Dot Bike

This month has been a busy one for me (alas much non-bike related) so other than keeping up with our event calendar I haven’t had much time for posts.

Nonetheless DotBike has been working away on several things this last month including meeting with Dorchester Ave. planners about bike accommodations, planning with BNAN folks on strategies for closing the missing link in the Neponset Trail, preparing to push the T to install a bike cage at Ashmont and keeping our ear to the ground for other bike relevant issues.

Just want to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season and have a look below for a couple of ways you can help support biking in the new year with the new administration courtesy of Mass Bike.

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Opportunity #1: Funding for Bicycling in Economic Stimulus
MassBike has already been working with local and national advocates, state agencies, and our Congressional delegation to support funding for bicycling projects in the infrastructure spending currently being debated in Washington, DC as part of a massive economic stimulus package. Here is an opportunity for you to add your own voice via one of our national partners, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. RTC is compiling an online petition to send to President-Elect Obama and Congressional leaders, asking them to provide funding for trails, walking, and biking.

Click here to sign the petition

Opportunity #2: Make Bicycle Transportation a National Priority
Ideas for Change in America, a project of Change.org, is asking for public input on ideas for the incoming Obama Administration. Individuals can vote for ideas they support. One idea that is getting significant attention is to make bicycle transportation a national priority.

Click here to cast your vote

With the days getting oh so much shorter now more than ever it is important to make oneself as visible as possible when the sun is down.  Here’s a great example of how one can do so.

This picture is of one of Debbie’s colleagues in Chicago and was obtained from Velocity a Seattle Area Bike Blog.  You can read how David fitted out his bike to be so very visible in detail here.

And for more on winter and night riding there are a couple of upcoming events that can help you get used to riding in the cold wet conditions of a New England winter.  For the ladies Bikes-not-Bombs is having a free women only workshop at their hub this coming Monday 12/8 and Rozzie Bikes is also having a free winter riding clinic Wednesday 12/10 at the Roslindale community center.  See the event calendar at the right for the details.

There was a grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony this past Saturday at the new Transit oriented Carruth Building in Peabody Square.  The Mayor was there, as was state representative Linda Dorcena Forry and various other high mucky mucks.

The Carruth is right near the Ashmont T station and houses some new great local business including Tavolo restaurant, Flat Black Coffee, AtHome real estate and Wainwright bank.  All great for the neighborhood and good places to frequent.

Despite the cold some of us wheeled down to check out the action.  As this picture clearly demonstrates there is an aspect sadly lacking at this location, namely bike parking.

If you ride to any of these businesses let them know that you want a good safe place to park your bicycle.  And we’ll work to keep up the pressure on the project developers. Let’s get some more parking in places that need it.

A couple of weeks ago Pete Stidman published a nice article in the Dorchester Reporter that gave a bit of a historical perspective on Boston bike groups at the turn of the last century.  We went on to highlight some of the things that DotBike has accomplished and how others have been inspired to start up other neighborhood bike groups.

You can read the article here.

However, he characterized DotBike as a “small group of dedicated bike commuters” and while it is true that there is a core group involved in much of the organizational matters we know there is more to DotBike than just these folks.  This was nicely stated in a follow up ‘Letter to the Editor’ published in last weeks Reporter written by Phil a DotBiker.

Here’s a link to his letter.

You may have heard that there is a Franklin Park Transportation and Access Study happening to make access to and biking in Franklin Park easier for all.  More on that below.

Someone decided that they didn’t want to wait for the study to finish and the money found to make the recommended changes and decided to do their own small part to make biking through the park easier.

The simple “bridge” allows a rider to cross an open culvert without stopping or dismounting, a difficult feat prior to the installation.

Debbie and I both tested the bridge and its sturdy and stable and a definite improvement.

Gotta love guerilla bike improvements.

Oh and about that official study.  The draft recommendations available for download from the Parks page of the city website as a 3 pdf document (check out the Reports and Publications section near the bottom of the page) outlines the proposed bicycle and pedestrian improvements.   The comment period goes until November 24th so if you want to give your opinions or suggestions you send them to Howard/Stein-Hudson Associates, Attn: Joseph SanClemente, P.E, 38 Chauncy Street, 9th Floor, Boston, MA, 02111  or send them to us via email using our contact form and we’ll forward them along.

On a slightly overcast but very clement Saturday morning a bakers dozen of bicyclists gathered at the Great Hall in Codman Square to enjoy a ride around Dorchester to have a look at a bunch of public outdoor art.  We headed north and saw a number of large murals on our way to Upham’s corner.  At Upham’s corner we had an unscheduled stop in the 2nd oldest cemetery in the country, it is the Halloween season after all.  We then went on to Nonquit Street where there was a dragon waiting for us.

Leaving the park we ran into the ‘Tour de Grave’ bicycle ride as they toured several historic grave yards in the city.  We continued south on to the giant Clapp pear and the Baker House.

Heading east through Savin Hill to UMass Boston for the great view of the Harbor and took in a couple of sculptures and the Corita Kent work on the Gas tank.

We then headed back to our starting point in time for people to enjoy the open studios and all the great art on display.

You can check out the route and some info on the art here.

Thanks to our friend and host BostonBiker you can now subscribe to an RSS feed for the DotBike site.

Subscribe using http://dotbike.bostonbiker.org/feed/ and know when new content has been added to our site.

And if you want to keep up with all the great blogs hosted by bostonbiker you can subscribe to the master feed at http://feedproxy.google.com/BostonbikerorgMasterSiteFeed

Enjoy!

The weather is definitely getting cooler but tomorrow looks to be a lovely fall day.  This weekend is the Dorchester Open Studios where over 100 artists display their work at locations around the neighborhood.  But before visiting these indoor venues come along with DotBike for a ride of outdoor public art in the neighborhood.

We’ll be meeting at 10 a.m. in the parking lot of the Codman Square Health Center at 637 Washington St. in Dorchester.    We’ll take you on a little more than 9 mile tour of the neighborhood where we’ll point out various examples of the historical, modern and community art along the way.  The studios don’t open until noon but we will be riding past or near several of the venues and we will be sure to point them out so you can hit them after the ride.

Here is a map of the route:

View Larger Map

Here’s a great story of a DotBike member helping out some neighborhood teens get ready to ride.

DotBike has been working in fits and starts to help the St. Peters Teen Center launch get their bike club up and rolling.  We provided them with some sponsored entries to the Hub on Wheels Ride, passed on some donated helmets and a bicycle.

We knew that they had been working hard on fund raising so they could send a handful of riders to the ‘Rodman Ride for Kids‘.  However, they had been so focused on the fund raising and other preparations for the ride, along with the start of school and all the other stuff that happens in the early fall that they had not realized that of the bikes they had on hand none were really up to the task of carrying their riders 50 miles in a single day.

They contacted Vivian, who they had met at the DotBike table at the Rep. Marie St.-Fleur community night held earlier this summer at the center, to see if he might help.  Vivian, a DotBiker and a accomplished bike fixer offered to have a look and see what he could do.  The trick was that the call for help came only one day before the ride.  Vivian went over to the teen center late Friday afternoon to see what was what.  Over the course of two hours he was able to get three of the bikes that the group had into a state where he felt that the riders would be safe to attempt the 50 mile ride.   Unfortunately, they had planned and fund raised to have five teens do the ride.  That left them two bikes short.  Very generously Vivian again came to the rescue by letting two riders borrow two of his personal bikes to use for the ride.

I’m happy to report that all five of the St. Peter’s teen riders completed the 50 mile ride.  Way to go!  And way to go Vivian for helping out people in our neighborhood get out on bikes and have a good time for a good cause.

Yesterday I attended this years Moving Together conference.  This conference has been apparently happening annually for some number of years and is put together by the ‘Baystate Roads Program‘.  It brings together people and organizations interested in creating and improving bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in the state.   There were a number of interesting workshops and exhibitors.  I’ll just highlight a couple of things I heard that I think are of most direct interest to Dorchester cyclists.

Nicole Freedman gave a nice presentation on plans and progress in bicycle improvements in Boston.

• Of note, there is a google map that tracks the status of the city bike racks that are being installed throughout the city including several in Dorchester.  (I’ll add a link to this map on our DotBike maps page as well)

The cities plan is to install 250 racks each year for the next three years.  According to the map as of today there have been 182 rack requests made for the first year (and some of the requested locations have been declared ‘dead’) which suggests that there are at least 70 additional requests that can be made right now for these city racks.

Here is a link to a form to submit a rack request to Nicole and her staff so when you identify a spot where you would like to see a rack let the city know.

• The short term strategy in terms of creating bike lanes, sharrows etc. has been to go after ‘low hanging fruit’.  In other words, jump into ongoing projects that provide an opportunity to add bike accommodations as part of an ongoing process.  This is how the Commonwealth Ave. and American Legion Highway (as yet unmarked) bike lanes were created.   Dorchester Ave. was included as a piece of that fruit going forward.  No specifics were offered in the presentation but it was good to hear that it is definitely on the bike program radar as they embark on the Dot Ave. improvement project.

Peter Furth, an engineering proffessor at Northeastern University, whose students recently gave some interesting presentations at a DotBike event last month, himself gave a very interesting presentation on creating a network of greenways through the city.

While there are currently three stretches of continous greenway longer than two miles in the city, the Charles River Paths, the Southwest Corridor and the Harbor Trail  to UMass Boton, none of these are connected to each other.

In addition, there are other shorter sections of greenway that contain gaps for which there are plans and proposals to connect the gap that will extend the greenways.  These include the gap in the Neponset Greenway/Harbor Trail that is one of our priority efforts.

However, Dr. Furth suggests that there are a two ‘magical’ paths, one between ruggles station and the fenway, the other connecting the Southend to the Harbor Trail via Southampton St. in Dorchester that would dramatically increase the number of point to point connections accessible via off road paths.

We’ll be keeping eyes and ears tuned for proposals on the Southhampton Street link.

Cathy Lewis, the chief transportation planner of the Central Transportation Planning Staff, presented work they have been coordinating in conjunction with ‘Friends’ groups on path usage.  The Harbor Trail and Southwest Corridor are not currently included in their counts but may be added in the spring.  Not only CTPS but also the city will be looking for volunteers to do counts on these paths so stay tuned for requests for volunteers.

In my opinion an interesting conference with lots of good ideas and perspective.