Brighton Avenue to get 24-hour bus/bike lane

I know in the Roslindale case they studied who was parking on the street during the special lane hours. There was a great hue and cry about hypothetical single moms with multiple small hypothetical kids who need to park in front of their homes. But it turned out the people parking there are from the 'burbs looking for free parking near Forest Hills.

It is almost disappeared too. You can barely see it. What is happening there?

Actually that block on Brighton Ave between Linden and Harvard [with the restaurants] is notorious for being full of double parked cars in the travel lane. Most of them probably can be attributed to delivery or livery drivers? That is the lane I would assume is slated to be the bike/bus lane, but they're going to need to buy a bulldozer to keep it clear.

n/t

Buses suck. We want more trains, not less.

I’m not saying it’s your conscious thought, but I notice that cyclists tend to look at the bus element of impending bus lanes as an afterthought.

Not from Allston, so I have no opinion on the proposal. What works for the neighborhood works for the neighborhood.

Having a dedicated lane for the bus means they're not merging in and out of traffic which speeds up the car lanes too.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/driving-true-costs/...

The report documents that the amount that road users pay through gas taxes now accounts for less than half of what’s spent to maintain and expand the road system. The resulting shortfall is made up from other sources of tax revenue at the state and local levels, generated by drivers and non-drivers alike.

While congressional bailouts of the Highway Trust Fund have made this subsidy more apparent, it has actually never been the case that road users paid their own way. Not only that, but the amount of their subsidy has steadily increased in recent years. The share of the costs paid from road-user fees has dropped from about 70 percent in the 1960s to less than half today, according to the study.

Rules of the road and tickets are already codified in MGLs and enforced (hahahhaah) by local law enforcement. Lotta good thats done.

Now a new bureaucracy for cycling seems a little silly in the grand scheme of things, ya know things that children ride. So the police that already aren't pulling over motor vehicles and adults on bikes are suddenly going to dedicat resources to checking license and registration on every child on the road?

Maybe better to understand that laws and registration and insurance surrounding motor vehicles are a direct response to the threat they pose to society when unregulated. Bikes? Not so much.

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It's replacing the right travel lane. The lines have already started going down today.

It's to the left of parking. Someone parking on the curb will use the lane temporarily to park. Most of the cars in there don't move anyways, so it won't be an issue.

I share that lane and it doesn't help. As an occasional bus rider here at rush hour, feeling that its much more than 4 buses an hour.

Also lots of pot holes were there until recently repaved, so not only are you trying to take the lane while getting tailgated but you get to play the game of moving to avoid a pothole while hoping that that few inches you've just conceded aren't perceived to be a couple dozen inches and the motorist takes it because who cares about safe passes.

Nah, Lyft and Uber can GTFO.

At peak times, the 57 and the 66 both run every 10 minutes. So that's 12 buses per hour.

Why would Uber and Lyft drivers get access to a bus/bike lane? They're just regular civilian cars.

How many people are in those 4 buses vs how many people are in the cars that would be there instead?

I can't answer for the MBTA's planning department, but I do know that if they re-routed the #66 bus back away from Union Square (straight Harvard Avenue to Cambridge Street) it would cause transportation difficulties for myself and several of my neighbors who live in the handicapped-accessible apartments on Hano Street and Everett Street.

Some of my neighbors use wheelchairs and some use walkers or canes. Walking the extra two blocks to get to Harvard Avenue might be too much of a physical struggle for some or all of them, just as it's too much of a physical struggle for me in the wintertime, (and increasingly other times of the year as well, as I get older).

This would lead to *more* use of Lyft, Uber and/or taxis for short trips, and more traffic congestion.

Keep in mind also the upcoming construction of a large number of apartments at the Stop & Shop/Home Goods plaza, and part of the traffic calming strategies promised to the neighbors was INCREASED bus service to that area...which suggests another detour of the #66 to include that area, a new bus route entirely, or possibly a shuttlebus service.