We have bike ... markings ...

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Wow. My part of Willow Ave. suddenly has not only a center line (double yellow), but at least one bike marking - the share-the-road type, not a line or lane.

How much of the rest of the city are they doing?

Comments

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

Wow!

[dibalh.livejournal.com]

Pearl St. has sharrows now as well.

Not totally related, but blew me away: a motorist pulled up alongside me yesterday at the light by Target about to head under McGrath, and the driver thanked me for stopping at lights and using hand signals.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Not totally related, but blew me away: a motorist pulled up alongside me yesterday at the light by Target about to head under McGrath, and the driver thanked me for stopping at lights and using hand signals.

I do this when I see cyclists doing that, and I can safely do so.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

"Sharrows", right. Thank you. I can't imagine why that term didn't leap right to mind. :)

[ron_newman]

There's a new westbound bike lane starting in the middle of Union Square and running all the way down both parts of Bow Street to Somerville Avenue (which already has a bike lane).

To make this work, the city replaced parallel parking with back-in diagonal parking on part of Bow Street.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

What does diagonal parking do for this?

[ron_newman]

It's supposed to reduce conflict between bikes and parked cars (and their doors), while simultaneously adding a few more car parking spaces. The bike lane is between the travel lane and the angle parking. It's reverse angle parking because that makes it much easier for the driver to see an approaching bike (and vice versa) when the driver leaves the parking space.

It is an experiment, which the city may remove if they decide it isn't working well.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I thought that might be the idea, and it sounds good.

However, in parallel parking areas, people are supposed to look before opening their doors, or pulling out, and they don't - and it's not that hard to do the right thing - while this will probably make it harder for them to miss a bicyclist, I expect that automobile drivers are going to be just as oblivious as they already are.

As someone who bikes and drives, I'm all for anything that helps, even a little bit, in making sharing the road easier and safer ... I just hope it works.

I suspect the city will kill it because the reverse angle thing is going to take too much getting used to, and the drivers will whine about it enough that the city changes it to head in parking.
I'd even be willing to consider an over/under on that, but for no money.

[ron_newman]

I took some photos of the new Union Square and Bow Street bike lane (though only one of them shows the new diagonal parking area)

Union Square Main Streets has a blog post and a video showing the diagonal parking experiment.

The Boston Herald published an article today claiming that the experiment is a failure that is hurting local businesses on Bow Street. The Herald article also has a video.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I doubt they'd ever do what I think would help alleviate some of the congestion issues in that newly designed stretch - get rid of the parking on the left hand side of the road.

Considering that they doubled the available parking on the right, why do they need the parking on the left?

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

The experiment is a failure after it's been in place for two(?) days?

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

The Herald article has a lot of vague complaints.

But one that I agree with is that it looks like there's no place for quick parking for deliveries. With the old configuration, double-parking was possible, which wasn't ideal but at least didn't totally block traffic. What happens now?

One solution would be loading zones every few spaces.

[dial-zero.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh. You cleared something up for me. I visited Austin this past week, and some roads that used to have normal angle parking now have reverse angle. I couldn't figure out why they had done this, but now it totally makes sense. I'm not sure how long it's been in place there, but it seemed to work fine.

[smammy]

Now if only they'd put a contraflow bike lane on Willow between Highland and Elm...

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

YES PLEASE.

[smammy]

I usually just ride on the sidewalk between Highland and Elm.

[wardv.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would be good.

I was thinking the other day that actually, it would be really nice if Willow were one-way the whole way (i.e. including the part between Highland and Broadway). The section that is two-way now is really too narrow to have two lanes of traffic and parking on both sides. Removing parking on one side would probably just encourage more traffic/traffic going faster so that seems less than optimal. It would also likely cause major parking issues for everyone who lives there. Making that section of Willow one way would hopefully reduce non local traffic, and make the street more liveable. Especially if it was one way from Broadway towards Highland. Maybe they could then make Cedar one-way the other way; the stretch from Morrison to Broadway is also very narrow.

[ron_newman]

But if it's narrow and people are having to slow down because there is parking on both sides, isn't that a good thing?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Making that section of Willow one way would hopefully reduce non local traffic

I doubt that, as you'll still get the afternoon commuters using it as part of the getting from Mass ave to Medford corridor.

Due to its current one way section, it already is unusable for the reverse of this corridor.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Gods no. I can't tell you how happy I am that Willow, on which I live, is 2 way most of the way.

[smammy]

That sounds awesome, actually. If it Willow were one way, we'd have plenty of room for a bidirectional bike path. My ideal arrangement (facing North):

| curb | southbound biking | northbound biking | curb | north-facing parking | northbound driving | north-facing parking | curb |

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

I'd strongly oppose such an arrangement. A bike sidepath on the wrong side of parked cars makes blind spots at every intersection and driveway. It would be dangerous to bike on such a path at anything faster than walking speed.

[smammy]

Oops, I mean... I didn't think of that. Good thing I'm not an urban planner! What would you do?

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

The best way to reduce traffic on Willow would be to fix the awful traffic light configuration in the center of Davis. This would also make all the Davis bus routes faster, more reliable, and cheaper to run.

[koloratur.livejournal.com]

This. I have to get to 93 to work, and I always go down Willow, because as terrible as it is, it's reliably quicker than continuing down the street to turn right at Davis.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Aiieee, no. The number of times I've thought it would be really nice if it were *two*-way the whole way....Seriously, my commute used to go by way of Porter starting in Ball Square, and I had to look at a map for ten minutes just to find a legal way to do it. (The home direction, of course, is easy -- straight up Willow.)

I mean, I sympathize with the fact that no one wants their streets to have traffic, but there have to actually be SOME streets that enable people to get from point A to point B.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this.

[koloratur.livejournal.com]

WHAT! A reasonable way to get to Mass Ave without taking a half mile detour in one direction or the other? Surely, you jest.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

There isn't a good nearby cross street in that area, though. I don't consider Cedar particularly convenient to my area of Willow (and I live on the 2 way portion).