GreenDorchester (Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition)

Wednesday Feb. 2nd starting at 6:30 pm at 551 Talbot Avenue, come see the new bike shop Ashmont Cycles, located in Ashmont/Peabody Square. Owner Jack Pelletier will show the place and describe his plans for the store which is opening March 1, 2011. Continue Reading »

There is a LivableStreets Alliance StreetTalk “How is Boston Completing its Streets?” with Vineet Gupta, Transportation Planning Director, City of Boston on Thursday, February 17, 7-9 PM.  (This was originally scheduled for Jan. 12 but rescheduled due to snow.)

@ LivableStreets office, 100 Sidney St, Cambridge MA
Open to the public. $5-$10 suggested donation

From the LivableStreets website:   Mayor Menino has told us, “The car is no longer king in Boston.” Is a new wave of urban planning upon us? Boston is ready to put pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users on equal footing with drivers and promote a vision of streets which are safe, attractive and conducive to healthy, active transportation. What would you do to make Boston’s streets more livable, safe and accessible?

In 2003, a coalition of national advocates coined the phrase “Complete Streets” as a way to better communicate the inclusion of bicycles in everyday transportation planning to government officials and the general public. Today, the movement has grown more powerful than just the accommodation of bicycles and has been adopted in more than 200 Complete Streets policies across the U.S, including Boston! See the LivableStreets website for more on this talk.

Here’s an update to our 5/3/2010 posting: the latest new station to start taking shape on the Fairmount Commuter Rail Line (also called the Indigo Line) is now under construction on Talbot Avenue – see this recent Dorchester Reporter article.  The Commonwealth of Massachusetts agreed to improve the Fairmount Line as part of a legally binding commitment in 2005 to mitigate increased air pollution from the Big Dig. Improvements also include Continue Reading »

Dorchester residents are encouraged to attend the Health Council meeting on Thursday Nov. 18th, from 4 to 5:30 PM, at the Codman Square Health Center, 637 Washington Street.
Anne Lusk, Ph.D., of Harvard School of Public Health is conducting bicycle-related research in the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury, to help make bicycling safer in these neighborhoods by improving the environment. Dinner will be provided by Haley House.
Participants can enjoy having good food, while ranking a series of pictures, and talking about what they think about the pictures and bicycling. You do not need to know how to bicycle to participate.

Please note that this bike survey and dinner are also available to other groups who meet regularly. See this invitation for bicycle survey. Please contact Anne directly if your group is interested in participating in this survey on another date.

Bicycle Visual and Verbal Preference Survey – Boston Fall 2010
Anne Lusk, Ph.D. Harvard School of Public Health
AnneLusk@hsph.harvard.edu, 617-432-7076

Come see a presentation of new detailed design options for the FAIRMOUNT GREENWAY planned for Wednesday, October 6th, at 6 PM.
At previous community meetings with the Fairmont CDC Collaborative, local residents determined their preferred routes for the greenway and identified potential locations for development into parks and other open space.
A team from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning is helping to facilitate more detailed design studies of the Fairmont Greenway as it goes through the Dorchester neighborhood.
What will be presented - visions for what certain streets, bike routes, green spaces and intersections might look like.  The team would like to hear Dorchester residents’ feedback, ideas and opinions.  Please come to this meeting to help further design and plan this Greenway.

Meeting location: 193 Talbot Ave.  Click here for meeting flyer.

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For more information contact: Cullen Deas
Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation
Phone: 617-825-4224 x130
Email: CULLEN@CSNDC.COM
In partnership with: Greater Four Corners Action Coalition * University of Massachusetts, Amherst-Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning * Urban Ecology Institute *

Head on over to Elmhurst Street the evening of August 9 for the Talbot-Norfolk Triangle neighborhood’s Family Fun Night Celebration – its their Big Event to wrap up a successul summer of youth programming. There will be a community dinner and a presentation about what this year’s group of children and teens learned this summer. Dinner at 6:00 pm, Presentation at 7:15 pm.

Bike lanes and sharrows on Dorchester Avenue are expected to be installed by the end of July (you can see some of them on the road right now!). The lanes start at Broadway in South Boston and end at Hoyt St., which is part of the Glover’s Corner intersection that includes Freeport Street.

Click here to see a Google map of where the bike lanes and sharrows will be on Dorchester Ave.

There will be sharrows (markers that indicate bikes share the road with cars – see the photo at the right) instead of bike lanes around Andrew Square,  and continuing from Hoyt St. south to where Dorchester Ave. ends  in Lower Mills.

Plans for intersection redesigns, including bike boxes in Fields Corner at Centre, Park and Gibson streets, at Glover’s Corner and Savin Hill Ave. and in Andrew Square are in the works.  On Talbot Avenue, bike lanes are going to be installed within 2 months.

The MBTA is using $4.8 million in federal funds to construct up to eight new bike cages (now called Pedal & Park), with one at Ashmont T station to open in Spring 2011.

The P&Ps can hold 300 bikes, are monitored by video cameras and require a special-coded Charlie Card to get inside.  Bike CharlieCards are free of charge and obtainable from station staff where P&Ps are located.

It’s riding weather, but not all of the Dot Bike regulars ride on Dorchester Ave. daily. So if you see bike lanes painted, please let them know at dotbike@bostonbiker.org.

Cities and towns across Greater Boston can install bicycle parking racks in their communities at almost no cost this year, as part of a special reimbursement program administered by the MAPC.

MAPC, the regional planning agency for 101 cities and towns in Greater Boston, has more than $475,000 in funding still available for local governments to bring bike parking into town centers, schools and other areas this year.

With summer on the way, bike racks offer cyclists enhanced opportunities to enjoy warmer weather, to get fit, and to enjoy a low-cost form of transportation that provides an environmentally-friendly alternative to driving.

Bicycle parking can be nearly 100 times less expensive than vehicle parking per space, and employers who offer bike racks alleviate the demand for car parking. Continue Reading »

On Thursday, May, 20, 2010, Mayor Menino will recognize Codman Square Health Center as a bronze-level Bike Friendly Business.  The Mayor’s Bike Friendly Business award program recognizes Boston companies that encourage bicycling among their employees by engaging in bicycle friendly practices – this has the added benefit of making them more bike friendly for customers as well.   By adopting a few basic, inexpensive practices, companies can significantly “improve the climate” for cycling in Boston. 

Codman Square Health Center already supported bike commuting with a bike rack close to the front entrance and free shower facilities for employees.  A few other simple steps (providing a link on their website to information for employees who would like to commute by bike, for example) garnered the award. The Codman Square Health Center is also exploring setting up a bike share program for employee work trips, using bike messengers for local deliveries, signing up a team for Hub on Wheels event in September, and guaranteeing a ride home for bike commuters in the event of a family emergency.
The Bike Friendly Business Awards are part of Mayor Menino’s vision to make Boston a greener, more sustainable, and livable city.  Thursday’s honorees will receive a “Mayor Menino Bike Friendly Business” window sticker.  We hope you will join us at the 2010 Bike Friendly Business Awards Ceremony, Thursday May 20, 2010, 11 AM at City Hall Plaza.

The Fairmount Line opened in 1855 and was one of Boston’s first commuter railroads, running approximately 9 miles between South Station and Hyde Park.   After long years of declining ridership, the line was closed down in 1944 – it was reopened by the Mass. Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) in 1979, but without any Dorchester or Mattapan stations.  In 1987, two new stations opened in Mattapan (Morton Street) and Uphams Corner due to community pressure.  Carrying about 2,000 riders daily, it is the smallest commuter line in the MBTA system and the only one entirely contained in Boston, MA.  Currently there are four stations – Uphams Corner, Morton Street, Fairmount and Readville – and the line runs through communities (Dorchester, Mattapan and Hyde Park) that constitute more than 30% of Boston’s population.

Over the years, the Fairmount Corridor Collaborative (FCC), a group of local housing and economic development agencies, realized the commuter line was travelling through rather than serving the transit needs of the neighborhoods. Dorchester and Mattapan communities are served mostly by bus Continue Reading »