POLL: Are You in Favor of the Proposed Beacon Street Cycle Track?
After several community meetings, Somerville residents remain at odds over the proposed Beacon Street Reconstruction Project, a $4.5 million dollar plan to reconstruct Beacon Street between the Oxford and Washington Street intersections. Along with new traffic lights, road resurfacing and other proposed improvements, a permanently-divided 7-ft cycle track lane would be placed on both sides of the street and would call for the removal of at least 100 parking spaces. More than 700 individuals have signed a petition opposing the plan due to the potential impact it will have on parking at their residences and businesses, as well as concerns over the legitimacy of the Somerville parking study that supports building the track.
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I’m a Somerville resident and (Spring Hill) property owner that is really disappointed with the resistance to the cycle track. Business owners in the Beacon St. corridor opposed to it are extremely misguided in believing this change will be harmful. Heaven forbid this blighted stretch actually look nice and attract people on foot and bicycle that will spend money in their restaurants and shops!
“blighted stretch actually look nice and attract people on foot and bicycle that will spend money in their restaurants and shops!”
The cycletrack has nothing to do with making the street prettier or actually making biking safer on Beacon Street. Beacon is already popular with cyclists despite the absence of a cycletrack and given the actual volume of cyclists, the accident volume is relatively low. A lot of cyclists (myself included) aren’t in favor of the track because of several design flaws (Beacon has tons of driveways and intersections) and issues with the parking study – this is going to affect a lot of residents and business owners. Finding alternative parking near Beacon isn’t easy because of the Cambridge border and the rail road track cutting much of it off from the rest of Somerville. The track can’t be continuous either, it will be very disjointed. The current prosal has tracks going from Oxford to Musuem, then regular bike lanes Museum to Park, the a little bit of cycle track from Park to Washington, then regular bike lanes from Washington to City Line. That Beacon/Washington Intersection is INCREDIBLY dangerous for both cyclists and motorists and the city refuses to put in a turning lane and left turn signal there.
Sam makes an excellent point about the cycle track being disjointed. Which is why the City really should make it continuous from Oxford St all the way to Inman Square!
One recent study shows that adding cycle tracks to a street is great for business! It finds that bicyclists (and pedestrians) spend more money overall and make more trips per month than car customers.
http://www.americabikes.org/nyc_study_finds_protected_bicycle_lanes_boost_local_business
In addition, another study shows that removing parking to make room for bicycle facilities is often worth the trade-offs because of the increased business that is created.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/bike-lanes-may-benefit-small-businesses-1C7488581
The other good news is that there is unused parking capacity along Beacon St, so even with a reduced number of spaces (along with more sensible regulations and perhaps supplementing it with underused off street parking as well) all the of the people who need to park on Beacon St will still be able to.
Oh Charlie, there you go spewing woefully misleading information again all over the internet. Because Beacon St. in Somerville is the spitting image of Manhattan! And oddly enough your NBC news study was on bike lines, which already exist on a good portion of Beacon St., not cycle tracks….
Is there data regarding which mode spends the most in this area: bicyclye, car or pedestrian?