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Somerville Bike Safety is working with the city, members of the community and other cycling advocacy groups to help improve cycling safety in and throughout Somerville.
By Elizabeth Long
“All ages, all abilities, and all neighborhoods” is the motto of Somerville Bike Safety or SBS. With so many people active in many new ways as a result of Covid-19, being safe is the number one concern.
July 8 marked the one-year anniversary of the founding of Somerville Bike Safety. Arah Schuur and George Schneeloch hosted a Zoom call where they spoke to their community about the increasing need for bike safety, especially in Somerville since there is not yet a bike network.
This committee has a mission to advocate for a connected network of protected bike lanes.
Schuur explained that “we think it is important to ground our work in a better future,” and a safer and less polluted future with an increasing interest in biking over driving considering the growing environmental concerns.
Somerville already has the highest bike commuter mode-share of any city on the East Coast. Protected bike lanes allow people to travel at their own pace without being afraid of sharing a lane with a much more dangerous vehicle, a car. In the meeting, they discussed that the primary obstacle of adding these lanes is the limited road space due to on-street parking.
The long-term plans of Somerville in order to improve biker safety are focused around the Somerville Climate Forward Plan, Vision Zero Plan, and Somervision 2030 and 2040. Schuur said that “Achieving these requires two things: a fundamental change of thinking and reprioritizing the valuable and limited road space in Somerville.”
Although there is not yet a bike network plan as a result of budget cuts, the plan will move forward in house, which will overall increase mobility options in the city. SBS plans to convince the community that there is an urgent need for safe streets and could use the support of businesses and organizations.
SBS is one of two bike groups in Somerville and they work together with the Somerville Bicycle Advisory Committee. These groups complement one another on issues, but only SBS is able to get involved in activism so that they can change the infrastructure. Schneeloch said that “Bike infrastructure is decided by elected officials; who is in office basically determines whether all ages and abilities will feel safe biking on the streets.”
The pandemic caused a delay in preparation for the construction season, so they will be moving forward in 2021. Encouraging Somerville residents to vote is one of the top priorities of SBS. “Every vote counts, especially in a city like Somerville because a local election can be decided by less than a thousand votes,” explained Schruur.
During the meeting, SBS also provided their view on using police for traffic issues. They discussed rethinking the role of police in transportation and will focus on alternatives that will shift the structure away from the police. This intent affects their implementation of the 2020 Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic fatalities and injuries in Somerville.
In order to make these changes, public support is imperative. SBS intends to build a base of supporters that can be activated on certain issues, in addition to using the media to educate and persuade new supporters. They also want to demonstrate community support for protected bike infrastructures, so they ask their supporters to email elected officials and turnout to public meetings.
SBS hopes that within the next year they can prioritize a bike network and parking plan, elect state representatives who want to implement protected bike lanes, take the police out of Vision Zero, and coalition building. Some final words from Schuur said that “I hope that our city staff thinks about how to streamline this process and make our progress more equitable.” With injury and mortality rates increasing as a direct result of roadways that are not bike-friendly, this issue is of growing importance and needs to be addressed.
Somerville Bike Safety is always looking for new members or anyone interested in participating. If interested, contact SBS at info@somervillebikesafety.org or go to Somervillebikesafety.org for more information.
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“ ‘All ages, all abilities, and all neighborhoods’ is the motto of the Somerville Bike Safety Committee or SBS.” This is laughable. They clearly don’t care about elderly and disabled residents. Yet the city allows them a seat at the table to design infrastructure? Who occupies the seats for elderly and disabled residents?
“SBS intends to build a base of supporters that can be activated on certain issues, in addition to using the media to educate and persuade new supporters. They also want to demonstrate community support for protected bike infrastructures, so they ask their supporters to email elected officials and turnout to public meetings.” And the BOA falls for these social media campaigns and think that a group of organized people looking for some type of change is representative of the community. It is not. The BOA need to go back to the old-fashioned way of politicking, and speak with their constituents, rather than point to some twitter posts from anonymous people as ‘community support’.
Uh-huh. Well. For starters, there is no BOA. We have a city council (first clue). Next, these biking advocacy groups are well established community based organizations. Constituents, not “some twitter posts from anonymous people”. They advocate safety and improved routing for all residents, not just themselves. They also do it in a well thought out, organized and civil manner.
If you’re concerned about issues concerning elderly and disabled residents, there are already advocacy groups that have access to our city officials’ ears. If those groups aren’t doing it for you then help start another one or two. Ragging on biking groups is way off base and just makes you look kooky. And yes, you can be elderly and/or disabled and still come off as kooky. You haven’t earned a place on any pedestal.
You’re probably old enough to know that you can get farther by spreading a little honey instead of throwing all this crotchety “get off my lawn” attitude. Try it sometime.
Considering we are the most densely-populated city in New England, it’s next to impossible to be able to come up with a way to make everyone safe. The Mayor has continued to bring development here, which increased our population even more, and is probably the main reason why this pandemic has caused him to hold back on reopening for longer than other cities have. This is a clear example of why there needs to be limits on development in heavily-populated cities.
We have ancient, narrow streets, and more people, more traffic to, from and through the city. The GLX may help, but not for people who need to drive through Somerville to areas not accessible by the T. When T fares go up, there are more cars and bikes. When gas prices go down, there are more cars. It’s a juggling act.
How cyclists, pedestrians and cars are all going to be able to get through a city of people crammed in like sardines will be extremely difficult to manage. In a perfect world, we would have wider streets to accomodate both cars and bikes, but unless we dig everything up and move houses farther apart, I think we may have to live with whatever we can manage to do.
Ultimately, everyone needs to use common sense and pay attention to their environment to avoid problems, but sadly, common sense is far from common these days.
The council has already shown that the other 90% of the people do not count here. As well as the businesses they continue to work on to put them out of business. Lack of common sense trying to put things on a road that do not fit doing more harm than good. Look at Winter Hill. Unused protected bike lane screwing over businesses there. And YES, unused as so few bikers actually use this. So we continue to penalize the businesses that people with mobility problem can’t get to or in and out of their houses. And the ADA has notified to city which they totally ignore.
I simply can’t understand the mind set of a person arguing against infrastructure that protects a relatively small population of vulnerable people by claiming said infrastructure harms a relatively small population of vulnerable people.
(Looking at you Arthur)
I prefer to work towards a world where we try to support and protect *ALL* vulnerable people. Why pit one group against another when we should support both??‽???
Precisely, exactly what I was saying Cognitive. Why keep hurting seniors and people with mobility problems and small business? Speak to the small businesses being hurt by these changes. Look at the records for the calls to the ada from people with mobility problems. I talk to people and I have been out there involved. So in this matter I do know what I am talking about. Once we learned the problems of Winter Hill and the lack of compassion from the city to rectify the problem they created. Things can work if common sense is used and people work together. This means we cannot trust the powers that be to do the right thing when It goes wrong. And it has. A class action suit is on the making for the problems created against people with disabilities as we speak. The city ignores the ADA. The city has not been cooperative even with the ADA after them. The city does not work together with people. And the people running the show are part of bike groups so they have one interest and that is for them. Not for the people they have put out. They do this without all the facts and without looking to see if any problems will result from this. It is better to stop it before it ruins any more lives and businesses since the city will not work for all, just select groups of their own choosing. No one cares the elderly and small businesses. Go speak to them like i have.
I sincerely hope Arthur gets that section of bike lane removed from the front of his business establishment. I’m sure it won’t be any inconvenience for passing cyclists to stop, hoist their bikes onto their shoulders and gingerly tiptoe past his store. Maybe he’ll finally STFU then.
May all the ADA regulations be met as well.
SomerVision 2040 has NO input or involvement concerning local seniors, despite them being the city’s most vulnerable population.
So much for “a seat at the table.”
I keep trying to speak up for them somerbreeze. That’s when they go into ignore mode. We had one voice on the council, now we have none. I just find too many here really just do not care or get it. One day they will.
In no particular order:
– Better walking and biking infrastructure is better for everyone, including seniors (who do a lot of walking), It’s better for business too.
– Glad SBS is out there advocating for these issues.
– The Winter Hill bike and bus lanes are fantastic and they’re not going away. Great to see the bus (a key piece of transportation for many seniors) get some priority.
– We heard the same silly complaints back when they redid Broadway through E. Somerville (and Arthur might have been one of them), as well as when they pitched the bike lanes on Beacon St. In both cases the doomsayers were completely wrong.
Mr. Villenous this is Arthur Moore(real name). Winter Hill, bus lanes took away bus stops making it impossible for some seniors to now use the buses. You can easily check the ADA letter sent to the city about this asking them to fix this and other problems about having access to the businesses and getting in and out of their apartments to go anywhere or come home. The large rise in accidents in Winter Hill due to the bus lanes. I submitted the police reports to the city. Not a doomsayer, I use facts. Bike infrastructure can be bad for business if implemented wrong such as Winter Hill. In fact, just ask the businesses, they will freely talk to you, don’t take my word for it. If common sense and expertise was used for these changes in the street it may have helped but instead the way they did it had the opposite effect. I did not say these things just out of my opinion, but with facts that are right here in Somerville. Plus being disabled with the bus stop removed I can no longer get to one unless I drive there. And with no parking that is a waste of time. That being said I don’t oppose making things better but maybe we need someone with the expertise to do that, Which obviously we do not.