From today’s Boston Globe:
At around 6:30 a.m. last Friday, members of Bike Newton placed a line of red Solo cups along the buffer zone separating the bike lane on Beacon Street from the cars driving by on the left.
By 7:30 a.m., many of those cups had been crushed by passing vehicles.
Sadly the scene at 7:30 am. There is no reason cups should have been knocked over. No vehicle should have been driving in the buffer. This is the most direct route for people biking into downtown. It needs protection. (Yes we have picked up all the cups and will recycle) pic.twitter.com/dhj97cad7g
— Bike Newton 🚲 #mobilitylanes #2019Goals (@BikeNewton) April 26, 2019
This seems like a well-meaning but not particularly useful exercise. Environment shapes behavior, and metro Boston vehicle operators of all types have decades of ingrained bad behaviors influenced by bad roads (in every respect) and bad traffic. It’s why Allstate Insurance ranks metro Boston at #199 and metro Worcester at #196 out of 200 US cities.
Note to headline writers: not every driver on Beacon Street is a “Newton driver”
Good one.
The #RedCupProject gives a glimpse into some of those ingrained bad driving behaviors that need to be addressed for safe biking to grow into what it needs to become. That glimpse is necessary to illustrate why bike lanes need some type of protection – not just paint.
These things have become obvious.
1. Bad roads will not be addressed as fast as needed to have safe roads all over.
2. Ingrained bad driving behaviors are almost impossible to change unless the majority of drivers want to change.
3. Bad biking behaviors reinforce the drivers’s perspective that bikers are a nuisance and that roads were meant for cars.
4. Drivers drift into other lanes. Luckily as newer cars become more prevalent alerts and other measures will keep those cars in their lane.
5. Drivers who move to metro Boston either adopt the bad driving behaviors or continue to drive defensively as they did before. (Both types are in my family.) Its interesting that those who drive differently than they did before not only don’t realize it but also will swear that it’s the only way to get anywhere.
Curious question…were the cups filled with water or something else innocuous? If not, how do you know whether they were simply blown over by a gust of wind and then trampled? If they were empty cups, I think your conclusions are too hasty! Even filled, some could have blown over on a windy day, or from the breeze of cars driving by.