Last updated on September 24, 2023
Many pro-bike lane residents around Boylston Street are very disappointed with the city’s continued insistence on pushing through its original Boylston Street multiple bike lane plan without any revisions to respond to the expressed concerns and objections of the neighbors.
They are insisting on the plan that was developed in a vacuum without community engagement and without accommodations for the community’s concerns. The city plans to carry out a quick-fix plan to push through an unsafe 2-way bike plan for narrow, congested 1-way Boylston Street that creates safety issues for cyclists, congests traffic, causes unnecessary hardship for many residents, and has infuriated the community.
The part of Boylston Street this concerns runs for a half-mile uphill from Lamartine to Centre Street. It is a busy connector for westbound traffic through JP. Every morning Boylston St. traffic backs up bumper to bumper for at least half of this length as vehicles queue to get through the slow, 5-way intersection traffic light where Centre, South Huntington, Moraine, and Boylston converge. Paul Gore and Spring Streets flank Boylston on either side and carry the east-bound traffic.
A better plan, in terms of safety, the understanding of long-established traffic patterns, and convenience for residents, would be that the City utilize the 3 streets as a part of a well thought-through plan for a JP bike network with single direction paths on each street flowing in the same direction of travel for vehicles.
Instead, the city will put both east and west bike lanes on Boylston Street. Because Boylston is not wide enough for this, the uphill, westbound bike traffic will need to share the same lane with other vehicles, rather than making a safer dedicated lane. Eastbound bike traffic will be in an unprotected “contraflow” lane that runs in the opposite direction of traffic. Sharing a lane with cars and bikes going uphill will make for a very slow half-mile long slog, so the back-up from Centre Street will become even worse. Impatient morning rush-hour drivers will try to get around the slow traffic by pulling into the contraflow lane, risking head-on collisions with downhill cyclists.
Also, because Boylston is too narrow, many parking spaces are being eliminated including on either side of the street for entire block between Adelaide and Belmore Terrace, a dense area of triple-deckers and few driveways. More than the imposition of inconvenience of having no parking close to one’s home, real hardships for residents will occur when there is no place to park a moving van or pod on the block. Contractors will avoid work on these homes or charge significant premiums because of the difficulty of access. A disabled, long-time resident will lose his parking.
The city is ignoring a solution that could have been trumpeted by Mayor Wu as an example of successful neighborhood participation to improve the JP bike lane network. Instead, it has created a situation that will make life on Boylston harder, alienating us, and angering us at City Hall.
Pip Lewis is a Boylston Street resident
