Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#2I live in Boston, and have lived in Silicon Valley. Biking in Boston is downright scary.
Having a bike sharing program is great, but Boston needs to invest in more dedicated bike lanes, and bike paths before it can get anywhere near SF in bikability.
Plus you are visiting when its 40ish degress out, not 20 and the Hub system isn't available in the winter.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#3I've used this system in Minneapolis, which is almost identical to the costs and station density here. It's OK for certain people I suppose. If you are a local, it's better to bring your own bike. If you are visiting, the fees are very high since you have to start paying extras for a few minutes overage. Overages are easy to get because the stations are usually no where near where you are going unless you are doing short tourist jaunts. So you end up walking for 30 minutes to a bike, riding the bike for 15 minutes to a station roughly in the direction you are going, parking to avoid the fee, transferring to a new bike to continue, now you have to go further, then you get to closest destination station, park, walk 30 minutes to actual destination, and reverse to go home. Spend too long stuck at a red light and now you pay a fee for late. Want to ride somewhere, drop something off, then come back? To save on fees you have to factor in a bunch of stations and swaps, so a 40 minutes bike ride round trip if you had your OWN bike is now 90 minutes including all the walking to stations and swapping.
So just pay the fees. Or take the bus, which is cheaper and faster. Or rent a car and be done with all this.
The idea such inefficient systems are being taxpayer funded in some cities is offensive.
I agree with the other comment that it is quite difficult to navigate Boston traffic with a bike since the city is not built to accomodate it for the most part. Police are also highly aggressive, belligerant, uneducated, ignorant and thuggish and risk of being arrested and harassed for not being in the correct lane or whatever are significant.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#4As someone who spent a long time biking, driving, and taking public transit in Boston this is sort of laughable.
A bike sharing program is a neat idea, but actually riding bikes in Boston is a terrible experience. The roads are in bad shape, there are no bike lanes, and the drivers are homicidal.
Public transit in Boston certainly isn't bad, it's better than most cities I've lived in and it may very well be better than the valley. But the subway is generally only helpful if you're going to and from downtown. If you say live in Somerville and work in Allston, you're pretty much out of luck, unless you're willing to transfer between the bus and the subway a few times.
In general I found having a car was a pretty key part of living in Boston.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#5I live in Boston, and have lived in Silicon Valley. Biking in Boston is downright scary. Having a bike sharing program is great, but Boston needs to invest in more dedicated bike lanes, and bike paths before it can get anywhere near SF in bikability. Plus you are visiting when its 40ish degress out, not 20 and the Hub system isn't available in the winter.
SF != Silicon Valley
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#6I live in Boston, and have lived in Silicon Valley. Biking in Boston is downright scary. Having a bike sharing program is great, but Boston needs to invest in more dedicated bike lanes, and bike paths before it can get anywhere near SF in bikability. Plus you are visiting when its 40ish degress out, not 20 and the Hub system isn't available in the winter.
SF != Silicon Valley
That being said, Silicon Valley is very bike friendly.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#7As someone who spent a long time biking, driving, and taking public transit in Boston this is sort of laughable. A bike sharing program is a neat idea, but actually riding bikes in Boston is a terrible experience. The roads are in bad shape, there are no bike lanes, and the drivers are homicidal. Public transit in Boston certainly isn't bad, it's better than most cities I've lived in and it may very well be better th…
Yes, the idea of biking in Boston scares me. About 90% of the people I know who ride bikes in Boston have gotten in at least one accident. The streets are very crowded.
"In general I found having a car was a pretty key part of living in Boston."
This is true for you, but not my experience. I moved to Boston in 2008 and got rid of my car. I've been living car-free for four years now. I thought I'd need zip cars or cabs every once in a while but I don't use either. I mostly walk everywhere (I live in Cambridge) and occasionally take the T.
The real story is not how bikable Boston is, but how walkable it is.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#8As someone who spent a long time biking, driving, and taking public transit in Boston this is sort of laughable. A bike sharing program is a neat idea, but actually riding bikes in Boston is a terrible experience. The roads are in bad shape, there are no bike lanes, and the drivers are homicidal. Public transit in Boston certainly isn't bad, it's better than most cities I've lived in and it may very well be better th…
The rail lines (red and green respectively) go straight through Somerville and Allston. Obviously there are some places in both towns without nearby rail access, but it's sort of a stretch to claim "multiple transfers" for that ride.
The roads are in no worse shape than any other northeast city (potholes are a fact of life in that climate). The drivers are agressive but broadly competant. Maybe a better complaint would be lack of bike lanes, which is true: old streets don't always fit them.
I grew up in Boston; lived, studied and worked there until I was 27; and never once felt the need to own a car.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#9As someone who spent a long time biking, driving, and taking public transit in Boston this is sort of laughable. A bike sharing program is a neat idea, but actually riding bikes in Boston is a terrible experience. The roads are in bad shape, there are no bike lanes, and the drivers are homicidal. Public transit in Boston certainly isn't bad, it's better than most cities I've lived in and it may very well be better th…
A few weeks ago I went to a talk by Nicole Freedman, the head of the Boston Bikes program, on the state of biking in Boston as of the end of 2011. She talked about the enormous changes Boston has been making, like going from 180 feet (!) of total bike lanes a few years ago to over 50 miles now [1]. For instance, they removed 70 parking spaces from Mass Ave to make a bike lane there.
Most of the people at the talk seemed to be hard-core cyclists, who tend to be a pretty tough crowd to please, but there were so many standing ovations that it could've been the State of the Union address. Have you ridden in Boston lately? I'm curious to see if the changes are as big as most of those people seemed to think.
As to getting around, there are certainly trips in the Boston area that are easy by public transit and others that aren't. I live in Somerville and getting to Allston is a pain (I'd probably use the 66 bus [2]). I generally only drive outbound from Somerville, since I find driving in Boston stressful and of course the parking is expensive.
[1] http://www.cityofboston.gov/Images_Documents/Annual%20Report... [2] http://www.mbta.com/schedules_and_maps/bus/routes/?route=66
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#10Hubway has a real-time feed of bike availability [1]. I built a little web site that shows the bike stations and T stations on a map [2], along with real-time data for both bike and T stations. Bike stations with available bikes are shown in green and ones without are red. Also, it's open source [3].
[1] http://www.thehubway.com/data/stations/bikeStations.xml [2] http://bikeboston.herokuapp.com/ [3] https://github.com/amonat/bikeboston