We’re bicyclists. We train for a triathlon every year, which means we’re out on the road for long rides whenever weather permits. Some of our fondest memories are of bicycling with our children on family vacations to the Cape and Islands along the bike paths.
But we’re also realists with a keen appreciation for the many dangers that our roadways present, even for experienced riders such as ourselves — and for that reason, we’ve come to what we think is an obvious conclusion: Despite the best intentions of municipal leaders who have added miles and miles of bike lanes in their communities, our roadways are more dangerous than ever for all users, whether they be cyclists, pedestrians, or motor vehicle operators.
Moreover, we would go so far as to say that encouraging people, especially senior citizens, to use bikes as a means of transportation is tantamount to inviting them to die or suffer serious injuries — and we are not being hyperbolic.
In New York City, there were 30 bicycle deaths in 2023, the most since 1999, of which 23 occurred with those using the ubiquitous Blue Bikes (which don’t require the rider to use a helmet).
Even in the Netherlands, a country where the number of bicycles (24.1 million) outnumber people (17.6 million) and where bicycling was embedded in the culture of the country and in its roadways before there were automobiles (the roads were designed around cycling), cyclists account for the largest number of road deaths (36%), compared to 33% for passengers in motor vehicles and just nine percent for pedestrians. The age category that accounts for the largest number of deaths is 70+.
In Boston and surrounding communities, bike lanes are being installed with no sense of an overall plan. For example, in our hometown on the South Shore, there is a two-lane roadway that traverses the length of the town for about seven miles. When the town recently repaved a stretch of about 1.5 miles, they widened the sidewalk and put in a narrow bike lane in each direction.
But for the three or so miles on either end of the repaved section of the road, there is no bike lane — and cyclists face multiple threats traversing the rest of the road, whether from where the road widens into a four-lane road with higher speed limits or a narrowing of the road in the business section where they run the risk of being “doored” by non-observant drivers who have just parked their cars.
The tragic death last fall of an experienced bicyclist on Memorial Drive at the B.U. Bridge was an example of a situation where the bike lane simply ended, bringing cyclists essentially into the pathway of motor vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed.
In short, it is clear that bike lanes are being overlaid on top of our existing roadways without any notion of common sense in their design. Those rows of stanchions we see in downtown Boston essentially create an obstacle course for everybody.
Prominent Boston businessman (and world-wide infrastructure developer) Jay Cashman is leading an effort to bring some degree of common sense to the process of creating bike lanes in the city.
Cashman is the founder of Pedal Safe Boston, an advocacy group that is urging a comprehensive, master-planned approach to bike infrastructure development.
According to its website, Pedal Safe is seeking to prioritize safety, accessibility, and proper site studies over rushed rollouts to ensure that city infrastructure works for everyone — pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists.
In our view, the willy-nilly installation of bike lanes is the epitome of virtue-signaling — municipal planners are doing it just to be able to say they’re being environmentally-friendly without any regard for the chaos they’re creating. Moreover, given the cutbacks we are facing in federal funding, the millions of dollars being spent on seldomly-used bike lanes would be far better spent to maintain and improve public transportation.
As we noted at the outset of this column, we are avid cyclists. But in view of the poor design of bike lanes and the new challenges of distracted drivers (not to mention that we’re not getting any younger), we have cut back our bicycling substantially in recent years.
We urge our municipal and state leaders to listen to what Jay Cashman and many residents are saying and to stop installing new bike lanes until a comprehensive plan can be developed.