Mass Rail Trail News -- February 14 2012

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Tom Connors

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Feb 14, 2012, 3:38:01 AM2/14/12
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Newton Upper Falls Area Council Gives Support to Upper Falls Greenway

The Newton Upper Falls Area Council voted 9-0 Sunday in favor of the project.

http://newton.patch.com/articles/area-council-gives-support-to-upper-falls-greenway



Paris cyclists given right to break traffic laws

Breaking traffic rules, almost a national sport in France, has just been legalized – but only for Parisian cyclists.



New York City's High Line has opened phase 2
http://vimeo.com/26340409?enews123111

MIT Undergraduates create bike helmet vending machine

The prototype of the product they call HelmetHub would dispense headgear to what until now have been the mostly helmetless riders of Hubway, the bicycle-sharing system that burst onto the scene in Boston last summer with 60 sleek, modular solar-powered stations and 600 bikes.

Tourists and local residents embraced it, recording more than 140,000 trips in four months. But a city count found that just 30 percent of passing Hubway users wore helmets.

That’s a far cry from the 72 percent spotted wearing helmets while riding their own bikes, and it came despite efforts by the city to make helmets cheap and accessible by persuading retailers to carry steeply discounted helmets, sold at or near the $7.50 price that helmet-maker Bell reserves for nonprofits and government.


Architect Magazine: Community groups are leading the charge to transform abandoned rail lines into new city parks


Proximity to trails in urban areas increases property values, which in turn boosts the amount of property taxes filling government coffers.

The research, by planning professor Rainer vom Hofe and economics professor Olivier Parent, looked at houses along a 12-mile stretch of the Little Miami Scenic Trail, a former rail line that cuts across the northeastern portion of Cincinnati. The pair found that home buyers were willing to pay a premium of $9,000 to be within 1,000 feet of access to the trail.

"A bike trail like this has many types of returns. Residents can use it as a way to commute, and most people use it for recreation," says vom Hofe. "For local governments, you can make a strong argument that they get back some of the money invested in these public amenities in the form of higher property taxes. We see positive spillover in more densely populated urban areas as well as less densely populated, suburban areas." The study looked at 1,762 houses, worth an average of $263,517, that were located within 10,000 feet of the trail.

Inspiring lessons from Europe: Ten lessons from the great cycling cities

Why the Bike Lane is the Golf Course of the 21st Century


From Christine Grant's excellent bicycling blog: http://christinemgrant.com/


Good info: 
Boston Bicyclists Union

StreetsBlog

The Atlantic Cities Blog
American bikeshare systems more than doubled in 2011
Greater Greater Washington
Boston's Hubway. Photo by Luis Tamayo on Flickr. Here are the current US bikesharing systems, ranked by number of stations. The list is more impressive than ...

Saugus — Arguing the positives outweigh any potential risks, the Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to sign a lease with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to turn the old Saugus branch railroad line into a bike and pedestrian trail.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/saugus/newsnow/x132490104/Full-speed-ahead-for-rail-trail-in-Saugus#axzz1lEbNgpEl 
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