One idea put forth by Ruth Nemzoff — that we should “perhaps have cyclists carefully share the sidewalks with pedestrians” — would be an absurd and lethal proposal to pursue (“There just isn’t enough room on streets for both cars, cyclists,” Letters, Dec. 22).
We know that walking is increasingly being promoted as a healthy and fun activity, whether leisurely or rigorous. Yet Nemzoff is asking urban walkers, of all ages, to share the danger of getting around Boston that she otherwise accurately describes in her letter, and become, in effect, parading automatons who must constantly look over their shoulders before making any deviation that might endanger their lives.
Comments
I agree that pedestrians and bicyclists sharing the sidewalk is a bad idea and speak from experience: On Commonwealth Avenue, around the Boston University West Campus to Packard's Corner, pedestrians and bicyclists already share the sidewalk--badly. Cyclists ride at full speed in both directions, never using a horn or bell when approaching a pedestrian from behind. When on the street, many cyclists blatantly ignore and barrel through stoplights and crosswalks occupied by pedestrians.
The problem is not restricted to cyclists. Generally, there is a huge locomotion problem in Boston, which is to say that too many people drive, cycle, or walk as if nobody else exists, or should exist. The Boston drivers are notorious around the nation for their bad behavior on the road, even though there are some careful and considerate drivers among them, but there is plenty of heedless and inconsiderate behavior among pedestrians. I stopped riding a bicycle in metro Boston many years ago, to the detriment of my health for my own safety. After years of motorists thinking it cute to play "motor tag," nosing me up over to the curb, beeping their horns or sending out catcalls afterwards, it was a pedestrian who forced me to stop riding: Riding along Beacon Street, just past Coolidge Corner, approaching a green light, a woman looked me straight in the eye, smiling, and stepped off the curb a few yards ahead of me. I applied my handbrakes violently, avoiding a collision with the woman, and was tossed over the handlebars, leaving me with a ripped shirt, gashes on my upper body, a lunp on the forehead, and the front wheel bent into a 90-degree angle. This was not the first pedestrian crossing against the light that I had encountered, but it was the most brazen and painful in its effects. It made me vow never to cycle in Boston or its immediate suburbs. I should add that I always made it a point to obey the traffic laws, including those for cyclists, making me seemingly unique among my fellow cyclists.
What to do? If people cannot share roads and sidewalks properly and safely, then the police should use the laws already on the books to do soThe City of Boston and some of its immediate suburbs should start enforcing the traffic laws for motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians and do this regularly and consistently, something which they have not done since I moved here 34 years ago. Parking laws, which are now enforced as a revenue measure, should be enforced at intersections with side streets out in the neighborhoods as a safety measure. That is to say, not merely at meters and neighborhood permit spaces, but at the corners, where people frequently leave their cars (when I moved here in 1978, someone told me that "Bostonians don't park their cars, they abandon them!"), obscuring the sight of cars entering the intersection until it is too late for cyclists to see them. Motorists running red lights is far too frequent an occurrence here, but running red lights by cyclists is the rule, rather than the exception; boh should be stopped by the police officer who sees them. Brochures containing rules of the road for cyclists should be published and distributed widely, and, on the few streets that have painted bicycle lanes, drivers should be kept out of these lanes at all times.
In the long-term or "pie-in-the-sky" category is the buiding of raised bicycle lanes, separated from roadway and sidewalk by curbs, as are common in Denmark, parts of the Netherlands, and certain outer districts of Berlin. Given the current fiscal condition of the Commonwealth and its cities and towns, as well as the general unwillingness to raise the fuel tax, I see this as unlikely happening at any time in the foreseeable future, except, perhaps, as a pilot project to impress the tourists, without any follow-up. But, if we want real and lasting safety for cyclists, that is the way to go.
But in the short term, relegating cyclists to the sidewalk is a poor idea, a "fix" that merely replaces the cyclists in hospital beds with pedestrians. The better fix in the short term is to enforce traffic laws and ordinances for all. I wish that this could happen, but, since this is Boston, I'm not holding my breath.
I reminded an educated young lady not to ride her bicycle on the sidewalk in a business district. She proceeded to throw a maniacal fit and spat on me. I walk with a cane, BTW.