GreenDorchester (Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition)

FREE – Teen Environmental Job Fair features employers seeking young people who are interested in the environmental field.
Jobs for ages 16-22, noon to 4 PM, Maverick Landing Meeting Room, 31 Liverpool Street, East Boston
Food~Prizes~Workshops

In 2009, advocates in the neighborhood were able to enjoy some hard-earned new and improved open spaces in the neighborhood, like the new Elmhurst Playground in the Talbot Norfolk Triangle neighborhood, the new “Paul’s Park” at Washburn and Howell Streets in the Polish Triangle, and the improvements to the Geneva Cliffs Urban Wild in Bowdoin-Geneva.

DEHC was involved in a number of these efforts as an integral part of the larger community, and we look forward collaborating for a strong 2010 Continue Reading »

The Mass Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) has received $4.8 million in ARRA federal stimulus funding to improve bike parking facilities system wide. This money is for bike parking only, and is intended to boost ridership and give people more transportation options.

With this money, the MBTA plans to build
· 6 to 10 bike cages (accessed using a special Bicycle Charlie Card, issued by the MBTA)
· 50 bike parking shelters (helps prevent rust for the bikes)
· An unspecified number of bike racks

DotBike and the Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition are recommending that at least one bike cage be installed in Dorchester.

Ashmont Station is a priority location because it is a terminus station that also serves as a hub with connections to the Mattapan trolley and many bus routes serving locations in and outside of the city.

PROPOSAL
We have identified what we believe is a highly suitable location for a bike cage at Ashmont station – just south of the busway at the south end of the station between the existing entrance and the transformer housing.

OUR OBSTACLE
The main access to the bike cage would be via the existing bus way and the T’s safety department claims that allowing bikes on the bus way would be too dangerous. However, there is little evidence to support that bikes sharing a bus way would be more dangerous than a bus encountering a bike on a roadway during its normal route particularly if MBTA drivers are trained to expect cyclists is this specific location.

A POSSIBLE SOLUTION
Add a short bike lane along the bus way leading directly to the cage, and add appropriate signage to direct all bike traffic directly back to Dorchester Ave. The bus way is unusually wide even at its narrowest point of 21 feet, so there’s ample room for a 4 or 5 foot wide bike lane.

The MBTA is pushing a bike cage on the new plaza, which we feel is a bad idea that would put cyclists in potential conflict with other neighborhood needs.

We ask you to: Please let the MBTA know that this bike cage at this location is a priority for the Dorchester cycling community and would allow more people to ride to the station without fear of bike theft (which is the number one reason people don’t cycle in Dorchester!). The city is building a bike lane on Talbot from Ashmont to Blue Hill, so this will be part of a new network of facilities that will promote cycling. Cycling in turn promotes health, fights obesity and cardiovascular disease.

How to support:
· Call or write the MBTA, 617-222-3214, EScheier@mbta.com (please cc us at Stidman@gmail.com as well)
· Ask your organization to write a formal bike cage request letter to the MBTA:
Eric Scheier, MBTA, 10 Park Plaza, Suite 3910, Boston, MA 02116, EScheier@mbta.com, and
John Hynes, MBTA Red Line Chief, 45 High Street, 10th floor, Boston, MA 02110.

This letter supports a DotBike and Franklin Park Coalition campaign to erase an outdated parks regulation that prohibits cycling on the many paths and walkways of Franklin Park.

Dear Boston Park Commissioners:

Franklin Park has incredible potential as a recreation resource for people from all walks of life and all parts of Boston. But as it is currently configured, it has not yet fully become the magnet for fitness activities that it can be, and this is of particular concern as we face a global obesity crisis. Golfers, university and high school track teams and other sports teams use the park, but we at the Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition are concerned about the average Bostonian, and how they use the park.

Getting rid of an outdated law against cycling on Franklin Park’s paths is, we believe, a promising step toward a park that can welcome fitness seekers of all kinds. Cycling is a low-impact but high-intensity exercise that has been proven to aid weight loss and improve cardiovascular health. Many of the park’s paths are wide enough to accommodate both walkers and cyclists, and the more people that are welcomed into the park, the better park security becomes.

Franklin Park is also a safe place where parents can take their children to first learn to ride a bike, and where people of all ages who wish to improve their cycling skills can come with peace of mind for their safety.

In the future, when more funding is available, we hope the commissioners will consider improvements to paths and roadways that would more effectively welcome cyclists to the park. Conflicts between users, when and if cyclists arrive in greater numbers, can then be mitigated with simple signage and road striping that designates separate space for walkers and wheeled traffic such as bikes, rollerblades and other sporting goods.

If our parks and open spaces are not places where all reasonable forms of fitness are possible, to where do we turn?

Sincerely,
Rosanne Foley,
Director
Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition

BOSTON PARK ADVOCATES: PARK MAINTENANCE MEETING
~January 19, 2009, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. ~
(refreshments at 6 pm)
Boston Public Library, Orientation Room in the McKim Building

If you are concerned about a park in your neighborhood that is not as well-kept as it should be, please attend this Boston Park Advocates (BPA) meeting to discuss maintenance of Boston’s parklands, with Antonia Pollak, Commissioner of the City of Boston Parks and Recreation Department, and Samantha Overton Bussell, Deputy Director, Urban Parks at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).

Please visit the new BPA website at bostonparks.org and click the event to RSVP.

A few months back we asked 362 people in the neighborhood why they didn’t cycle or cycle more often.

Some might expect safety in traffic would be the most common reply, but the survey tells the true story. Bicycle theft is by far the biggest deterrent to cycling in Dorchester!

Over 59 percent of respondents said they feared their bike would be stolen, and a third of the folks without a bike said their last bike was stolen! Other studies have backed up this finding, finding evidence that between 20 to 25 percent of all theft victims ultimately do not replace their bicycles.

By comparison, around 49 percent of respondents in Dot said they cycle less or not at all because of a fear for safety in traffic, 47 percent said biking messed up their clothes or made them too sweaty, and around 41 percent said they had a hard time finding bike parking.

DEHC and DotBike have done a great deal of work encouraging the city to paint more bike lanes in our neighborhood and improve bike parking, both of which directly address some of the deterrents identified. But this survey points out that it may behoove us to spend some time figuring out how to reduce bike theft.

DEHC reviewed the literature on bike theft to come up with a number of ways to reduce it. Here’s what individuals can do to protect themselves: Continue Reading »

The outlook is good for DEHC efforts to bring a bike lane to Blue Hill Avenue and also Warren Street, and with a strong grassroots advocacy effort, lanes may be possible on Columbia Road!

Earlier this year, the city’s bike coordinator Nicole Freedman raced against time with design consultants to add as many bike lanes as she could to plans for roads that would be repaved using ARRA stimulus funds. What she completed is only a fraction of what could have been done if there had been more time or more resources.

But striping of any kind cannot be installed during the extreme cold of a Boston winter, which now gives bike lane advocates a window of opportunity until at least March 15, when the city predicts warmer weather.
Continue Reading »

December is bike cage month in DotBike land, as DEHC’s Pete Stidman and DotBike’s Vivian Girard have been gathering support for a bike cage at the JFK/UMass station near Columbia Point. The MBTA is building six to 10 bike cages within their transit and commuter rail system as part of a $4.8 million chunk of stimulus money specifically targeted to improving bike parking.

DEHC used the Freedom of Information Act to acquire a list of all the stations the T is considering for the new cages, as well as 50 bike shelters they intend to build. What we discovered is a strange bias toward suburban stations, and the likelihood that there would not be a bike cage in Dorchester, where bike theft is the number one deterrent to cycling!

As it turned out, the proximity of other stations worked against Dorchester and other urban neighborhoods in the T’s assessment of need for bike cages. They didn’t prioritize the positive effect on bike-ability neighborhood density has, nor the fact that cyclists might avoid other nearby stations due to theft risk. And most surprising-they didn’t compare or even look at rates of bike theft for any station! Continue Reading »

It is now certain, the $140 million proposal to install a faster bus line on Blue Hill Avenue is dead, and that TIGER grant will not be obtained from the federal government. The good news though is that there is now much wider support for bike lanes on the street.

State legislators along the corridor have proposed a longer, more community-based process, to take advantage of the hundreds of thousands the state has already invested in the project. There is a roll plan of the street now, complete with bus boardings, turning movements, and tons of other data. And after the lengthy 28x controversy, we feel it’s time to really determine what the neighborhood would like to see on Blue Hill. But this longer process is not ensured. It would require funding for the process itself.

It is also unclear which government agency would carry on this process. If there is no large transit element, it would not be a state, but rather a city project. And of course money is tight everywhere.

If you’re interested in seeing the process continue, contact Mayor Thomas Menino’s office, contact your City Councillors about it, and also let your state legislators, Governor Patrick and Secretary of Transportation Jeffrey Mullan know that you support a continued public process on Blue Hill Avenue.

And, while you’re at it, suggest expanding the Public Advisory Group to include representation for cyclists!

DEHC and St. Marks Area Main Streets met with Nicole Freedman and Nick Jackson of Toole Design (the city’s contractor for bike lane design) earlier this week, and the news is a 25 percent design is expected sometime in December. We’ll be letting you know how it looks shortly after the Boston Transportation Department reviews.

With your support, DEHC influenced the city to install a bike lane on Talbot from Peabody Square to Blue Hill Avenue when we learned the section near Franklin Field was scheduled to be repaved as part of the stimulus funding to the city. We are on the lookout for more opportunities, and your continued vocal support of bike facilities in the neighborhood is absolutely necessary for our continued success! Thank you!