Two cycle tracks
January 22, 2012
One is officially inbound to Cambridge, the other is officially outbound from Cambridge. The two tracks are on opposite sides of Concord Ave.
On one side, we have an almost completely unbroken cycle track adjacent to a sidewalk. There’s only one place on the whole stretch where a car might drive across it. Together they make a great wide flat space, and when it snows, it is plowed.
On the other side the cycle track is cut several times by cross strets and driveways, and sometimes it is level with the sidewalk, sometimes it is level with the street. It is not plowed.
And they could have plowed it, but just decided not to:
The plow didn’t fit on the sidewalk, so they plowed the cycle track here, but only as long as they were forced to.
I have to wonder, what they heck were they thinking when they built this second cycle track? Running bicycles across driveways and cross streets is a recipe for accidents, and after spending all the money to build this thing, they don’t even plow it (and when it’s not covered with snow, it’s often full of gravel and sand). Why waste the money? Why put those arrows on both sides to attempt to guilt cyclists into doing something unsafe? The inbound side is safe and attractive, why not just shift the whole road a few feet and put both directions over there?
