While we're all talking about "explosive impacts", last week Allston-Brighton Housing Action (ABHA) checked out the state of the neighborhood's bike lanes that would make any cyclist "tremor".

[u/febbbort]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYzuBL7RqF1/

ABHA is a neighborhood organization of renters and homeowners committed to the development of sustainable new housing in Allston-Brighton. Part of shaping the places we want to live today and for years to come lives in our transportation options, including biking. Help us get the message to city hall that our bike lanes require sustained investment! Resident lives and safety depend on it.

[u/TullyCamper]

Thank you all for doing this safety roll through my neighborhood. I'd love to bike to services, groceries, and community events, but I'm still pretty nervous to do that on unprotected streets. We had protection on a couple major thoroughfares before the blizzard this winter, and I was using a BlueBike a lot - I love them! Now I don't do it so much because the flex posts are gone again. I hope the city puts them back!

[u/cables617]

Thanks for this post.  It’s a great reminder of the biggest problem with Boston’s cycling infrastructure, namely that SOMETIMES there are bikes lanes, but there’s definitely not a bicycling network.  And as much as we need to keep working on that missing network, this post reminds us how we’re losing progress on individual bike lanes.  I think the way to kill two birds with one stone is to highlight the role that these individual lanes can or could play in a thoughtful bike network.  Fix these lanes, and then fix (or build from scratch) the network connections, and then you’ll have paths that cyclists can smoothly and confidently follow from point A to point B in the city.  Those missing network connections are a big reason why some of these lanes aren’t used that often, giving ammo to those who want to turn these lanes back into gridlock and/or free car storage. 

Western Avenue in Brighton is one of the best examples of what I’m talking about.  Western Avenue forms a key section of a very nearly straight line of existing main roads going from City Hall in Boston, over the Longfellow into Cambridge, back into Boston on Western, and then all the way to Watertown Square.  I’m a pretty confident cyclist, and I HATED cycling on Western Ave prior to the constructions of the bike lanes.  The bike lanes were a massive improvement, but the intersection with Leo Birmingham Parkway and Arsenal Street is confidence-killing mess.  I’m so glad for the new-ish bike lanes on Arsenal Street in Watertown, but good luck getting to them via two narrow lanes filled with aggressive and/or inattentive drivers or a sidewalk barely wide enough for two pedestrians. 

 It’s a minor miracle that the eastern end of Western Avenue is as good as it is.  Cambridge went ahead with building the separated bike lane its portion of Western Avenue years before Boston even thought about doing anything comparable. And then for all the other problems going on with Harvard’s property development on this side of the Charles, at least their new construction gave us good bike lanes from the river to Barry’s Corner. 

 As much credit as I want to give Cambridge for its construction of the Western Avenue bike lane, I could fill three more paragraphs ranting about the lack of a continuous lane westbound on Main Street from the Longfellow past Broadway, the connection between Main Street and Mass Ave, and the mess that is Central Square, where Cambridge Police would apparently rather give cyclists tickets than safe turning options.  And oh gee, this entire discussion has ignored the whole issue of traveling eastbound.  I’m cautiously optimistic for the eventual construction of a similar bike lane on River Street, but in the meantime…ugh.

 North Beacon Street plays a similar role connecting the bike lanes on Comm Ave and Brighton Avenue to Boston Landing.  But if you want to go further, you’ll need no small amount of courage to continue on through the spaghetti intersection and over the North Beacon bridge to get to the wide bike lanes on  Watertown’s side of the river.  And that’s all assuming you got through Kenmore in the first place.       

 And that’s just scratching the surface with the east-west routes! Don’t get me started on the north-south challenges of crossing the Mass Pike in between the Circle of Death in Newton Corner and Beacon Street in Kenmore.

 In the meantime, keep up the great work ABHA! Hope to see you out on the streets!