Francine looks at rising gas prices and wonders what it will take to get people to commute by bicycle. She suggests better facilities for cycling commuters and improvements to the bicycles themselves. To which I’d add that there really needs to be some bike routes into major office areas. Downtown’s the trickiest, but until you can connect the Southwest Corridor and the Muddy River paths to the financial district, you’re not going to have a practical cycling commute for most people. A path across the Longfellow’s probably a pipe dream, but there’s no reason uberliberal Cambridge can’t design a couple of routes toward Kendall - ones that are more than a death-trap white line down a major road, like the Mass Ave. "bike lane."
I’m not saying any of this civil engineering will be easy, but if you’re going to encourage one kind of commuting over another, trade offs have to happen, money spent.
She also makes the point that this issue is beyond the purview of bicycling advocacy groups. But if it’s not to fall to them, whom?
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