Allston-Brighton bikes

Zach’s RAX survey:

I covered most of A-B (as the map will show you) but not Allston north of the pike. Some observations:

1. More bike racks would be great in Allston Village (Harvard and Brighton). There are lots of people who ride there, and currently there are bikes attached to meters, trash cans, signs, etc for lack of racks.

2. More bike racks would be great in Union Square (Brighton and Cambridge). There’s a bunch of vegan/cycling friendly places there and my friends and I are there always with no where to park. TJ’s Pizza are big cycling promoters and they deserve a big rack outside!

3. Brighton Center could use more racks, especially on the south side of Washington.

4. Shaws on Comm Ave could always use another rack. It’s always full at rush hour and on weekdays

5. The absolute best kind of multiple bike racks (in terms of # of bikes and sheer good lockability) are the ones they have all over the MIT campus: the long big bar across the top with many little triangle hanging vertically from the big bar. That way any type of lock can fit the wheel AND frame. The best kind of single bike racks that I have found are the ones they have in Cambridge: poles with a vertical circle made of solid steel. They can even be combined with parking meters. The reason these racks are good is because the racks are skinny but very strong. That way any type of u-lock can fit around as many things on the bicycle as possible. The wide diameter racks are kind of pain to tell you the truth, and pretty inefficient. For whatever reason, these are all over Boston and they just don’t make sense in my opinion. Also, I have often seen racks installed by simple bolts without any sort of cement to “permanently” secure the rack to the ground. That doesn’t help much. We need racks that encourage people to lock their bikes appropriately. Ie, with as small a u-lock as possible that fits around wheels AND frame. Without the racks to encourage it, people are going to continue to use crappy cable locks or just put the u-lock around a wheel or a frame. Bike theft will continue to be a problem.

6. For kicks, I’ve often thought it would be really neat to get local artists and cyclists to collaborate on making beautiful sculptures that are nice public art AND extremely functional for bikes racks. Multiple use for public spaces! Just putting that out there.

Hope this helps. Thanks.

~ZSH

See Zach’s RAX map here.

View Larger Map

See…
http://www.cityofboston.gov/TridionImages/9May08_BostonImproves_Globe_tcm1-1213.pdf

so… I thought rather than business cards or flyers, a better way to spread the word about us is to get some promotional mini-carabiner keychains with our url to hand out… what do folks think of the idea?

at least 2 of us plan 2 do some mellow off-road bikin this Sunday @ the Fells, weather permitting… post a comment if you’d like to join us!

Rosie of Brighton Main Streets has asked for our help mapping out existing bike parking/racks in Brighton so we can get a better sense of needs for additional bike parking… any volunteers?

See the link on the right sidebar to A-Bbikes’ Google Group. Ask to become a member, post about the stuff we care about, coordinate ridin togetha, etc. Be sure to set your membership to receive emails at the frequency/in the form you desire!

Smoken’ Joe’s BarbBQ was the happy host of the first meeting of A-Bbikes. Here’s what the Allston Brighton Community Blog had to say:

The meeting on Tuesday of Allston/Brighton bicyclists was a great success. Arriving a few minutes late, I could tell it would be a good meeting because of the many bikes on the sidewalk in front of Smoken Joe’s on Washington St. Inside I found 40 people filling the restaurant enthusiastic about making Allston and Brighton a better place for bicycling. There were some familiar faces like Alex Selvig and John Quatrale but many more people who I had never met or seen at a community meeting. City Hall was represented by Boston’s “bike czar” Nicole Freedman and Aldo Ghirin from the Parks Department and there were people there from MassBike, the Allston/Brighton CDC, and other groups interested in improving our city and transportation in it.

This was the group’s first meeting so mostly it was a time to meet each other and volunteer to help the group in different ways. Thanks to Chris Ditunno for organizing the group. It will be great to have a group organized to support and encourage more bicycling here.

THANKS to all who attended our first meeting last week at Smoken Joe’s! The general consensus is that it was a strong turnout at our first meeting and there’s lots of energy, enthusiasm and interest in our new Allston-Brighton Bikes community collaborative. Since the first meeting, many others in our community have expressed interest as well.

At our first meeting we:
- introduced ourselves
- collected e-mail addresses for our Google group and future distribution list(s)
- collected names (and some “write-in” suggestions) of those interested in working on various bike-related issues in our community
- reached consensus that we’re all interested in our mission: improving our Allston-Brighton community to be more safe, supportive and welcoming for cyclists
- ate a fairly respectable amount of carrots and hummus, chicken wings and cornbread

All in all, I think we got a lot of really good stuff accomplished without getting too overwhelmed with all the great stuff we can do (with enough energy, enthusiasm and elbow grease) in the future!

Stay tuned on this site for more info… A-BBikes is off to a great start!