North students show off the prototype of their solar-powered air compressor
Congratulations to Bike Newton and President Alicia Bowman on winning a $4000 grant from PeopleforBikes to improve the bike facilities at both Newton High Schools! The grant will partially pay for the construction of covered bike parking for 45 bikes at Newton North and another 30 at Newton South, as well as bike path improvements at South.
Today there just aren’t enough spots and students regularly lock their bikes to fences, trees, posts and anything else they can find. A survey by Green Engineering students at North found that there are regularly more than 100 bikes on campus, but only 70 spots. At Newton South, there are about 60 bikes overflowing the paltry 25 spots.
This isn’t just true of the high schools. Recently I attended the Generation Citizen at Day Middle School in which students did some research and found that the bike parking there also isn’t large enough to handle the number of bikes.
There is still more to be done, as the $4000 doesn’t cover everything. The bike shelters will be built by the Green Engineering students and will include solar panels to power both LEDs and a bike pump. In fact, the students have already built a prototype of the pump, which was available for use today at Newton North.
This is a worthwhile initiative and one that is long overdue. I couldn’t be more excited for the students who bike or want to bike and for all the volunteers like Alicia Bowman who made it possible. This is one of the things that must be done if we want to get more kids biking to school.
I’ve noticed more than a few bikes chained to trees, fences, posts etc, on or near Newton North and you just know that any diligent thief could make quick work of most of them. During the mid-1950’s, the powers that be at the old Newton High School let us park our bikes in isolated corners of the tunnels that connected the three main school buildings. The only condition was that we secure them with a solid lock.
This is an excellent step. I do hope that as we plan our street improvements, we recognize that most of bicyclists riding in newton aren’t wearing spandex… they’re wearing school backpacks and risking their lives to get to these bike-racks on broken asphalt, narrow sidewalks and squeezed by blasé texters in luxury SUV’s. At least they’ll have a cool place to keep their bikes if they make it!
I am very excited to get this going. It has been a goal of mine for six years to increase bike parking at NNHS and to make some covered. It has taken some effort to get here. Hopefully the students leading the way on building will help it get completed without too much drama. In addition to the covered bike parking, the proposal includes safety upgrades to better define bike routes into both schools.
As for who is biking in this area, we tweeted photo last week with a small purple bike for a maybe 5 year-old among those locked up at NNHS. I am guessing the child riding this bike to NNHS was not in spandex.
What David said. I’d encourage my kids to cycle to NSHS, but frankly I don’t think it’s safe enough for them to do so.
Robert, if by chance your kid is coming from north of rt 9 & west of newton centre, the rt 9 signalized crossing at Woodcliff Rd & quiet back streets with a hawk signal at Parker & truman makes for a relatively safe bike route, much safer than Parker.
And, BTW, kudos to Alicia for your excellent work getting this award!
Awesome! Biking is great for everyone, except for the danger. Have you tried to get to Brown/Oak Hill/South during dismissal? It is dangerous, and many drivers are NOT driving carefully enough, especially with student bikers. We have a long way to go for bike safety in Newton, including changing drivers behaviors. Also just, because the most direct way is the shortest way is not the way student bikers should go. The shortest distance from our house to South is driving over a mile on route 9, but not safe for a biker.
There is a big effort around safe routes to school, and this discussion certainly drives that point home. I live near Day Middle School and all three of my children have walked or biked there. Sometimes even the crossing guard is ignored as she tries to calm traffic. There have been several incidents involving drivers and students at Linwood Ave.
We can make these places safer, we just need the will to do so. That may mean diverting traffic during key hours or offering better transportation so parents don’t opt to drive their children as often as they do.
Nathan, yes, the Woodcliffe Rd pedestrian lights across Route 9 would be the way to go, but even so, it’s over 3.5 miles to Brown Middle School or NSHS, carrying a 20+ lb backpack.
Maybe I’m being over-protective? And this is from someone who used to ride around central London in the rush hour, and was an occasional bike commuter into Boston.
Robert, I think those are very legitimate concerns. I wish our kids weren’t weighed down like pack mules.
Congratulations to Alicia and to all who helped make this happen. I wish I had been able to do this at the old dingy North of my youth. I remember not only the lack of locking areas, but no storage for helmets and other accessories. I had to ask the House office to store these things, and they didn’t need the extra cargo. Hopefully that is (or will) be part of the next step, as well as striping and signage. In the end, the real problem won’t be the student cyclists, but the (increasingly) distracted drivers.
On the backpack issue, I tried (and failed) to get my kids to use a front basket or a pannier/ backpack to load the weight onto the frame. There are bags that can do double duty (clip to the frame, then convert into a backpack), but “fashion” remains a key obstacle.