just as it is now, for almost the entire length of the project.
There will be added signage reminding motorists to yield to cyclists.
Right-turning motorists will have to stop and wait, rather than merging into the bike lane before turning. Expect congestion, and mistakes. Signs or no signs, left-turning motorists will be unable to see past vehicles in the westbound lane. The best a left-turner can do is to creep forward until his or her vehicle’s hood provides a warning to cyclists that they need to yield.
There is nothing about the design that changes where cyclists travel over a standard bicycle lane.
This statement ignores the need to cross the street, among others, as already discussed.
Turning movements are always a concern, on all roads, whether there are bicycle facilities or not. There is no evidence that a raised bike lane with this design would make the situation worse; to the contrary, it increases the visibility of the cyclist, as well as decreases the likelihood of other dangerous behaviors such as motor vehicles parking in the bike lane.
That is an astonishing statement. Such evidence has existed for decades. It follows from human factors analysis (e.g, that drivers do not have x-ray vision, as already discussed), and from safety studies on both sides of the Atlantic. See for example this review of research results. And, a recent, extensive study in Copenhagen confirmed substantially-increased crash rates for cyclists, motorists and pedestrians alike.
If everything about positioning is the same, how can a height difference of 6 inches — or less, when the facility slants down before a street or driveway — make the cyclists more visible, especially to left-turning traffic? Will the child cyclists be more visible? Will any cyclists be visible when to the right of vans, trucks and buses?
As to your concern about motor vehicles parking in the bike lane, there is ample parking in the adjacent industrial area, and besides, the bike lane is too narrow to park in. Parking there is rare, illegal and subject to fines and towing. If there is no bike lane, any illegal parking will be in the travel lane instead or with one wheel up over the curb in the “raised bike lane”.
It’s important for cyclists to feel safe; especially riders with children and others who would not choose to ride on major streets with high volumes and high speeds of traffic.
We find it very distressing that the City proposes to attract unsuspecting cyclists including children onto a facility that crosses 24 driveways and 7 streets in 3000 feet, with known and serious crash risks, by making them feel safe — when the option exists for a path with only one, signalized intersection on the other side of the same street. Is it acceptable to make people feel safe when actually creating hazards for them? There is a vernacular term for this action: “Pied Piper” and also a legal term.”attractive nuisance.” We vote to re-examine the project on the basis of true safety, rather than an illusion of safety.
The City is committed to supporting and promoting sustainable transportation, and making it available and accessible to all. Raised bicycle lanes have been proven to be safe, effective facilities, which enable more people to choose to bicycle.
We support sustainable transportation too. We ride our bicycles almost every day, and we desire real safety improvements. Please cite your sources and clarify whether you are stating that a “raised bike lane” with so many intersections and immediately behind a high curb has been shown safe.
The project will also have important benefits to other users, especially pedestrians, who will have a greater buffer from motor vehicle traffic and improved street crossings. It is also expected that narrowing the curb-to-curb width of the street will help to reduce speeds, which are currently excessive.
Then we would be trying to use the cyclists and the car-bike conflicts as a shield, sacrificing one group for the benefit of the other. See especially the table on page 3 of the Copenhagen study, which was limited to the most carefully-designed street-corridor separated bicycle facilities. It found streets with these facilities more hazardous than other streets — for cyclists, motorists and pedestrians alike. Many features of the Concord Avenue design increase the hazard far beyond that of the Copenhagen facilities. Please, Ms. Dunn, show us your evidence to the contrary. We can’t just take your word for what you say, when public safety is at stake.
Yes, speeds are sure to decrease when the motorists are brought to a complete halt to wait to turn right across the “raised bike lane” and to a crawl to try to avoid collisions when turning left. Speeds could easily be controlled with traffic enforcement or with other measures, for example, raised pedestrian crossings.
One of the primary goals of the project is to improve conditions for people walking and biking on Concord Avenue, while maintaining vehicular capacity. The number of travel lanes will remain the same as today.
A “raised bike lane” is not a bike lane. The number of lanes will be reduced by two. A cyclist, who has the right to use the roadway under the laws of the Commonwealth, will no longer have eastbound and westbound bike lanes on the road. Also, capacity for motor vehicles will be reduced because motorists will have to stop before turning right, and will have to creep forward (we hope) while turning left, to yield to cyclists they can not see.
The conditions for cyclists and pedestrians will deteriorate with the snow in winter and no place to put it. Even if the “raised bike lane” is cleared, it will remain partly coated with slush and ice.
A community meeting was held last spring and the project has been reviewed by community groups, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian committees, the disabilities commission, and the committee on public planting.
The Cambridge bicycle program likes push the envelope by imitating European practice. People who are not familiar with the research literature can easily be convinced that the grass is always greener in Copenhagen, and that all such innovation is positive. This project also plays into the widespread public misperception that bicycling on sidewalks is safe. Some European designs are faulty, and this project in addition reflects a poor imitation of European practice. It will create a situation far worse than possible alternatives, and a perception of safety without really increasing safety. That is not positive innovation.
I (Jessica) am requesting meeting minutes and a copy of the flyer that was supposedly distributed around my neighborhood. I also ask why Massbike was not informed of the construction project.
If you would like, I can add your email to my public notification list; you can also check the progress of upcoming work at our website as well: http://www.cambridgema.gov/TheWorks/
Thank you again for your comments. I will be sending out periodic construction updates at the work progresses. If at any time you run into issues, feel free to contact me or Dan Vallee, project manager.
Sincerely,
Kelly
Kelly Dunn
Community Relations Manager
Cambridge Department of Public Works
147 Hampshire Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
T: 617.349.4870
F: 617.349.4814kdunn *at* cambridgema *dot* gov
www.cambridgema.gov/theworks
[All contact information here is already available on the Internet; e-mail address has been altered to avoid contributing to harvesting by spam robots.]
April 27, 2010
New author, topic: bicycling; Concord Avenue
Hello, I’m John Allen, and I thank Bob Winters for welcoming me as an author on this blog.
My topic is bicycling. I am an active bicyclist; I ride both for transportation and for recreation. I lived in Cambridge from 1971 through 1979, and I have lived in the Boston area ever since. I have been active in bicycling advocacy since the founding of the Boston Area Bicycle Coalition in the late 1970s. I was a founding member of the Cambridge Bicycle Committee in the early 1990s. Over the years, I have paid a lot of attention to bicycling developments in Cambridge.
My opinions about the Cambridge bicycle program may confound your expectations, unless you have been reading my writings on other Web sites. While there are many good things that Cambridge has done, there are others which I find to have serious flaws. My work takes me to cities all around the USA and abroad, so I have had many opportunities to compare bicycle accommodations. There are cities I could hold up as examples — San Francisco, Albuquerque, Madison. In my opinion, Cambridge is not one of the more shining examples.
I will be posting later about developments over the years, but my present concern is with a construction project which has now started on Concord Avenue between Alewife Brook Parkway and Blanchard Road. Details of my concerns are explained on my own blog.
The City's before-and-after cross-section diagram of the Concord Avenue project
I have several general areas of concern:
- The plan is to narrow the roadway, replacing the present bike lanes — whose installation I applauded — with sidewalk-level bikeways. The north-side (westbound) bikeway, like the present bike lane, will cross 7 streets and 24 driveways into an industrial area — so there will be very many turning and crossing movements. Most car-bike collisions involve turning and crossing movements. I only consider the westbound bike lane suitable for bicyclists who know how to avoid the conflicts. The raised bikeway will not resolve these conflicts, but it will create a false expectation of safety for child and novice bicyclists.
- The bikeway is to slant down to street level at each of the streets and driveways, but only where it reaches one — not before, so there is no way for either bicyclists or motorists to negotiate lane position. The presumption is that westbound motorists will always look back to the right and yield to bicyclists overtaking on their right, and that left-turning eastbound motorists will yield to bicyclists — who can be entirely hidden behind westbound vehicles. The so-called “right hook” and “left cross” collisions are already the two most common types of fatal car-bike collisions in the Boston area. The proposed design offers a wealth of opportunities for these collisions to occur.
- Bikeways behind 6-inch-high curbs at sidewalk level make it inconvenient and unsafe for bicyclists to cross Concord Avenue — and in particular, to reach the eastbound bikeway from most of the streets and driveways on the north side. In this way, the design encourages wrong-way bicycling — which is much more hazardous than right-way bicycling, because the wrong-way bicyclists are where motorists do not expect them and where they are in conflict with right-way bicyclists.
- The high curbs also pose the risk of bicyclists’ toppling into the street.
- The present bike lanes drain and are plowed along with the rest of the street. The proposed bikeways, just behind the curbs, are where gutter splash will target bicyclists and where snow will be plowed from the street. The City claims that it will plow the bikeways, but I don’t expect that they will be cleared anywhere near as soon or as well as the roadway.
- Creating a separate, narrow bikeway can not account for changes in the traffic mix, some of which are already underway. Cargo tricycles, bicycle trailers and pedicabs will block the bikeway; mopeds aren’t allowed; electrically-assisted bicycles are faster than others and more likely to get into trouble on the bikeways, but slower than motor vehicles. Who knows what else the future will bring?
- The turning and crossing conflicts between motorists and bicyclists will increase congestion of motor traffic on Concord Avenue, and particularly in the single westbound travel lane.
- The south side of Concord Avenue is adjacent to Fresh Pond Reservation and has only a single driveway crossing in the project area — at a signalized intersection. There is already a path extending part of the way along the south side of Concord Avenue; there is a sidewalk the entire way, and many bicyclists already use these westbound to avoid crossing all the streets and driveways. A bikeway on the south side properly designed for two-way travel would accommodate child and novice cyclists safely and comfortably, and avoid creating congestion.
- The project does not conform to the specifications in the award-winning Massachusetts Project Development And Design Guide, widely regarded as the best in the nation. I understand that the project is funded by the Commonwealth. Nonetheless, the project somehow slipped through the review process. Though City officials claim otherwise, neither does the project correspond to good European practice. It is a weak imitation of European practice.
The City makes the indirect claim of “safety in numbers” for this project. That is, when there are more bicyclists, motorists become more attentive and better at avoiding collisions. I agree that this happens, but I don’t agree with it as the justification for an all-around poor design. When bicyclists are placed where motorists can’t see them, safety is only achieved when everyone slows way down — same way as when pulling out of a blind driveway. This type of situation leads to frustration and animosity, because transportation is about people wanting to go places — both bicyclists and motorists. And the planned westbound bikeway is so inherently hazardous that I don’t expect either safety or numbers!
My recommendations? Leave the bike lanes as they are. Install a two-way bikeway on the south side, if that is practical. Provide a couple more signalized crossings, with signals timed so traffic flows smoothly and/or median refuge islands. Also look to other east-west through routes. One is already rideable, and funded for improvement, the Fitchburg Cutoff path between Alewife Station and Blanchard Road, north of the commuter rail tracks. The City’s Concord-Alewife Plan describes another route to be developed south of the tracks.
Bicycling advocates learned of the Concord Avenue project rather late. Construction has already begun, and I’m not very hopeful that the project can be changed. But whether or not it is changed, I consider public discussion and awareness important. I welcome comments. Thank you for your attention!