Boston has plans to complete protected bike lanes this year on Mass Ave. between Melnea Cass Blvd. and Columbia Rd., but that could change due to last-minute concerns about the impact on parking from a few businesses.

Here’s what you can do to convince the city to move ahead with these long-needed bike lanes:Email Councilors Baker and Essaibi-George along with the Boston Transportation Department expressing your support for separated bike lanes. Explain why this project is important to you personally.

• Email Councilors Baker and Essaibi-George along with the Boston Transportation Department expressing your support for separated bike lanes. Explain why this project is important to you personally.

• Attend an upcoming virtual open house. Dates are TBD but likely to begin in June. You can sign up here to be notified by the City about the project. 
   
• Share this action alert with anyone else you know in your district to create a groundswell of support. If you visit businesses on this stretch of Mass Ave in the next few months, let them know that you support this project and that you biked there or will bike to their business once it is complete.

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Background

Over the past two years, we’ve built support among residents and businesses to complete this important piece of Boston’s bike network. With your help, our organizing led Boston to create the Mass Ave Better Bike Project last spring. The Boston Transportation Department then met with the public, and with all the nearby civic associations and businesses, last fall. And in a budget hearing this month, Chief of Streets Chris Osgood highlighted Mass Ave. as a project that would be completed by the end of September 2020.

However, in that same budget hearing, Councilor Baker said he’d received pushback to protected bike lanes from a few businesses along Mass Ave. who would lose some on-street parking. We have seen other projects cancelled or indefinitely postponed over similar objections. We cannot afford to let that happen here. 

This part of Mass Ave. sees a high rate of crashes for all modes of travel. With speeding and the fatal crash rate rising on newly empty roads, making Mass Ave. safer should remain an urgent priority. This is also the only proposed bike project serving Dorchester residents, increasing its importance for addressing equity and connectivity in Boston’s bike network. 

To help move this project forward, please email Councilor Baker and be sure he knows that his constituents (you!) support protected bike lanes on Mass Ave.