Washington Street in Somerville. It has bike lane stripes painted over numerous crumbling pot holes. Whose idea was that? For goodness sakes, fix it.

Beacham Street in Everett and Chelsea. The only way for a biker in Chelsea to go to downtown Boston, besides putting his bike on the bike rack of the 111 bus, is to go down Beacham Street to Route 99. The Tobin Bridge does not have a sidewalk, and a bike can’t go through the East Boston tunnels. If you haven’t before, I urge you to take your CAR down Beacham Street and you’ll be frightened and disgusted. WTF is stopping them from repairing this main street in such obvious disrepair that it can easily break the axles of an unsuspecting car? My God!

Second thing. When you were a wee tyke, what was the cautionary statement your parents made to you about crossing the street.

Third, pointed out already, cyclists MUST follow the same rules as cars if cyclists are to ever have a chance at equal respect.

Cyclists – should act like they are part of the traffic if they want to be respected. That means not flouting laws.

Motorists – there needs to serious enforcement of traffic laws, as was already mentioned here by others. In addition there needs to be a change in motorist’s mindset: I’ve been at a light and had a driver staring directly at me, and still had them turn into me. Their eyes may be pointing to me, but in reality the don’t really “see” me. It’s filtered out, as if I’m just like a tree – part of the scenery.

I do NOT think bike lanes are the first thing we should be doing. It’s an easy feel-good thing to do but I’d rather see more efforts going into getting more cyclists on the road — especially those who just haven’t gotten over that first hurdle. And … sorry to say this, but we could make it less “convenient” to drive all those big guzzling cars into the city.

There is a lot of stupidity to go around out there on the streets. I can’t glare loudly enough at cars parked in the bike lane, or the ones that turn without signaling, sometimes while I’m right next to them in the direction they want to turn. Many of my fellow bicyclers brazenly blow through red lights and I think that makes things worse too.

-Brian, Medford MA

I have lived and bicycled in the Greater Boston Area for over twenty years now, and find myself both encouraged and frustrated by the energy and resources going toward these new programs.

Any cyclist will be happy to hear of new bike lanes being demarkated, sure, but we all know that a line of paint is not going to save our lives. The most obvious and most critical reasons that bicycling in Boston is so dangerous to riders, drivers, and pedestrians are two-fold:

First, and most easily repairable, is the physical road condition. Behind the wheel of a tall vehicle, a driver cannot possibly see the ruts, potholes, gouges, and glass that a cyclist *must* swerve to avoid to retain control of the bike. I’m not going to claim that all chaotic-seeming manuevers intitiate for this reason, but I can tell you that the view is different from down here, and a move that I make that may seem dangerous and crazy, may have just saved me from going heel-over-head into the street. I have seen bike-lane markers painted over *ridiculous* road-surfaces, such that I imagine the DPW worker painting it must have shaken his or her own head in disbelief. If the goal is to have cyclists ride to the right-hand side of the road, and more or less stay in the bicycle-lane, then that bicycle-lane must be in good repair—better than the standards you need for a four-wheeled vehicle.

Secondly, and equally if not more important, but far more difficult to correct, are the habits of the famous “Boston Drivers.” My commute through Somerville, Cambridge and then through the Back Bay would be immeasurably safer in direct-inverse proportion to the number of double-parked vehicles. A driver may feel that he or she is “just going to be a second” running into a corner store, or waiting, double parked, for someone to come out, but in the mean time, a cyclist now must swerve around that car, into traffic, and contend with other drivers doing the same. The mornign commute, especially, is filled with avoiding delivery vehicles, many of which are double parked because automobiles are in the Loading Zones. Though, too, I imagine, more loading zones may be necessary.

There has been lip-service paid toward an intention to “crack-down” on double parking after tragic deaths caused in part by fire-trucks not being able to get past double-parked cars, but I cannot say that from an anecdotal, street-view perspective, I’ve seen any difference.

If the City of Boston took every penny they were planning to spend on new bike lanes, and with that money hired more traffic officers (on bicycle!), and seriously, aggressively ticketed with *substantial* fines, drivers who double-park or even just sit in their cars and idle in no-stopping zones, then the roads would be quickly and notably safer for cyclists and other drivers. My most erratic-seeming behavior on my bike is invariably caused by my having to work around someone stopped where they shouldn’t be, or someone swerving and speeding up to go around someone turning left where they shouldn’t, and similar situations.

Repair the roads and keep them that way, with an eye toward the needs of two-wheeled vehicles.

Enforce existing laws and regulations regarding driver-behavior. No, really, for real, with an aim of making the phrase “Boston Driver” no longer be a short-hand for “anarchist.”

With those two changes at the top of the list, *then* start talking to me about bike lanes and bike-sharing programs.

In the mean time, next time a cyclist swerves out around your car, consider that they may have had to in response to an issue or condition that a driver of a car cannot see.

-Rachel Mello
Somerville, MA