my response to the Freep articles

[mook]

Hello again, Sorry to bug your inboxes, but I sent an online response
to the Freep's articles and I wanted to send them on to the group. I
hope you enjoy my directed ranting:

First, thanks to the Freep for making this such a big issue. Four
different articles in one paper really help get the point across. I'd
like to add a bit, without trying to restate all the salient points
made in today's paper:

Frankly, I find it reprehensible that Vineet Gupta passes the buck by
saying it's the city's responsibility to maintain the bike lanes. It
is his campus and his student population that use the lanes, and it is
his students who are put in harm's way by their misuse. If he cares
about keeping his students safe, if he was at all concerned that
students DIE while biking to class, then his reaction would have been
different. You can't just put this issue in the bureaucratic basement
when it involves life and death situations for students.

What BU needs to do (and should have done) is build dedicated bike
lanes on Comm Ave. That is, bike lanes separate from the road,
divided by a curb, so that cars and bikes don't interact. Squeezing a
lane in-between parked cars and moving cars just creates a death trap
for bikers. I don't understand why this logic escaped the designers
of the Comm Ave Beautification Project, it is common practice for most
urban centers in Europe, especially bike-oriented ones such as
Amsterdam and Paris. The city planners over there saw the concerns
and dangers facing their bikers and built the streets to accommodate.
Considering BU and the City of Boston just spent MILLIONS UPON
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS on construction along the Comm Ave strip, they
really should have done it better.

But it seems BU doesn't really want to concern themselves with the
plight of its biking population. I recall last May when they OK'd a
plan for the construction crews to cut bike locks and steal bikes that
were locked to parking meters and trees. Their claim was bikes should
only be parked on official bike racks (yet it is stupendously obvious
that our campus lacks the necessary number of racks - so, PUT MORE
IN!) The crews did this to coincide with graduation ceremonies, and
under the precept that the bikes interfered with the construction
project, and the "beauty" of Comm Ave. BU claimed it was the city
that orchestrated it, yet the bikes were sent to 15 Buick Street at
BU's B&G facility. When pressured, the city or BU or the crews or
whoever was responsible quickly stopped the practice (and rightly
so!). Still, they thought they could just cut locks and steal bikes!
What an insult to an entire community of students!

I will leave this post with an anecdote that happened to me the other
week. I saw a UPS truck parked in the bike lane right in front of the
flower shop on Comm Ave. I walked up to the UPS guy and asked him if
there was a way he could not park in the bike lanes because it caused
a dangerous problem for bikers who had to swerve into traffic to go
around the truck. He said he was busy and if I had an issue to take
it up with the cops. He pointed just down the street to a squad car
that was also parked in the bike lane, not more than 50 feet away, it
held two officers sitting idle in the car. So, I walked up to the
cops, and asked them if there was a way they could get the UPS trucks
to not park in bike lanes. They said it wasn't their job, they don't
enforce traffic laws. Fair enough. So then I asked them if they
themselves could not park in the bike lanes, since it was creating a
dangerous problem for bikers. Instead of answering, they asked me:
"Are you a biker?" "Yes I am," I replied. "Then you're all set," was
their response (cop talk for "this conversation is over, we don't care
about you anymore"). So then I asked "Are you guys BU PD." "Yes,"
they said. I thanked them for listening and I walked away, thinking
I'd report them to their higher-ups.
A minute later, as I was marveling in their impudence and audacity, I
saw President Brown walking along Comm Ave, with a rolling suitcase
and cell-phone call in hand. Feeling confident of my right as a
student, I stopped the Prez mid-conversation and brought the UPS issue
up with him. He said he couldn't have BU enforce traffic laws,
especially with delivery vehicles. So then I pointed out to him that
there was a cop car parked in the bike lane, and he asked me "Are they
BU PD?" "Yes," I said. The conversation ended there, without any
pleasantries, and Mr. Brown simply turned and walked away from me. I
watched him walk past the cop car without saying a word.

So, I ask, even when the problem is presented right to the highest
administration, to the man who no one can question, what does BU do to
help out its biking population? Simply walk away. Bikers get killed
in this city all the time due to poor urban design. Animosity is bred
by "sharing the road." I wish BU would pull their heads out from you-
know-where and recognize this, and for the love of God, build some
decent dedicated bike lanes!

[Alex Storer]

Hey Everyone,

I think now may be the time to meet up and figure out what sorts of
goals we want to establish and the best way to go after them. Some
goals (like getting dedicated bike lanes) may be out of reach for now,
but others (like bike parking) are definitely something we could have
a firm impact on.

I'm not sure who's interested in meeting up and touching base, but I
have a few ideas that I'd like to toss around, and I think there's a
lot of leg work that we should divide up and get moving on. I'd be
happy to set up a meeting in the next week if interested parties want
to send me their schedules?

Mook, thanks for forwarding all of these e-mails. I never read the
Freep, so hearing about all this bicycle hubbub has got me all stirred
up! :-)

~Alex

[Chris Ditunno]

Hello and happy fall to friends of BUbikes... well... looks like with all of the students back in town and lots of folks on bikes (in our mind, a GOOD THING), things are starting to heat up again at BU and in the new bike lanes... more bikers means more user conflict... and we're ALL starting to have our own less than ideal stories of life in those bike lanes...

BUbikes will be formally organizing and submitting an application as a student organization...

FRIENDS OF BUbikes is a currently a larger organization that includes more than BU students... and we should start chatting about how to support BUbikes and what we can do to address these issues as well. I'd suggest Friends of BU bikes continues to network and post online and maybe meet over coffee or whateva sometime soon... and then we can report back at the next meeting of A-Bbikes to the larger group who attends and via our blog/site. In the meantime, I'm gonna create a space on our blog/site to post stories of what's going on in the Comm Ave bikes lanes for all to see. I've also started taking digital pictures of license plates of those parked illegal in the bikes lanes. I'd like to start some formal discussions with BTD and BUPD about enforcement around bike lanes... anyone else interested in being involved should let me know.

Let's focus on how to get as many folks working together productively to make sure the Comm Ave bikes lanes DON'T become the scene of the next biker accident... the bikes lanes are intended to protect us, promote bike commuting and REDUCE user conflict... let's do our best to try to make that happen... and give those who SHOULD be helping us with the effort as part of their job a chance to do the right thing and re-prioritize (everyone has lots to do on their plate, we just need to remind them and help them understand that this is a daily life or death issue for some of us on bikes!)

I suggest we work hard to engage and work collaboratively with the BU administration (including the BUPD, Dean of Students, Parking and Transportation, etc.) to address these issues. We also have lots of resources to offer and provide to BU to help them address these issues and plan and implement attempts to improve. If BU fails to recognize the importance and urgency of these issues to our community and reprioritize their work load to accommodate these bike-related issues, then we'll have to strategize about alternate approaches to motivate them to do so. Let's work hard to get something good (or better) to happen!

Chris Ditunno
Allston-Brighton bikes

[sohrob kazerounian]

Hi All,

I agree with alex. I think it would be a good idea  to have a meeting, firstly so that we can all get to know each other, and secondly so that we can begin tossing out ideas and how to go about solving BU's bike problem.

When/where would be good for everyone else? Perhaps in the backcourt of the GSU so that we don't have to reserve a room? I am free any day except weds nites.

Best,
Sohrob

[mook]

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.