bike lanes and businesses

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Whatever happened to the Beacon street project? I haven't heard anything about it in a while. Anyway, a page about various studies of the effect on businesses of replacing curb parking with bike lanes. Answer: not much. Businesses regularly overestimate how many of their customers come by car; bikers do often spend less per trip in grocery or cart-away shopping, but make more trips. http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-business-case-for-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes/387595/?utm_source=SFFB

Comments

[ron_newman]

Some utility work was going on last fall and it's supposed to start construction in earnest this spring.

[smammy]

What happened to the resistance to the cycle track? Did that get anywhere, or are they still going forward with the cycle track plan? (If I recall correctly, some people were saying that Beacon St. has too many cross streets and driveways for a cycle track to be safer than normal bike lanes, and that if a cycle track was built, it would actually increase collisions.)

[totient]

Near as I can tell it's being ignored.

3/4 of the cycle track is safe. I wouldn't recommend riding the inbound section from Oxford to Museum, either for your safety or for that of any pedestrians in the area. But the other inbound section (Park to Washington) and all of the outbound part is OK. And there isn't so much car traffic on that part of Beacon Street that riding in the car lane will be a problem.

Since the hearings, Cambridge has built a similarly unsafe cycle track (on Ames St). All the cyclists can tell it's unsafe and just ride in the street. So I'm not nearly as worried as I was about collisions. It'll be a waste of money, but it'll be a waste of Federal money, not city, so whatever.

[gruene.livejournal.com]

Also on Western Ave. As far as I can tell, the pedestrians there prefer to walk in the "bike" lane because it's newly paved, while they didn't bother rebuilding the rest of the sidewalk.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

We should collect evidence of this, and present it during the public discussions the next time Cambridge or Somerville proposes a sidewalk bike path.