After two bicyclists were killed in Cambridge traffic within two weeks, city officials and staff say they are focused on addressing the other common factors in the deaths: trucks and intersections.
Kim Staley, 55, of Naples, Florida, died June 7 as a truck took a right turn where she was riding at Mount Auburn and DeWolfe streets, on the southern outskirts of Harvard Square. MIT doctoral student Minh-Thi Nguyen died Friday – two weeks later to the day – after being hit by a truck at Hampshire and Portland streets in The Port neighborhood near Kendall Square.
A vigil for the bicyclists took over the front lawn and steps of City Hall on Monday immediately before a City Council meeting. Then officials took up a policy order asking staff to target the city’s five most dangerous intersections for rapid changes to reduce risk to people walking and bicycling; and to seek state and federal action through Cambridge’s senators and representatives putting side guards on trucks to keep people from getting caught under them and run over by trucks’ rear wheels.
The guards are required on city-owned trucks and companies with City Hall contracts, but “legally, we can’t require them for other trucks,” said vice mayor Marc McGovern, author of the order. That’s where the other request comes in: “We clearly need to elevate the intersection conversation, given the tragedies that we’ve had.”
Staffers embraced the order, with City Manager Yi-An Huang describing a flurry of texts and calls over the past weekend as people grappled with “the lives that were lost and what can be done.”
Range of intersection improvements
Transportation officials had preliminary intersection data to get started on but would supplement it by going through police reports to identify where to target the first intensified improvements, transportation commissioner Brooke McKenna said. Staff expected to present to councillors at their next meeting, a midsummer session set for Aug. 5.
“There’s a lot of work to be done improving intersections, but it is something that we have done consistently in the past,” McKenna said, pointing to a project that turned Inman Square – “a place that was just terrifying,” she said – into two simplified intersections from a single, elongated one with up to seven legs to navigate.
“We have a lot of planning to do and we’ll jump right into that,” McKenna said.
The Cambridge Bicycle Safety group posted a list of possible improvements Sunday that included “daylighting,” which increases visibility by removing parking spaces close to turns; “turn hardening” that adds physical elements to force vehicles to slow for a turn and into an angle that lets drivers see more of where they’re heading; light-signal phasing that has vehicles moving at different times than bicyclists; and models that extend separated and protected bike lanes farther into intersections.
Bike lane success
Councillors had been getting emails arguing that the deaths show the failure of the city’s bike lanes, McGovern said. The installations are part of a Cycling Safety Ordinance passed in 2019 to create more than 25 miles of the lanes within the next few years. The deaths showed only that “they don’t work for everything,” he said.
A co-sponsor of the order, Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, elaborated. (Other co-sponsors were Sumbul Siddiqui and Burhan Azeem.)
“The protected bike lanes have been successful. We’ve not seen anyone killed in the protected bike lanes we’ve added,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said. That there was a death on Hampshire Street shows how successful they are, in a way, and why a friend of his riding with their child happened to see Nguyen being removed from the scene of her fatal collision.
“They would rather be biking on Cambridge Street. But Cambridge Street is much more dangerous right now and they have to go out of their way to go to Hampshire Street to get their kid to school” using bike lanes, Sobrinho-Wheeler said. “The reason people are on these high-traffic, high-volume streets is because we don’t have protected bike lanes on other streets. And there’s still time for us as a council to reverse that.”
Trucks are a disproportionate challenge
There are fewer things the city can do about the presence of trucks. The Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution forbids the city from banning trucks, acting city solicitor Megan Bayer noted. And restrictions against trucks entering certain streets have to go through the state, which has strict guidelines for approval, McKenna said. Even if a restriction is approved, it doesn’t apply to trucks with a “local destination,” a term with no clear definition. Putting up a sign saying only trucks with side guards can use Cambridge streets would also need state approval.
Even the city’s demand for side guards is somewhat porous, as it provides for a few waivers and exemptions, deputy city manager Owen O’Riordan said. They can apply to companies that use such a variety of subcontractors that the rule is functionally impossible, and to trucks whose shapes make side guards physically impossible to put on.
“The fragmented nature of that industry” is a challenge, Huang said of trucking – and yet more must be done. The percentage of vehicles on Cambridge roads that are trucks is under 5 percent, yet up to 80 percent of traffic fatalities over the past 10 years involve trucks. “The culprit in many of these crashes is trucks and size, and blind spots. It is just a disproportionate challenge in terms of how we regulate our streets.”
“Please, please, please be careful”
The council was aligned in calling the bicyclist deaths tragic, including members who angered some bicyclists in April by passing a policy order that could delay construction of bike lanes on Main Street, Cambridge Street and Broadway if work mitigating parking loss – by allowing for off-street spaces to be rented – isn’t finished by May 1, 2026. They offered extra resources for the Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department to enable the intersection study to be added to their workload; one said they were “shattered” by the deaths and bicycled themselves “through one of those intersections almost daily, and the other one at least monthly.”
What’s needed most, McGovern said, “is a culture shift.”
“I get for the last 100-plus years, roads have been all about cars,” McGovern said. “The roads are for all of us. Cars do not own them. They’re public roads – cyclists have a right to be on those roads. We just need a culture shift and understanding that things are moving in a different direction than how they have previously been. We are all in this community together, and we are all responsible for each other’s safety. So please, please, please be careful and cautious.”
“My plea to anybody listening who drives a car, including myself, is just slow down, be more attentive, be patient. You can be five minutes late to wherever you’re going,” McGovern said.
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Claiming that bike lanes don’t work because some cyclists die is illogical. It’s like saying seat belts and airbags don’t work because people still die in car accidents. Bike lanes save lives, just as seat belts do, though neither can prevent all deaths.
Consider cyclists killed by dooring—they would have been saved by bike lanes.
C’mon Cambridge, we should be smarter than this.
Terrible tragic deaths, condolences to the innocent lost lives.
As many have pointed out the designs in most of what’s been done is sub par. When you have cars, vans etc parked between the car lane and the bike lane they absolutely 100% obstruct sight lines for bicyclists, drivers AND pedestrians.
I’m hopeful this pause can really get to a place where there are actual dedicated raised bike lanes on main roads like Mass Ave. What’s been started is a dangerous mess for everyone.
Raise the street for a dedicated bike lane on each side from h sq to Arlington. Move all the metered parking to side streets and be done with it. If drastic action isn’t taken these tragedies will sadly keep repeating.
Cambridge must not delay improving street safety. Too many pedestrians and cyclists are hurt or killed.
Mark McGovern is right: streets are public, not owned by drivers, who are a minority.
People’s lives are more important than parking. Period.
Ever seen four cars go through after the light turned red? Cyclists riding the wrong way up the middle of a one way steet? Walkers stepping in front of bikes with their faces in their phones? This is all pretty common. I am surprised, daily, at how Few deaths there are on our streets considering how people behave.
The only people calling the bike lane design “subpar” are those who oppose bike lanes entirely.
In reality, the bike lanes have reduced accidents by 50%. They won’t prevent every accident, just as seat belts can’t prevent every car accident fatality.
@prc
A 50% reduction in accidents is a success. These are accidents prevented and lives saved. How can anyone call that a “mess”? Was it better before when there were 50% more accidents?
@prc I also want better bike lane infrastructure, but there’s no reason to wait before taking action. We can use the current flex pole system while working toward better infrastructure.
The current bike lanes have dramatically reduced accidents. People are getting hurt and killed now. We can’t afford to wait.
Unless, of course, the call for better infrastructure is just a Trojan Horse for opposing bike lanes.
Cambridge is unique in that being a university (s) town, we have our fair share of truck inundation at the end of semesters and many of the drivers are inexperienced. the road markings are a gauntlet of signs, paint, standards, lanes, no parking marks, pedestrians and cyclists all trying to out-time the other. Trucks are at a disadvantage because of their blind spots turning right. Even a small car has to read the landscape in a nano-second or be rear-ended or honked at. everyone needs to take responsibility for their part in negotiating a dangerous barrage of transport and ever-changing rules. Sometimes it is easier for a bike to see a truck than a truck see a bike- sorry to say. No one is trying to do harm. everyone has a part.
@prc, it’s a fair question (why don’t we rebuild these at sidewalk-grade?), because we know that’s the best long-term solution for many roads.
The answer is that reconstruction projects are extremely costly and time consuming. Sidewalk projects trigger so much other utility and drainage work, and other modern safety design standards. So in practice, that could mean only a mile or two would be completed every year on average. That would leave us with bike lane segments scattered throughout the city until the network was completed over the next 25-30 years, and at greater cost.
These reconstruction projects also consume roughly the same amount of space, so they also trigger the same tough questions about trade-offs for parking, etc.
Do it once do it right frankd. Yes it’s a mess what’s been done and yes people are dying and will continue to be hurt and or killed.
They need to be done correctly. No one in their right mind would say what’s been done is effective. To put parking in between the bike lane and the auto lane creates huge blind spots. It’s common sense to most people but not the experts. Move the parking to the side streets without bike lanes and be done with it.
Again this all falls on the experts sorry to say.
You know why?
– If people liked what’s been done they’d be clamoring for more of them.
– The lanes are paused because they aren’t properly designed or maintained.
– City councilors are literally saying stop let’s do this right in spite of the vitriol.
Again frankd this isn’t some little park redesign undertaking – the city is committing to over one hundred million dollars to it.
It should be done correctly and one time not a mix mash of signs don’t turn left, turn right to turn left and cross the bike lanes TWICE etc my goodness.
And yes I agree this isn’t complicated it should be done immediately before breaking news from Cambridge yet again.
@prc re: “It’s common sense to most people but not the experts.”
The experts are using actual crash data from _our_ parking-buffered bike lanes to make these decisions:
https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/Bicycle%20Lanes_508.pdf
Can you point to a well executed study that shows that parking buffered bike lanes are statistically more dangerous?
These lanes may ‘feel’ more dangerous at intersections, but I think a big part of that is the massive contrast of having physical protection in the roads to having poor protection within the intersections. There is no question that we need to do more in the intersections, and cycling advocates have also been pushing for that protection for years. But certainly not at the expense of the part that are working well.
@prc All the problems you’re discussing are your opinion. The fact is that bike lanes have reduced accidents by 50%. None of your words change that. A 50% reduction in accidents is not a “mess”; it means injuries prevented and lives saved right now.
The bike lanes have been paused due to political pressure on a few council members. These pauses are a classic NIMBY tactic for opposition, and no one is buying it.
The discussion at that council meeting was about a pause to see if businesses are being harmed, as if a few businesses are more important than lives. It was not about a redesign. Once again, mendacity gives away your true motive: to stop bike lanes.
A 50% reduction in accidents is a cause for celebration, not a pause. It shows the bike lanes are working as intended.
Pausing the bike lanes means more accidents, injuries, and even fatalities. Stopping something that reduces accidents will result in preventable accidents.
@Chris Cassa +100
This talk of a pause for a better infrastructure is so transparent. They are just throwing up obstacles to stop or eliminate bike lanes.
We already know that the bike lanes are preventing accidents. There is no reason to pause something that is working exactly as intended.
I think many people who learned to drive more than a few years ago really haven’t internalized the fact that you have to check your right side-view mirror before you make a right turn. You can’t assume there’s no one there.
Until the 1980s there were no side-view mirrors, and even then they were optional.
Habits you learned at 16 need to be consciously unlearned.
@prc *Experts* studying our bike lanes have shown them to be effective at reducing accidents.
https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/Bicycle%20Lanes_508.pdf
Our bike lane design here is the same as in other cities.
*Experts* studying those cities have also concluded that bike lanes made streets safer, for all road users, including pedestrians and drivers.
Who says they are a “mess”? You?
Appreciate you Chris so let me ask this to someone that is well informed and reasonable.
Let’s start at alewife brook and go down to h sq.
Mass Ave by let’s say city paint.
A quick build was done a few yrs ago. People were generally excited me as well as I frequently bike. Protected Bike lanes with pylons ok seems reasonable.
Now next lane my goodness Red war paint on the street peeled up, small plastic signs (which are now gone) with arrows pointing cars bikes along with other signs stating 15min parking IN the bus lane.
Right there you have mandated parking in between the bike lane and auto lanes. So the experts have now created blind spots lots of em at every side street car or van turning onto one.
In addition to that they effectively eliminated the dedicated bus lane. Now the buses are forced to swerve into the car lane or wait 15min for someone to get paint or a haircut.
Adding to this calamity of errors parking meters were then hastily installed on side streets. Ok fine then go with that and remove the parking from the mass Ave “dedicated” bus lane so it can actually be dedicated. The knock on effect will also in this case be great not bad as blind spots aka parked cars vans etc will be on the side streets so bicyclists and autos are visible to one another.
It’s as if each decision made is not thought out of the knock on effects bad or good. This isn’t molecular biology but it seems that the experts are trying to make everyone happy and now no one is.
Do the dedicated bike lanes and bus lanes on mass Ave and move the metered or even non metered parking to the side streets.
Cars have a dedicated lane
Buses public transit have a dedicated lane
Bikes have a dedicated lane
Pedestrians still have dedicated sidewalks
Parking goes on the side streets. Everyone gets a dedicated lane parking is still available
Do you agree Chris?
@Chris Cassa beat me to it, but I’ll chime in anyway.
@prc: Can you provide any study or real evidence that bike lanes are causing problems? Studies show they reduce accidents.
@FrankD is right. This is just a tactic to oppose bike lanes. I’m not buying the “let’s pause to do it better” argument. It’s the oldest trick in the book.
@prc Nothing you say changes the fact that the bike lanes have dramatically reduced accidents, as intended. All those “problems” are your opinion only.
We can gradually improve them, but there’s no reason to pause something that is preventing injuries and saving lives. A pause means more accidents, injuries, or worse that could have been prevented.
What would you say to a parent whose child was killed in a preventable accident? “Sorry, I wanted the bike lanes done my way.”
I’m not buying it. This is just a tactic for opposing bike lanes.
We desperately also need enforcement and education of all violators. We also need more bike specific lights, (if nothing else to end the endless debates about Idaho stops) and better education at blue bikes about cambridge road quirks. University public safety could also do outreach to students who brings bikes to campus and register them. Lower speed limits everywhere but memorial drive, And no. More. Vehicles parked in bike lanes making bikes swerve into the street.
@q99 Agreed, but it’s not enough. We need infrastructure changes to make our streets safer.
Cars have seatbelts and airbags to protect people in crashes. We don’t tell drivers, “just behave.” Cyclists and pedestrians deserve protection too.
Streets are public, not just for drivers. Parking spots aren’t more important than lives.
I don’t disagree Joe. We need all of these things and we need them thought out planned in a holistic manner.
But what’s the point of a dedicated bike lane if it’s full of Ubers I have to swerve into traffic to avoid. It kind of renders it moot. We need enforcement.
@prc
re: “Parking goes on the side streets,” not everyone who lives on the side streets has offstreet parking. If parking continues to migrate there, residents, their service providers, and their visitors will face increasing (and unfair) competition for scarce spaces.
@AllisS well something has to give and what’s done is a mess which is why it’s paused. Moving the parking to the side streets clears the way for lanes for all on mass Ave a main thoroughfare.
Assuming the city still wants bike lanes this makes the most sense for all. Yes autos lose a lane residents lose some parking bikes gain a dedicated lane and buses get a real dedicated lane.
Sadly the trolls nor surprisingly Mr Cassa has not commented? Is this solution still not good enough ?
Cyclists need to follow the rules of the road. If you keep going through red lights even the bicycle lights something is going to happen.
@prc, there’s a project to redesign the section you’d mentioned that’s underway — it’s a two year process to redesign all of Mass Ave between Cambridge Common and the Arlington border. It’s called the ‘Mass Ave Partial Reconstruction’ project in case you’d want to see more about it:
https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/publicworks/cityprojects/2021/massave4massavepartialconstruction
This project has had a pretty extensive series of community meetings as well as a working group meetings, with different stakeholders to provide feedback into the redesign. The City made special note that they are definitely going to redesign Mass Ave north of Dudley St as part of this project.
The city has released proposed design plans for the first part of Mass Ave, between Harvard and Porter. The plans include parking on both sides of the street. Sadly, there are still signs up along that segment which claim that _all_ parking will be removed for bike lanes, which is far from the plan or reality.
I appreciate your statement / sentiment about planning for the future, for bikes, buses, and cars! I think that the good process they are doing on Mass Ave can bring the temperature down a bit, too, as people feel heard and the design is more comprehensive. There are always tough trade-offs with any redesign project, but there will be a lot of benefits for people walking, biking, and taking transit.
@SB Courtway
Drivers need to follow the rules of the road. If you keep running red lights, accidents will happen. For example, 7,000 pedestrians are killed by drivers annually in the US, while virtually no pedestrians are killed by bikes.
Studies show drivers break the rules as often as cyclists, but when drivers do it, they hurt and kill others.
Cyclists do NOT run red lights; they perform an Idaho Stop, pausing and then proceeding if clear. This reduces the risk of a “right hook” accident, the same type that killed these two cyclists.
@prc. We don’t need to pause the bike lanes. We build them and then improve them. The current version has already reduced accidents by 50%. They are working as intended.
A pause means preventable accidents and deaths. It’s unnecessary and just a tactic to oppose bike lanes.
Unfair competition for scarce spaces? Streets are public spaces, not guaranteed free parking.
What’s more important: parking competition or people’s lives?
By the way, bike lanes would eliminate less than 1% of parking spots in Cambridge. That’s negligible.
1% of parking spots is not worth people’s lives.
@q99. Bike lanes have already reduced accidents by 50%. They are working as intended, so there’s no reason to pause them.
Build them with flexpoles to save lives now and improve them over time.
@AvgJoe
Re: “bike lanes would eliminate less than 1% of parking spots in Cambridge. That’s negligible.”
Your 1% figure is deceptive; it’s clearly derived from total number of spaces citywide. It’s like saying that a clinical trial comprising two people, in which one person was cured, had a 50% success rate.
Here are numbers of spaces removed (supplied by the City of Cambridge) for just two of the bike-lane projects to date:
-North Mass Ave (Dudley to Alewife Brook Parkway): parking spots removed from Mass Ave: 40 metered spaces, 30 unregulated spaces
Added to the Side Street: 11 two hour metered spaces, 8 two hour unmetered spaces. 3 unrestricted spaces (converted from outdoor dining)
-Mid Mass Ave (Putnam to Inman) – Metered/Loading/HP: Removed from Mass Ave: 73
Added to side streets: 24
It’s hardly “negligible” when half or more of spaces are removed from a single stretch of road. Whether hundreds of spaces remain on non-commercial streets remote from these locations isn’t relevant.
The addition of meters to already-parking-challenged sidestreets is an unfair encroachment on the needs of residents lacking off-street parking, including their service providers and visitors. The numbers of people who rely on being able to drive and who thus need parking far from insignificant. For many, driving represents the only option standing between maintaining independence and becoming isolated (perhaps even suicidally so) and homebound. The perpetual rallying cry that anyone who opposes loss of vital parking is opposed to “saving lives” is tiresome and demagogic. Cyclists aren’t the only group of people whose “lives” should be considered when it comes to policy-making.
Here’s a revised version for clarity and brevity:
—
@AllisS, the numbers you mentioned are misleading because the displaced parking spots from bike lanes have been relocated to nearby side streets. The key figure here is the total number of parking spots available.
Yes, we’re only losing 1% of parking spots.
Regarding “unfair encroachment”: public streets aren’t meant for free parking entitlement. They are shared spaces. Owning a car doesn’t entitle anyone to claim public space.
Your claim that driving is the only route to independence is overstated. Many elderly individuals, supported by AARP, advocate for bike lanes. Do you think you know better than the AARP? Read these articles from the AARP website:
– 10 Ways Bicycle-Friendly Streets Are Good for People Who Don’t Ride Bikes
https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/getting-around/info-2016/why-bicycling-infrastructure-is-good-for-people-who-dont-ride-bikes.html
– Street-Level Solutions for Safer Cycling
https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/getting-around/info-2018/street-level-solutions-for-better-bicycling.html
Dedicated bike and bus lanes benefit both the poor and elderly. Are you only concerned about drivers’ lives and mental health?
Your speculation about drivers becoming isolated and suicidal is unfounded; it is *your speculation*, not reality.
In reality, people are being seriously injured and killed on our streets. Your focus on potential driver depression ignores real safety concerns.
Your comments suggest a bias towards drivers. In Cambridge, two-thirds of trips don’t involve cars. Should we prioritize 1% of parking spots for a minority, ignoring the safety of the majority?
Here’s a revised version for clarity and brevity:
—
@AllisS, you mentioned, “Cyclists aren’t the only group of people whose ‘lives’ should be considered when it comes to policy-making.”
Protected bike lanes enhance street safety for *everyone*, pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists alike. Refer to this source:
[Protected bike lanes improve street safety for everyone](https://www.pasadenacsc.org/blog/facts-about-protected-bike-lanes)
Studies consistently show that adding protected bike lanes improves safety for all road users.
Shouldn’t we prioritize safety for *everyone* rather than the convenience of a minority? The loss of just 1% or fewer parking spots seems a small price to pay for the safety of *all*.
Parking spots are not “vital”. Lives are vital.
@AvgJoe The misleading claim of 1% loss of parking that you keep repeating has now been refuted numerous times, both here and on social media.
@AvgJoe My comment about suicidality, which you have twisted (as you do every observation not in accord with your own POV), is not applicable to “drivers” as an entire group but to older, relatively isolated individuals who often rely on car travel to maintain their independence. The rate of suicide among older individuals is high. Lacking reliable parking in proximity to their homes, car ownership becomes a
stressful burden, which I realize is your wish and intention. Your reflexive need to slime everyone who dares to defend the need for parking as “entitled” is reprehensible—but do keep it up, because each time you do it you are further alienating and angering anyone not already a member of your echo chamber
AllisS: You mentioned that cyclists aren’t the only group whose lives should be considered in policy-making. Here’s why bike lanes benefit more than just cyclists:
Bike lanes make streets safer for everyone by calming traffic.
They protect pedestrians by reducing their exposure to cars.
Bike lanes decrease noise, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions by reducing car usage.
These benefits are supported by numerous studies. You can Google them.
Policy-making shouldn’t prioritize only drivers’ convenience over public health, safety, and climate concerns.
The people being selfish are the people who think convenient parking for a minority is more important than the greater good.
As @AvgJoe pointed out, the parking spots removed for bike lanes have been compensated for by metered parking on side streets. But he was wrong about the loss of only 1% of parking.
It is much smaller than that.
By @AllisS’s numbers, we lost about 60 parking spots in a city of 120,000 people. 63% of residents own cars, totaling roughly 75,000 cars parked in Cambridge. The loss of 60 spots constitutes less than 0.1% of available parking.
Prioritizing people’s safety over this minimal parking loss seems reasonable. While it may mean parking a block or two further from a convenience store, many people walk farther across parking lots without complaint.
@FrankD those were not *my* numbers, they were provided by the City of Cambridge as mentioned, and since then, additional streets have lost around 50% of parking, with more slated to have significant elimination. Similar is taking place in Somerville. In total, hundreds of spaces have been lost, in commercial areas where they are most needed. Your percentages are meaningless because they’re based on a city of nearly 6.5 square miles, most of which is not zoned for businesses. As has been stated, by me and others countless times, the metered parking on side streets is both an inadequate mitigation and unfair to residents of those neighborhoods. As you have amply demonstrated, you have nothing but contempt for the needs of anyone other than the cyclist constituency.
@AllisS, the business impacts of projects that reduce lanes and parking are largely neutral or positive. It’s been studied using objective revenue data in many places throughout the world. This article summed it up best – even if there are short-term challenges, in the medium and long term, it’s way better for the community to have safer more pleasant streets, and they are assets to business, rather than just being highways next to them. (https://www.businessinsider.com/bike-lanes-good-for-business-studies-better-streets-2024-3)
That said, if there are short-term challenges, we absolutely should do whatever we can to work as a community to address them. That’s why adding a couple of spaces next to the businesses on side streets can make a big difference if they need them. It’s a good compromise, because resident parking is a little less tight during the day, and that’s largely when there is parking pressure for businesses.
We don’t need to look further than Cambridge St, Brattle St, or even Porter Sq, to see that these business districts are doing ok, even just a few years after these projects. For example on Cambridge St, business owners said they would need to shut down in 2017, but there’s not a single vacant storefront where there are bike lanes. Brattle St is similar, and Porter Sq just had at least three businesses expand (Clogs, Bagelsaurus, and Ward Maps), as well as new businesses open, and long-term businesses change hands for ~3 million.
@AllisS The loss of a few hundred parking spots is still less than 1% of the total available. Since you’re referring to resident spots, the overall number of spots is relevant. Walking an extra block or two is a small price to pay for saving lives.
Streets are public spaces. Owning a car doesn’t give you ownership of these spaces.
Commercial parking spots are not as essential as business owners think. Surveys show only about 15% of customers arrive by car, contrary to the 50% they estimate.
Bike (and bus) lanes make streets safer for EVERYONE, including pedestrians and drivers. They reduce pollution, noise, and greenhouse gas emissions, benefiting EVERYONE. You’re prioritizing the convenience of a minority of Cambridge residents.
Prioritizing parking convenience over safety is selfish and shows a callous disregard for others’ lives.
@AllisS. “Unfair” is asking people to risk their lives and safety so that you can have an easier time parking. It is hard to imagine anything more self-centered and selfish.
@AllisS. Bike lane don’t just benefit cyclists. They benefit everyone. They reduce car use, slow traffic down, reduce pollution, and make streets safer.
Bike Lanes Make Cities Safer for Everyone
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/bikes-and-biking/bike-lanes-make-cities-safer-everyone/
Your claim that they only help cyclists is 100% false.
Competition for parking will worsen as more people move here. Have you noticed all the new buildings in Cambridge and Somerville?
To decrease traffic and parking competition, we must provide alternatives to driving.
One benefit of bike lanes is reducing car use.
City planners worldwide are installing bike lanes not just for safety, but to reduce traffic, with great success in places like London and Paris.
Protecting “vital parking spots” is short-sighted and will lead to worsening gridlock and parking issues.
Drivers need to realize that bike lanes can help them drive and park more easily.
@Chris Cassa I appreciate the civility of your response – something that’s been sorely lacking in bike-lane-related comments on virtually all platforms, including this one. I don’t think that studies of cities in other countries or even other US states should be the last word on whether businesses and many residents are experiencing adverse impacts from changes in the road infrastructure. While adding a few meters to side streets may be a sensible mitigation in some neighborhoods, in others it’s created a stressful competition for already-scarce availability. It’s important to conduct retrospective studies of impacts to both businesses and residents. You cite a few areas where businesses may have been unaffected by parking loss but I don’t think that can be extrapolated to every
commercial stretch. There are businesses that I and others can no longer patronize either regularly or at all because of the parking challenges. I am one who thinks that more dialogue is needed, where people actually listen to opposing viewpoints rather than minimize or ridicule them. Thanks for not having done that.
@AllisS Studies worldwide have shown that bike lanes generally have neutral or positive effects on businesses.
Cambridge won’t be an exception. As @Chris Cassa noted, businesses near bike lanes are thriving.
Personal attitudes can’t predict outcomes. While some customers might be deterred by the loss of parking, studies indicate that they will be replaced by more cyclists and pedestrians.
Moreover, as @AvgJoe highlighted, bike lanes reduce traffic and free up parking by decreasing car use. Without reducing car use, parking will become increasingly difficult as Cambridge’s population grows.
Most importantly, people’s lives matter more than parking! Even if studies showed a negative impact from parking loss, is it worth it when serious injuries and deaths are at stake?
Yes, compared to public safety, concerns about parking are minimal.
Bike lanes enhance safety for everyone, including pedestrians and drivers.
Vincent Barone, a spokesperson for the NYC Department of Transportation, stated, “Their designs have proven to significantly improve safety for everyone on the road — whether you’re walking, biking, or in a car” (from today’s NY Times).
The bike lanes he refers to use the same flex pole design as those in Cambridge. Here, they have reduced accidents here by 50%.
Isn’t making everyone safer more important than parking spaces for a few?
@FrankD How do you think the bike lanes are doing with *saving lives* so far? I can’t recall any prior instance of two cyclist deaths within two weeks in Cambridge—and both on streets with bike lanes.
@AllisS, the bike lanes are performing well. A federal study showed that Cambridge bike lanes have reduced accidents by 50%, similar to other cities.
Bike lanes reduce accidents but don’t eliminate them entirely. It’s like seat belts and airbags; they reduce fatalities but don’t prevent all car accident deaths.
The last two cyclists killed were in intersections without bike lanes. Changes like setbacks and traffic islands could prevent such incidents. The city is currently assessing intersections to implement these improvements. Bike lanes improve safety for everyone. But more can be done.
Additionally, the previous two cyclist deaths were due to dooring. Both cyclists would be alive if they were in a bike lane.
Drawing conclusions from just two accidents shows that our educational system needs to do better at teaching statistics and logic.
@MrNice Haha. So true. To claim that bike lanes aren’t working because of two accidents is like saying that smoke detectors don’t work because some people still die in fires. Or life vests don’t work because some people still drown.
@FrankD Re: “safer for everyone”: Not really. See, e.g., https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianafurchtgott-roth/2022/09/08/bike-lanes-dont-make-cycling-safe/
@AllisS Did you read the article? It does NOT contain any evidence or data on crashes. It is an OPINION piece. Opinions are just that—opinions. They are not evidence.
The author dislikes bike lanes because they follow a philosophy called Effective Cycling. Effective Cycling advocates believe cyclists should ride in the center of the street and be treated like cars.
Is that what you want? To drive behind slower-moving cyclists riding in the middle of Mass Ave or Beacon St? That’s what this opinion piece is suggesting.
To have a meaningful discussion about bike lanes (or anything), we must differentiate between actual evidence and opinion. Remember, opinions are not evidence.