friends of BUbikes + Freep correction

[Chris Ditunno]

Mr. Gupta:

In follow-up to our telephone discussion earlier this afternoon, please see the posting below.

Chris Ditunno
Allston-Brighton bikes

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: mook <gmm...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 2:32 PM
Subject: [friendsofBUbikes] Re: my response to the Freep articles
To: "(friends of) BUbikes" <friendso...@googlegroups.com>

Whoops.

Well, as a hotheaded blogger/columnist without editorial oversight,
one of the problems is that sometimes you get your facts mixed up
while trying to prove a point.  In this case, Vineet Gupta is the
Director of Policy & Planning for BTD, not for BU, and by saying that
it was the City's responsibility to maintain the bike lanes he was
actually letting BU off the hook - he wasn't passing the buck by
dumping responsibility on the City, which I called "reprehensible"
considering it's students' lives at stake, he was merely dropping the
ball since it's his job.

My concern still stands, however, that this shouldn't be a "it's his
job" attitude to keeping these lanes safe.  If it's BTD's
responsibility to make sure they are properly used and maintained,
then there's much work to be done, and by relying on the City to do it
we are putting all our eggs in one inefficient basket.  Rather, we
need to take a "it's everybody's job" attitude - BTD's, BU's, the
driver's, the cyclist's, pedestrian's, delivery company's, MBTA's,
construction company's, everyone who is ever in, on, or near those
lanes.  If the entire community isn't educated on how to properly
maneuver those lanes, then we're still going to be plagued by the
dangers of misuse.  We are talking life and death situations here, so
everyone needs to be proactive in the safe and effective use of those
lanes.

But again, Mr. Gupta isn't responsible for BU's handling of the lanes
- yet I hope he is working closely with those at BU who are (namely
Dwight Atherton, BU's Director of Parking and Transportation) and that
the walls of bureaucracy are down.  And I hope we can have a full and
open conversation between the City, BU administration, BU leadership,
and the entire BU community to prevent accidents like we've been
seeing all week long.

thanks.
-mook.