Brief by Bicycle Safety group responds to lawsuit seeking to roll back city installation of bike lanes
Commuters speed down Massachusetts Avenue on Tuesday south of Porter Square where a concrete median has been removed ahead of bike lane installations. (Photo: Marc Levy)
A lawsuit against the city over bike lane installations that cost parking spaces is based on flawed reasoning, and more bicyclists will be hurt or die if a judge grants an injunction to stop more lanes from being added and remove existing ones, according to a brief filed Wednesday by the Cambridge Bicycle Safety group.
The businesses, dental and medical offices and owners fail to show harm that would be solved by an injunction to stop bike lane installation, though an injunction would harm bikers and the city, according to the brief. And the lawsuit is based on a flawed reading of the law that’s unlikely to succeed in court, as well as wrong in saying the Cycling Safety Ordinance amendment was sneaked through during the pandemic, according to the text.
“Where plaintiffs have repeatedly failed to achieve their aims at the ballot box and before the City Council, they now attempt a spurious end run to subvert the will of the City of Cambridge’s voters and elected officials,” the filing says.
The suit was filed Friday by a group of business owners and residents called Cambridge Streets for All; the city has not commented on its merits, but its spokesperson said the Law Department would “diligently represent the city’s interests in this matter.” The bike safety group’s filing is an amicus brief by a third party, which outlines for a judge some arguments against the lawsuit and request for injunction that the city might also cite.
Some of the arguments in the brief are familiar, because they reflect debate that’s been going on for months.
While businesses owners say their revenue has dropped as parking has disappeared and customers and workers are stymied in finding easy access, for instance, the Cambridge Bicycle Safety group responds that the Covid pandemic is the more likely culprit, since there are reports of businesses suffering even where there are no bike lanes. In addition, they cite studies from within Cambridge showing that most customers don’t arrive by car, and national ones showing that bike lanes ultimately help businesses, not hurt them.
“Plaintiffs make no showing of a causal relationship between reduction in business revenue and the installation of separated bicycle lanes,” the brief says.
There’s also a “minimal scale of parking loss,” such as a total of seven on-street spaces lost from Porter Square, the filing says. The brief does not answer the lawsuit’s resistance to using side-street spaces to make up for the loss of spaces on Massachusetts Avenue; a press release Friday warned that under city plans, “quiet side street neighborhoods will become de facto parking areas and loading docks.”
When the lawsuit prepared by Boston’s Lawson & Weitzen firm says the city’s changes need approval from the state and neighboring communities, or that the council lacks the authority to pass the Cycling Safety Ordinance in the first place, “plaintiffs’ contention is wrong on the facts and statutorily unsupported,” the filing says. “Close review of the cited statutes reveals no basis for the plaintiffs’ claim.”
Meanwhile, “riding a bicycle in Cambridge is not safe, as crashes with motor vehicles lead to cyclist injuries and deaths,” the brief says, citing police data for crashes since 2015, and “stopping the installation of separated bicycle lanes, as well as removing existing ones, would therefore result in more injuries to bicycle riders.”
The filing also describes the process of getting the ordinance passed, beginning with a 2015 Bicycle Plan and an amendment process setting timelines for installation, which began March 16, 2020, and wasn’t enacted until Oct. 5, 2020. There were three council candidate pledges over the course of those years, group members note, making the lanes an issue in three elections in which a supermajority of candidates signed, or seven out of nine councillors who wound up voting on the law.
A publicist representing Cambridge Streets for All was contacted Wednesday to confirm the group had seen the brief and to get comment.
“CSA is declining to comment because it’s a legal matter,” said Shauna Hamilton, a publicist with Square Communications.
This lawsuit is nothing more than a temper tantrum that will put $$ in the pockets of lawyers.
They tried it in Inman Square. It failed there and it will fail here too.
Cambridge voters have made it clear that people want bike lanes. We don’t overturn laws in a city of 100,000+ because 10 people are upset.
Most Cambridge shoppers (2/3) do NOT arrive by car. These business owners are their own worst enemy. They are alienating a larger customer base. They are all over the internet telling this customer base “you can’t shop here without parking”.
If their businesses fail, it will be larger economic factors, not the bike lanes, that are to blame. But they can also blame themselves for alienating customers.
Sigh, what a waste of money and public time. So many people (including me) voted explicitly to make safe biking happen, and yet these short-sighted business owners still want more people to die and get injured just to benefit a few parked cars.
The lanes are great as a biker, except when they are blocked by delivery vehicles. The city needs to get on enforcement. City also could have rolled this out way better and communicated with businesses better, but the lanes are very nice. That said, they are almost always empty, even at rush hour on Mass Ave.
Yes those pesky local small businesses require deliveries. Ugh the nerve. Don’t fret the delivery trucks will be gone soon enough.
Ya I’ve noticed the same – the bike lanes are packed on both sides 😂. Wait till Nov Dec Jan Feb….it’s all the local small businesses fault they are closing one by one. Great point frankd!
I’m so glad to see that the author of this piece, Mr. Levy, is not biased at all. “A lawsuit against the city over bike lane installations that cost parking spaces is based on flawed reasoning” is how he begins his article that should be labeled as opinion.
Let’s speak about facts, not his thoughts. Less than 10% of the traffic on Mass Ave is bicycle traffic. The few bikers I see in those lanes never stop for lights and commonly swerve into the sole car traffic lane to avoid delivery trucks.
You may want to read more closely. That is a summary of “a brief filed Wednesday by the Cambridge Bicycle Safety group,” as it says in the same paragraph you’re citing – and is the entire point of the article.
It is still opinion and should be labeled as such.
No, it really isn’t.
It’s really narrow-minded to think only bicyclists break the rules of the road, as if no driver has ever run a red light, double-parked or broken the speed limit. And no Cambridge pedestrian has ever jay-walked, ever!
The root cause of lawlessness on our roads is, in my opinion two-fold:
1. The road system is broken. The lanes go from one to two and back to one, and that’s when they are marked at all. Left turn only lanes are frequently marked only with paint on the road, and that too only right at the traffic light. Someone who hasn’t driven down that road a million times has no chance of knowing where they are supposed to be, so how can you blame them if they are doing the “wrong” thing?
2. There is minimal enforcement. Bike lanes in Central Square are blocked by double-parked cars 24/7 but I’ve never seen even one get a ticket. Drivers frequently “block the box” at intersections causing gridlock and yet there’s no police officer there to issue citations. Why?
We need robust enforcement of what laws we do have on the books. If we have targeted and ruthless enforcement of “block the box” for example, for a month or two, then drivers behaviors will change and traffic will flow better at intersections like Western/Memorial. Similarly if bike lane violations by parked cars is ruthlessly ticketed, then bikes won’t have to swerve into the “one traffic lane” as the comment above mentions.
One reason bike lanes are under-utilized is because the bike lane network is incomplete. I don’t want to be safe only half the way to where I’m going. My child and I deserve to be safe for the entire journey, or else we can just drive and pollute and take up parking that would be much better used by someone who is physically unable to bike.
Once bike networks are more complete bike ridership will increase and bike lane usage will be higher. Simply because in a relatively small and largely flat city with small roads and high density a bicycle is a far more efficient means of transport than a car.
Climate Change is real and the largely single-occupancy car culture of our country is a large part of the problem. Yes there will be pain associated with changing the vehicle as king model our cities are built around but we have no choice. We have to make this change and we have to make it now because the climate isn’t going to wait for a perfect solution.
The lawsuit filed by Cambridge Streets For All is totally bogus. Even the name of the group is a misnomer because the “All” they refer to clearly doesn’t include bicyclists who make up 10+% of the commuting traffic, or the vast majority of voters who have voted multiple times for safer bike lanes.
Please “Cambridge Streets for All” change your name to something more representative like “Cambridge Streets for Fossil Fuel Guzzling, Fume Emitting, Single-Occupancy Cars Stuck in Traffic and Complaining About Traffic While They Are Traffic.”
You don’t represent all of us, not even close!
Bicyclists need to follow the safety rules as well walk signs are not for you. Just wait Cambridge they get rid of parking for bike lanes and buses to make it look good then “they” get rid of bus routes. Somerville is taking away major bus route routes now Somerville Ave, Highland Ave, Broadway, Medford St.