Pretty sure Hair by Christine is still doing masks if you request them to. Not sure what your gender is but they do everybody.

What's the climate impact of Cambridge's recent bike projects?

It would be an oversimplification to declare without evidence that these projects reduced carbon emissions because they intended to help cyclists. Maybe it's true, but maybe it's not.

Also, the Dunkin at 1007 Mass Ave has no parking lot, and all street parking on both sides of Mass Ave was removed for several blocks.

Wow, surprising that they would let cars park in the lobby!

Adding a new bike lane trough the lobby, probably.

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>The photo is a bit exaggerated, but to be fair most drivers go out of their way not to see any cyclists queued up when they want to make a turn through the bike lane.

Which suggests that having a queue there is probably not a good idea to begin with.

It would make more sense to have the cyclists in a bunch that can clear out quickly and then make vehicular turns possible.

The objection to having bikes in a bunch would be that cars can't pass them, but at busy hours passing cars only get momentarily ahead anyway - even with care to keep filtering past stopped traffic appropriately slow and careful, net progress on a bike can approach twice that of a car, so the few rounds of leapfrogging before the car is left permanently behind is only needless churn and repetition of a slight, but non-zero risk that can eventually add up to an incident.

Probably it would all be smoother if everything just moved at bike speed during busy hours, and passing bikes was something that drivers only tried to do at hours when the lights weren't causing car backups.

>This means that passing is common. Passing today requires entering the vehicle lane
>
>Passing on a divided bike lane can be pretty inconvenient. For anyone that goes, try to scrutinize this part of the design.

Exactly. Physically confining cyclists is a win for drivers, but bad for cyclists.

Build this, and you'll probably see lots of folks opting for the car lane instead - which is fully legal in Massachusetts, and quite appropriate at the volume of usage depicted in that picture.

An actually useful bike lane is space that we can use when being passed by cars at the hours where that's actually possible, and space that we can leave when that's what is required.

Plus confining cyclists to a fixed, second class space fails to match the desire to use subsidies to get people who would not currently bike onto an e-bike - e-bikes break the idea that bikes have different needs from cars, as they put even less-athletic folks in that uncanny valley between cherished beliefs of distinction that were never true to begin with.

And that's even before getting into the intersection conflicts...

Maybe recladding?

Young athletic dudes like myself alone don't get better infrastructure. The more kids and parents and older people and etc. riding, the more biking just becomes the best way to get around. So yeah, it's great to see everyone out riding, especially in the winter. And I commute on a bluebike, so even though I go relatively fast with them, it's not like I'm racing for my commute.

Yeah I've seen the cars on Brattle as well. Certainly a design issue; during the rest of the year there needs to be a bollard there to keep cars out, but they also could have done some curb work to make it too small for a car to enter.

I'm surprised the bidirectional was considered bad at Huron but acceptable at Concord. I haven't really figured out the right way to head into the square yet

I know at the first snow I saw the garden lanes got blocked by the plow, but I'm sure it was fixed later. It's more just about needing to clear twice as many lanes. i am always surprised to hear the mix of "I commute" and "it's great to see kids on this". But maybe I'm a grouchy old man who doesnt like ducking wrong way bikers or tots heh

iirc the design that had garnered the most public support wasnt the one the was deployed, so I'm not going to hold my breath reaching out to the city. Nor should I need to for the items I mentioned. Like I said, it feels half assed. I didn't realize they were constrained from making physical changes with the project however, so that certainly explains it

The city is not doing construction: no curb changes, no pouring concrete. Only paint or flexposts. If moving a sidewalk requires construction they won't do it as part of the project.

Within those constraints, they are trying to make the street safer for cyclists and pedestrians. I think the project is very nice. Many others do. You may disagree, or think there are ways to improve; if so the solution is to share suggestions with the city, not complain on reddit.

That’s also Fenway Park, I’m glad they haven’t taken that down yet

This project being a quick-build, the city didn't do any curb modifications. The curb-cuts are where the crosswalk markings are and not on the other side, so they can't just change the markings. But I'd still recommend emailing the city/Stephen Meuse/DPW about that so that they could try to do that small construction project separately.

As someone that commutes daily on Garden and the little bit of Brattle into Harvard Sq., but only rarely goes down the rest of Brattle (the newly done stuff, etc.)...

If there is missing signage, contact Stephen Meuse at the city, he/they are super receptive to small changes like that.

However, I've never had an issue with people on Garden. On the contrary, I regularly have issues of people not looking both ways entering Brattle in dangerous ways. And the bo-directional lanes lead to drivers not understanding and driving and parking in the bike lanes. Just this weekend (rare case for me in this section) saw someone driving down the new section of Brattle bi-directional lane. So from what I have seen, the Brattle style is way more confusing to drivers.

During the public meetings, someone (I think a student) brought up the desire of students from the Radcliff quad to not cross the road to use the inbound lanes. I thought that was a really interesting point and the city looked at it. But bi-direction at Huron would have created chaos and change between 2 lanes and bi-directional is a terrible experience. So I support what they settled on with split lanes the whole way. I do see students going the wrong way frequently enough, but they have always yielded to me, so I don't think it is that bad of a problem.

I think snow clearance of separated bike lanes vs. bi-directional might be a big issue for some cities, but I found Garden to be perfectly fine so far (with the limited winter that it has been). Cambridge does have the right tools and a real plan for separated bike lane plowing, so for us I don't think there's a real difference between the two options.

FWIW, I love the Brattle lanes too, but Garden used to be terrible and I avoided it unless it was late at night and there would be no traffic. Now I use it daily because it is the most direct route for me. I see parents with kids all the time on it. I think that's pretty great and transformative for a quick-build project. And, as mentioned above, I have more problems on the short stretch of Brattle I do regularly than the much longer Garden.

Between Harvard and porter

Dude where on Mass Ave?

wish i knew! worked there very briefly before covid hit. it's a great location and nice space, hope they do something good with it!

So removing all the parking, changing a street from 2 way to 1 way, and installing bollards is considered in scope, but not killing cyclists from cross traffic or looking at cyclist/pedestrian impact isn't in scope? You know that sounds weird right?

If moving the crosswalk would involve additional construction (e.g. for ramps for people with disabilities) that's out of scope for these projects, since they typically aren't doing construction.

There is one of those streets that will be reconstructed soon, I forget which, though.

In general, if it doesn't involve construction the city will adjust things even after project installation if people make a good enough argument, so email tpt@cambridgema.gov with any suggestions (that's the Traffic, Parking, & Transportation department email). They do read all their email.

That’s unbelievable. You should buy lottery tickets lol. Very cool that sometimes the universe just works out like that, glad you got your stuff back.

Finally got my MacBook Pro already. Disregard the post

The place where crashed into the Pole (between Mass and Hancock), there is a beige abandoned building. Somebody at the building saw the bag and put it in the building to safeguard it from thieves, hoping that I get it. Thankfully, I met one of the people in the building at 922 Mass Ave and they gave me the backpack which includes the MacBook pro which is still in impeccable shape and without anybody resetting the software. It still has all my data in it

awesome! what happened?

I finally found my macbook.