Boston by bike
The city is gearing up to make much-needed improvements; but even now, it's a great way to get around
Boston is a miserable city for bikers. The roads are glorified cowpaths - rutted, full of potentially lethal potholes, and loaded with sharp curves and odd meanderings. To call the weather inhospitable and unpredictable does not do justice to the 30-degree temperature swings of spring days or the 45-mile-per-hour winds of an early fall northeaster. Boston drivers are a national joke, and the midday traffic downtown is enough to make anyone considering a noontime ride head to the gym instead.
That, at least, is the perception. The reality is not that grim, city cyclists and officials say. And while Boston may not yet be on the level of bikers' paradises such as Portland, Ore., or Berkeley, Calif., there is something of a two-wheel renaissance underway in the Hub, and it's gaining momentum by the day.
Consider the city's new initiative to improve biking in Boston, which could include everything from adding bike lanes, racks, and rental stations to creating online maps that plot bike-friendly routes. On the more immediate horizon, there's this weekend's Hub on Wheels event, a mass bike ride and festival that is expected to draw upward of 4,000 riders, twice the number who rode in last year's edition. The city is closing down Storrow Drive for the ride, which benefits the Boston Digital Bridge Foundation, and riders will bike through some of Boston's more scenic real estate, including the Arnold Arboretum, Stony Brook Reservation, and Franklin Park. At the front of the pack will be Senator John Kerry and possibly Mayor Thomas Menino, a recent biking convert who is now preaching the cycling gospel throughout the city.
"There's no better way to see the city than on your bike," says Nicole Freedman, the organizer of Hub on Wheels and a former Olympic road cyclist who rides all over the city for transportation and fun. "I think it's really key for the future of Boston, too, in terms of the environmental impact and the need to reduce pollution."
Freedman is a passionate advocate of both the health benefits of biking and the virtues of Boston as a biking city. She commutes to City Hall each day from her home in Jamaica Plain and only uses a car as a last resort. "There are places in the city, like JP and Stony Brook, that you might have driven through, but if you see them on a bike you realize how beautiful they are," she says.
The Stony Brook Reservation is a prime example. Situated deep in Hyde Park off Washington Street, the reservation has miles of paved bike paths set among 425 acres of beautiful parkland. A lesser-known cousin of Franklin Park and the Arboretum, Stony Brook doesn't get as crowded as some of the other popular biking spots in town. "You get in there, and you don't even know you're in the city," Freedman says.
By virtue of her position as director of the Digital Bridge Foundation, a nonprofit that provides computers and training to under-funded schools in the city, Freedman has the mayor's ear. He's taking a personal interest in making the city friendlier for bikers, she says, not just because of his own biking habit but because of the need to reduce traffic congestion and pollution.
If a big ride like Hub on Wheels is too much for you, there are plenty of other options for pedaling around the city. After years of commuting to and from his accounting job by bike, Andrew Prescott decided he liked his commute more than his job. So he ditched the corporate gig four years ago and started Urban AdvenTours, a small outfit that leads organized bike tours of the city. He shows small groups Boston's hidden corners, taking them down the Jamaicaway and around Beacon Hill.
Prescott rides from Charlestown into the city to work and believes Boston has much to offer even for casual cyclists. "Go ride Boylston Street at night or the Greenway toward the Seaport and tell me there's nowhere to ride. I love riding in the city," he says. "Comm. Ave, if you catch the lights right, you can fly through the city. If the drivers give you a hard time, just smile at them. You have to act like a car if you're a city rider."
The city's roads and bike paths still need a lot of work, however. "It hasn't gotten any better in the recent past," says Chris Porter, president of the Boston chapter of MassBike, a nonprofit cycling organization. "There are almost no bike lanes; there are a lot of areas without bike parking."
Comm. Ave and Boylston don't have dedicated bike lanes or paths, but both are favorites of Boston bikers, as is the South End, and those cyclists ambitious enough to tackle Charlestown's hills are rewarded with commanding views of the city. But there are plenty of other good rides to be had around town if you know where to look (see sidebar for a few lesser-known places).
The path that runs along both sides of the Charles River is the go-to route for many riders, and for good reason. The mostly flat, paved path offers miles of traffic-free riding with only the occasional stop at intersections. The path is popular with runners and rollerbladers too, though, and can be crowded on nice days.
Chris Newell, a veteran rider both in Boston and other cities, uses his bike as his primary mode of transport and, over the years, has become expert at devising good routes through the city. "The new Harbor Walk and the paths along the Mystic River are great for cyclists. The Big Dig has also added another route through the city [on the Greenway]. The new Southwest Corridor path to JP coupled with the Emerald Necklace path and you have a fantastic ride to the Arnold Arboretum covering so many diverse neighborhoods," says Newell, who runs a small nonprofit organization. "The rail-to-trail Minuteman path beyond Alewife is great, too."
Many European cities and some in the United States have networks of interconnected urban bike paths that are dotted with bike stations. These small buildings offer secure bike parking, showers, and lockers and are the key for folks who would rather ride to work than drive.
"The reason more people don't ride to work here is there's no bike parking," says Prescott. "If we had bike stations near South Station, North Station, and one or two other places, it would facilitate people riding to work."
The ultimate goal for Prescott, Newell, and other biking enthusiasts is to see Bostonians embrace biking on a large scale, creating a critical mass of cyclists that would in turn encourage others to get out and ride.
"When there are more bikes out, it becomes a cause-and-effect thing, where more people become aware of it and want to go out and ride," says Porter. "A lot of times it's the shortest way to get from A to B in the city."
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