Many Cambridge City Council candidates are hesitant to sign the Cambridge Bicycle Safety Pledge, though most support expanding bike safety and infrastructure, voters learned at a Tuesday political forum.
The forum was hosted in Harvard’s Emerson Building by Harvard and MIT graduate students unions. The moderators asked each candidate the same five questions, touching on the issues of affordable housing, public safety, climate policy and workers’ rights.
Bike lanes, though, were one of the forum’s most controversial issues, especially regarding the Cambridge Bicycle Safety Pledge. By signing the pledge from the advocacy group Cambridge Bicycle Safety, candidates promise to support the Cycling Safety Ordinance, a statute requiring the city to build 25 miles of separated bike lanes within the next few years. When asked if he had signed the pledge, Dan Totten answered with an emphatic “Yes.”
“It’s really simple,” Totten said. “I signed the pledge because I don’t want my friends to die or get hurt, straight up.”
Councillor Marc McGovern also signed. He explained how he was the lead sponsor of the 2019 version of the Cycling Safety Ordinance and stands behind his work.
“I want people from 8 to 80 to get around this city safely. I think the Cycling Safety Ordinance does that, and I make no apologies for that,” McGovern said.
McGovern also recalled sitting with the parents of Amanda Philips, a Cambridge cyclist who died in a 2016 accident.
“Our streets just aren’t wide enough to do all the things we want to do, so I understand that by installing dedicated bike lanes we’re going to lose parking and other things, but we have to reimagine how we use our streets. Our streets weren’t always about cars,” McGovern said.
Ayah Al-Zubi echoed those sentiments while adding that the city must consider pedestrians, especially the elderly, when developing its road infrastructure.
“Bike infrastructure saves lives. It’s that simple,” Al-Zubi said. “When we consider what it actually means to uphold road safety, we need to consider everyone in the conversation, including pedestrians.”
Conversely, some candidates criticized the safety pledge because it would force them to ignore what they see as mistakes in the city’s rollout of bike lanes, among other issues. Federico Muchnik said that although Cambridge’s bike lanes could be expanded in some areas, he was “not wild” about last year’s changes to Garden Street.
“Just because I don’t sign the pledge doesn’t mean I’m anti-biking,” Muchnik said. “I biked here tonight; I bike everywhere. I’ve biked in Cambridge my whole life.”
Councillor Paul Toner also refused to sign the pledge, his second time doing so. Toner said that when he ran for council in 2017, he refused to sign because he felt that bike lane advocates had not adequately addressed the concerns of residents and business owners. The current pledge, which has been updated since 2017, is better, Toner said, though it is too strict.
“The reason I don’t sign pledges is I want to be an independent thinker to work on issues and find solutions,” he said. “There have been some proactive, positive suggestions for Garden Street that could have helped alleviate some of the consternation of the neighbors, and I was told, ‘No, we can’t do that.”
On the issue of bike safety, Ayesha Wilson delivered a powerful anecdote about her friend Jamesia Dottin, who died in 1997 after a car hit her while she was cycling. In her honor, the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Walden Street is known as Jamesia Dottin Square. Since Dottin’s passing, Wilson said, she has not ridden a bike, adding, “I do believe that bike lanes are really important to our community.” She continued, “I have not signed the bike pledge. I do not intend on signing the bike pledge.”
The next forum for council candidates is scheduled for 6 p.m. Oct. 12. The Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee and Cambridge YWCA will host the forum at 7 Temple St., Central Square, Cambridge.
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These responses show how useful the pledge is as a tool for voters. It’s trivially easy for council candidates to say they support vague positive-sounding notions, but that tells you very little but the actual _policies_ they will pursue, which is what really matters.
Similarly, “expanding bike safety” is pretty meaningless if some candidates literally sued to rip out all quickbuild separated bike lanes, some existing Council members have tried to delay or cancel projects (like Toner), and some candidates want to build quickbuild separated bike lanes.
Thus, the pledge, which asks candidates to support a specific, concrete policy, rather than vague platitudes. If you want a 50% reduction in crashes for people riding bikes that quickbuild separated bike lanes provide (according to the Federal Highway Administration), and the corresponding reduction in injuries and deaths, vote for people listed at https://www.cambridgebikesafety.org/election/.
(Also, Toner is wrong that the Cycling Safety Ordinance prevented changes on Garden St. Legally it was fine, none of the proposed changes violated the CSO. What actually happened is that city staff explained that in their professional opinion the proposal “would likely reduce comfort and safety for people biking and walking, and increase queues, gridlock, and congestion [for drivers]”. In short, it was a bad proposal for literally everyone who uses the street. Quote is from page 33 of https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Files/Traffic/2022/gardenst/postinstallationdata/033023gardenstreetsafetyimprovementprojcetlocaltrafficanalysis.pdf.)
To give an additional, unrelated example: every candidate says they “support affordable housing”. But even just the speakers quoted in this article have four different policies, at least.
– McGovern and Wilson support expanding AHO, and more market rate housing.
– Totten and Al-Zubi support expanding the AHO, but are not enthusiastic about market rate housing.
– Muchnik is against expanding the AHO and is not enthusiastic about building more market rate housing.
– Toner is against expanding the AHO but does support more market rate housing (though perhaps in different ways than McGovern and Wilson).
In short, the fact they all say they support affordable housing is not helpful as a guide to choosing who to support.
I have yet to see a single actionable proposal from any person who claims “I’m not anti-bike lane, we just need to be more thoughtful about it.”
“There have been some proactive, positive suggestions for Garden Street that could have helped alleviate some of the consternation of the neighbors”
He should have been asked to clarify what those supposedly are because everything I have seen in this regard would compromise the safety of bicyclists to improve the comfort for car drivers. He’s hiding behind vaguery and should be forced to actually state his real positions openly.
I will not vote for anyone supporting the unsafe bike lanes. No one is talking about all the problems that have been created since this situation has been forced on the people of Cambridge.
When people riding bikes become responsible I will change my mind but if you think bike riders are now safer you are terribly wrong.
There are no rules so now we have all manner of vehicles using the bike lanes. This makes it safer?
One more thing. A loyalty pledge forces them to take sides before they hear from constituents.
Loyalty pledges are not part of a democratic society.
“but if you think bike riders are now safer you are terribly wrong.“
No you are. The Federal Highway Administration priced that the new lanes have meaningfully increased safety for people on bikes: https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/FHWA-HRT-23-025.pdf
“The CMFs [crash modification factor] for SBLs [separated bike lanes] show a clear trend that, with their implementation, a transportation agency can expect a reduction in bicycle crashes”
The bike safety pledge is not a loyalty pledge. It doesn’t pledge loyalty to any group or organization it pledges that you will not undermine what is now the law in Cambridge (supported by a clear majority) as well as the safety of people on bikes. Saying that is extremely reasonable, and given that there are candidates who sued the city to remove those bike lanes the FHA proved improve safety and to stop all further installations it is actually needed to see which candidates really mean it and which pay lip service to bike safety while actually undermining it at every opportunity.