Mayor Fuller made two big transportation related announcements in her email newsletter today.
First she announced that the city has been awarded $250,000 grant from MassDOT to launch a shuttle system between three mass transit lines (Newtonville, Needham Heights, Newton Highlands) and Wells Avenue and the Mount Ida Campus of UMass Amherst in the N-Squared Innovation District. The shuttle could be on the road by this fall, Fuller wrote.
The mayor also announced that Newton, Watertown and two other municipalities received $340,000 grant to expand the Bluebikes bike share program to the city. Bluebikes is already operates in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville and Everett. Newton’s share of the grant is $80,000 grant will be matched with $20,000 of city funds to provide five docking stations at locations to be determined.
Bluebikes replaces Lime Bikes, the dockless bike share that recently pulled out of Newton and another 15 cities and towns after it moved its business model primarily to scooters.
In my opinion, the City of Newton should not be subsidizing [free rent] any bike company that allows unhelmeted riders. No helmets, no bikes!
Let’s really focus on safety. Helmets for all drivers, just like NASCAR! Let’s stop subsidizing driving. No helmets no roads!
@Mike Striar, you must have a conniption when you visit Amsterdam and see the 0.01% helmet use there.
We often cycle from Amsterdam to Bruges and we are literally the only riders to be wearing helmets across 250 kilometers.
Yet the number of cyclists killed per mile traveled is lower in the Netherlands than anywhere else in the world.
Cycling fatalities have a strong correlation to the number of cyclists on the road and a much weaker correlation to helmet use. So, the primary goal of anyone who’s truly concerned about cyclist safety should be to get more cyclists on the road, helmeted or un-helmeted.
Kudos to Mayor Fuller. I do my best to minimize car usage, and initiatives like this are extremely helpful.
Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Chuck.
How would one propose to stop unhelmeted bikeshare riders?
Bluebikes “strongly recommends” helmets and clearly states state law:
https://www.bluebikes.com/helmets
I’m not seeing why bikeshare riders should be held to a higher standard than regular bike riders, except for liability for the company. People make their own safety choices.
(I always where a helmet, set a role model for my kids, and advocate strongly for helmet use. Helmets are the best way for individuals to improve their own chances of surviving a bike crash involving head impact.)
How will blue bikes with 5 docking stations work. It seems like you would have to be pretty good at determining the 5 points since you have to start and stop your journey at a dock. I agree with Mike Striar on the helmets.
Another shuttle coming to the Highlands.
I don’t give a hoot about companies that rent bikes to adults without helmets. If someone wants to expose themselves to brain injury, well go ahead and knock yourself out. But I strenuously object to the City of Newton subsidizing a corporation that rents bikes to unhelmeted riders. The City should support public safety on its streets, not undermine it with free rent for companies like Lime and Bluebikes. No helmets, no free rent!
I agree with Mike 100% that helmets should be mandatory.
Yes, let’s not subsidize anything that is dangerous on our streets! Ban Cars! Ban SUVs! They’re the most dangerous things out there.
No cars, no pedestrian injuries. Done.
@Mike Striar: If you oppose the city subsidizing any bike share because the riders might not wear helmets, I hope you’re also in favor of the city not paying a single penny on the roads because some drivers will break the law.
Short of stationing a police officer at each docking station, you’re never going to get 100% compliance with any kind of helmet requirement. Even if BlueBikes were to *require* helmet usage, there’s really no good way to enforce it, which would make the requirement toothless.
It’s always swell when concern trolling succeeds in heading off any serious discussion of a topic.
I was a frequent user of Lime Bikes and I quite liked its flexibility for getting door-to-door, but it seemed to be a doomed experiment from the start, given that the much more lucrative market of Boston already had its own (incompatible) bike share system in place for several years.
I agree with Newton Highlands Mom that having only 5 Blue Bikes stations could be challenging. Brookline launched with only 4 stations, but they had the advantage of being on the edge of Boston’s commercial neighborhoods, as well as a significantly smaller geographic area. Such a limited rollout in Newton will prevent it from being used by high school students to get to school, for example.
But it would be very useful for Boston commuters to have a station in Newton Centre or next to BC at the corner of Hammond and Beacon (I often see Blue Bikers riding west on Beacon from Cleveland Circle, and I wonder where the heck they’re going).
A case could also be made for Newtonville-Newton Centre-Newton Highlands trips.