By Jill Bongiorni,
News Correspondent
Sophomore Andrew Hawthorne left Douglass Park on his bike last October expecting a quick and easy ride to Newbury Street. But before he could even cross the street his afternoon plans, and his bike, were totaled.
Hawthorne was struck by a car and thrown off his bike as he attempted to cross the corner of Columbus Avenue and Camden Street.
“Despite the fact that there was a bike lane on this particular street, it was not very well marked and I have never noticed any other bike lanes in Boston or at least in this area,” said Hawthorne, an economics major. “I flipped onto the hood of their car and my whole bike was messed up.”
Boston has been consistently dubbed the worst biker-friendly city in America by Bicycler Magazine and was awarded the first ever “Hall of Shame Award” for world’s worst city by the International Federation of Bike Messenger Associations in 1999.
A more recent survey conducted by the city in 2009 revealed that since 2005, approximately 533 cyclists had been involved in an accident with a vehicle. About 43 percent of cyclists were involved in an accident in 2009, and 10 percent of those crashes required hospital visits.
In hopes to renounce the city’s notoriety, Mayor Thomas M. Menino created a government initiative, Boston Bikes, and appointed former Olympic cyclist Nicole Freedman its director in 2007. Since then, the city has created 700 new parking spaces in bike racks and 35 miles of bike lanes on major roads like Commonwealth and Huntington Avenues.
“I think that things have definitely improved considerably and quickly,” said Cathy Buckley, bicycle/pedestrian resources project manager at Boston Regional Metropolitan Planning Organization. “It’s great to have Nicole Freedman there because up until that time, it was very hard to even find people to talk about these issues. With the support of the mayor, she has been making great progress.”
Still, like other cities, Boston is far from accident-free. Less than three weeks ago, Boston experienced its third fatal bike accident in two years.
On Jan. 24 at 8:10 a.m., a 74-year-old cyclist was struck near the corner of Tremont and Arlington Streets by a white sedan. The victim suffered from life-threatening injuries and was later pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center. The cause of the accident is still under investigation, but there are speculations that the sun glare was a contributing factor.
“You can’t eliminate crashes,” Buckley said. “No matter what, it’s going to happen, especially at times like these with the whole visibility issue so high because of all the snow piles.”
The last fatal biking accident occurred in August when a 24-year-old woman was hit and killed while biking down Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton. Before that, in April, an MBTA bus hit and killed a 22-year-old male biker on Huntington Avenue, and a day later, a 37-year-old man was struck on his bike by a car at the edge of Boston Common and suffered serious injuries.
“I think there should be a lot more bike lanes,” Hawthorne said. “There are a lot of students in Boston who ride bikes and I’m definitely not the only one who’s gotten hit. I actually saw a guy get hit by a car the other day on Huntington. It was a light hit, but it’s still a dangerous situation, especially in the middle of our campus.”
The enormous amount of snow the city has received this season – more than 70 inches so far – substantially adds to the dangers of cycling in Boston. Snow piles continue to grow taller and wider with every storm and now act as giant road blocks that take up valuable street and sidewalk space and block drivers’ and bikers’ vision.
“Even though some places do have bike lanes, because of the snow the bike lanes have been completely blocked in,” said senior Christina Gatej, a criminal justice major who has been driving in Boston for seven years.
“There’s no room to drive on the street as it is and then with a biker in the middle, it’s impossible. The current situation is dangerous to both drivers and bikers, especially since we live in a city where there’s snow half of the year.”
Because of this and the general tightness of streets, some bikers said they prefer to ride on the sidewalk, which throws pedestrians into the mix of those at risk of injury, especially on the crowded sidewalks near college campuses.
“I felt like I was forced off the road with my bike onto the sidewalk,” sophomore engineering major Joe Saliba said. “[The sidewalks] are pretty big, so I had much more room than on the road, but people would walk in front of me while I was speeding and I would have to swerve out of the way to avoid them. I’ve almost hit people at least three times.”
To prevent any type of collision, Buckley urges bikers and pedestrians to always be on the defensive.
“Good bicyclists and pedestrians should think of themselves as invisible, because if you go around with that idea and don’t assume people can see you, a lot can be prevented,” Buckley said.
