So we are pleased that, effective May 1, 2013, bicyclists must register either a Charliecard OR their Bike CharlieCard online to access these bike parking facilities. There will be no charge for this and it will further enhance the MBTA′s efforts to provide safe and secure areas for bike parking.

You can register your card anytime, but starting May 1st, unregistered cards will no longer open the Pedal & Parks. You can use any CharlieCard; the T is no longer issuing special Bike CharlieCards – these are now collector’s items!

Pedal & Park facilities are now open at Alewife, Forest Hills, South Station, Braintree, Oak Grove and Wonderland.  In 2013, 8 more Pedal & Parks will open at Ashmont, Davis, Malden, Back Bay, Dudley, Wollaston, Alewife and Beverly.

Click here to register your Bike CharlieCard or regular CharlieCard now for uninterrupted access to Pedal & Parks.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood

Due to a snow storm, most of the congressional meetings were canceled, including all Massachusetts delegation meetings. Nonetheless, we were still able to discuss important bicycling issues, share stories, and network with other advocates from across the country. Because we were not able to meet with our delegation on Capitol Hill, we are working on scheduling meetings with them locally to continue our ongoing relationship, and as well as build new ones with Senators Warren and Cowan and Representative Kennedy.

To watch videos of the keynote and plenary talks, visit the League’s YouTube Channel. If you were not available to attend the Summit, the League has made the presentations from break-out sessions public; click here to view.

The National Women’s Bicycling Forum

Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth

Congresswoman Duckworth said, “As you promote cycling as a way to be fit and as a way to become part of your community, think of the disabled. Three steps can permit me from getting into a bike shop. Simple things that cost little prevent many disabled people from participating. Continue to help promote this lifestyle, you are making a difference in this avenue.” Along with her inspiring words, many other speakers at the Women’s Forum had words of wisdom.

MA Attendees & MassBike Staff

The plan focuses on what MassDOT can do to reduce greenhouse gases from its own operations and to make itself more sustainable. The plan also includes more general goals around improving conditions for and creating opportunities for bicycling, walking, and public transportation. MassBike is very pleased that MassDOT is moving forward with GreenDOT, and we offered comments to Secretary of Transportation Richard Davey to make the plan even better (click here for a full copy of our comment letter).

The over-arching theme of MassBike’s comments was “change can happen faster”. We recommended accelerating the proposed update to the MassDOT road design guidelines to reflect current standards, so that better projects for biking and walking would start happening sooner. We pushed for actually reducing vehicle speeds on busy roads, rather than merely studying how to do it. We asked for additional measures of dedicated bicycling facilities, bike parking, access to transit, and the number of school children who actually receive biking and walking safety training and then ride or walk to school.

We await MassDOT’s response to our comments and those of other advocates and members of the public. And we will continue working with MassDOT to ensure that bicycling conditions in Massachusetts keep improving (and improve even more rapidly).

National Park Service and Local and State Officials Announce the New Service

Riders can now ride to Wellfleet and board the shuttle to Provincetown to avoid riding on Route 6, or could park in Wellfleet, ride to Provincetown and take the shuttle back. The Cape is a veritable cornucopia of transportation options! Tell your bicycling friends on Cape Cod and bicyclists who plan on visiting the Cape on weekends this summer!

For a schedule and more info, go to http://www.capecodrta.org/bike shuttle.htm.

We are pleased to announce Massachusetts’ first ever Bike/Walk Summit on Thursday, May 17th from 10am -1pm in Nurses Hall at the State House. This event will be the central MassBike event for Bay State Bike Week and is co-sponsored by the two statewide biking and walking organizations, MassBike and WalkBoston (respectively). It will give local advocates from all corners of the state a chance to tell their legislators how important bike/pedestrian issues and legislation are for Massachusetts.

We’re looking forward to a great event that will provide a unique opportunity for citizens to come together and let their voices be heard (the specific legislative agenda is still being worked on). You can find some more tentative details here. This event is free and open to the public, and we highly recommend anyone interested in bicycling here in Massachusetts to participate. If you have any questions, please email events@massbike.org. More details to come soon!

This year MassBike celebrates thirty-five years of promoting better biking. With its humble beginnings as the “Boston Area Bicycle Coalition” back in 1977, MassBike has had a history of growth and success. Since that time over three decades ago, we have expanded into a statewide organization with three local chapters, developed strong partnerships with other advocacy groups and government organizations, and hired an efficient staff of three full-time employees. MassBike has worked continuously to foster a safer, more accessible biking environment through education, legislation, and infrastructure design.

Here are just a few of the major successes we have had over the years:

• 1970s – Launched our education program, which has since educated thousands of adults and schoolchildren on safe riding
• 1985 – Successfully lobbied the MBTA to lift their ban on bikes
• 1992 – Helped lobby for the creation the Minuteman Bikeway, now one of the most popular rail trails in the U.S.
• 1996 – Secured passage of the Bike-Pedestrian Access Law, making Massachusetts one of only three states to guarantee equal access for cyclists on the road
• 2000-2011 – Lobbied the MBTA to: allow bikes on the T without a special pass (2000), dramatically expand the hours during which bikes are allowed on the subway (2004), purchase bike racks for 250 buses (2005), revamp bus driver training to ensure that drivers are aware of bicyclists (2010), and Helped to win reduced peak hour restrictions on the T’s Blue Line (2011).
• 2004 – Passed legislation requiring the Registry of Motor Vehicles to update the Driver’s Manual to include more information about bikes and bike safety
• 2005 – Persuaded the state to create the first Bicycle Advisory Board in more than a decade
• 2006 – Worked with the federal congressional delegation to win more than $5 million over five years to help make it safer for kids to bike and walk to school.
• 2009 – Helped work with legislators to create the Bicycle Safety Act which supplies significant legal protection to bicyclist throughout the state.
• 2010 – Partnered with MassDOT and MassRIDES to expand Bay State Bike Week into a truly statewide event
• 2011 – Launched our Same Road, Same Rules safety campaign, aimed at educating both bicyclists and motorists about their rights to road.

Over the years and with each new success, MassBike has evolved to meet the needs of bicyclist in Massachusetts. Currently supported by a membership base of roughly 3,000 members, we hope you join us in supporting all of the great work we have done and continue to do to advocate for the rights of bicyclist throughout the Bay State. If you haven’t already, please follow the link to become a member and support better bicycling for Massachusetts today!

With the current threats to federal bike funding it is more important than ever to show your support for bicycling. On March 20 – 22, the 12th annual National Bike Summit will take place in Washington D.C. and bring together advocates and government official from across the country to talk about biking in America. This is a critical year for the National Bike Summit as it comes in the midst of a major vote regarding federal bike funding.

We’ve coordinated the Massachusetts delegation to the Summit for many years, and we’re looking forward to doing so again in this critical year. We typically have good representation from the Boston Metro area, but need widespread support from around the state. We hope local advocates, particularly from outside the Metro Boston area, will join us in DC to meet with their Representatives. Be sure to register before the early bird discount ends on February 3! Please follow the link to sign up for this important event.

The first major challenge faced by T4MA is the recently announced MBTA proposal to both increase fares and cut service. The MBTA projects that its revenues this year cannot support service at its current levels. T4MA opposes the proposal, and MassBike agrees that the MBTA’s proposal would not be good for bicyclists. In our view, the T’s proposal would significantly reduce existing opportunities for bicyclists to use bicycles in combination with public transportation, creating a barrier to biking.

You only need to look at the hundreds of bicycles parked at MBTA stations, even on frigid days like today, to see that many bicyclists are transit users and many people use bicycles to access the T. Some bicyclists, like other transit users, may simply be unable to afford a fare increase. Others will be affected if the trains, buses, or boats they rely on are eliminated. For example, we have analyzed the two bus service cut scenarios put forth by the T, the second of which would impact over 70% of bus routes that are currently equipped with bicycle racks. The MBTA has been a strong partner in improving bike access on its system, and MassBike has been working with them for many years to fully equip the bus fleet with bike racks. This project was expected to be completed this year, and the elimination of so many routes that are already accessible to bicyclists is an unacceptable leap backward.

Public meetings on the proposed fare increases and service cuts begin tonight in Newton and Worcester, tomorrow in Chelsea, and Thursday in Roxbury. More meetings continue in the following weeks all over the MBTA service region – see the calendar on our homepage for details. If you are a bicyclist whose mobility would be affected by MBTA fare increases or service cuts, please attend a public meeting or send your written comments to fareproposal@mbta.com. Make your voice heard! MassBike will continue to work with T4MA and the MBTA to find an acceptable way forward.

Casey Overpass Public Meeting

Monday, November 21
5:30-6:00pm Open House
6:00-8:30pm Public Information Meeting
William Hinton Laboratory- Auditorium (also known as the State Lab)
305 South Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

While either option will improve overall traffic flow through the area, there are compelling reasons to favor the at-grade option. You can find a lot of information about the project and the proposed alternatives here, but briefly some of the benefits of the at-grade option would be:

• Bike lanes through the entire corridor
• Safer and more convenient connections to transit
• Supports street-front economic and neighborhood development
• Better connections between abutting green space and the parks of the Emerald Necklace
• Separate paths for walkers and cyclists (in addition to on-street bike lanes)
• No dark or hidden spaces in the corridor
• Includes Washington Street improvements making it safer for walkers, cyclists, and motorists
• Saves taxpayer dollars

If you don’t have time to attend the meeting this Monday, please email your support to John Romano at MassDOT (john.romano@state.ma.us) and copy Jullieanne.Doherty@cityofboston.gov and your local elected officials. Be sure to reference Project File No. 605511.

To maximize the number of bikes that can fit in each Pedal & Park, the T plans to use bi-level racks. The existing racks at Alewife, Forest Hills, and South Station are OK, but those racks are either unavailable now, or have not worked that well in actual use. So the T asked for feedback from actual bicyclists on bike rack prototypes from two vendors. We reported back that all the designs had significant drawbacks.

A few weeks later, when the T asked us to try out another design, we were pleased to see that most of our concerns had been addressed.

Executive Director David Watson tries out new bike rack

The T took our feedback seriously, asking the manufacturers to address the problems we identified. The new design works much better, and needs just a few more modifications before going into production for the new Pedal & Parks.

We really appreciate the T asking for our input and taking the time to get this right!