Street Smarts

Are the Boston Police getting the training they need to be safe and effective on bicycles?

I don’t think so. I don’t know how they train, but I have seen how they perform.

In another post, I described how a participant in a protest march pushed a Boston bicycle patrol officer over — intentionally or not, it isn’t clear. Evidently, the officers’ task was to prevent the march from spilling out from the street onto the sidewalks. The officer who fell — and others on both sides of the phalanx of marchers — were astride their bicycles, as shown also in the photo below. For crowd control, officers should stand with the bicycles between them and the crowd.

Officers standing over bicycles at December 13, 2014 protest march

Some of the officers in the photos have their feet up on the curb. They are sitting on the saddle, not compatible with the best astride-the-bike stopping and restarting technique. The video below shows officers’ awkwardness in basic mounting and dismounting.

Correct starting and stopping techniques are described on this Web page. The video below shows the astride-the-bike technique.

A police officer from another city describes the techniques taught in International Police Mountain Bike Association training courses:

Disengage pedal from your retention. Swing the drivetrain (right) leg across, stand on the left pedal with the left foot, the right foot tucks behind the left at the ankle. You can now coast for a ways or step forward off the bike onto the ground (right foot first) and away from the bike – that is a dismount and exit. It is simple and works whether going fast or slower, in tactical situations, suspect contacts, or normal stops. With practice the rider can use their right foot to lower and engage a rear-mounted kickstand, mounted on the rear stays instead of behind the bottom bracket. With the kickstand down, the rider can walk away from the bike leaving it upright on the stand.

Looking at the videos again it seems they had an assortment of pedal retention, but it appears a number have none at all. That makes mounts, dismounts, and starts even easier to learn and perform, but more dangerous over obstacles where pedal retention helps hold the foot securely on the pedal.

For a simple stop, swing across to the left side, stand on the left pedal and put the right foot onto the ground either in front or behind the pedal – both work. The balance needs to be centered and care used on the front brake. An endo is still possible in that position. Officers are not encouraged to stop with the bike between their legs when dealing with a suspect or an unknown person. You can’t fight or react with a bike between your legs. It is obviously seen as okay at a stop sign, traffic signal, etc. They are encouraged to move forward off the saddle, having downshifted, and put their bike into a power pedal position. We also teach a power slide to dismount. EMS mostly uses road style techniques due to the balance they have with heavily loaded bags.

For starts we  teach the technique you call the cowboy – also the road start where they swing over and straddle the bike, put bike into the power pedal and pedal away, and a modified cycle-cross. Push the bike forward, jump across the saddle and land on the saddle, perhaps not centered, power the first pedal that reaches your feet. I don’t know that we address the issue of starting on an incline unless a student brings it up. We require use of some sort of pedal retention, so that becomes in an issue early in class. Most use toe clips with straps or strapless toe clips.

There’s also the image below — found during an unrelated Google Maps expedition. Boston Police wait at a traffic light to cross into Franklin Park to go on patrol. The officers all have a foot on the low pedal, ready only for a shuffle start, not a power pedal start. An orderly and lawful stop behind the stop line and a brisk restart would have been more appropriate, more polite for the pedestrian and motorist in the photo, and a better example to citizens who ride bicycles.

Police wait in disarray at Elm Hill Avenue and Seaver Street in the Roxbury section of Boston

This image in Google Maps

Here’s a Google Maps image from a few seconds earlier, showing that the pedestrian had to walk behind the group of police officers who had stopped in the crosswalk.

The pedestrian had to make her way around the police to cross in the crosswalk.

This image in Google Maps.

Boston police also ride opposite the flow of traffic, for no evident reason, and violate the traffic law in other ways. The photo is from Congress Street, downtown Boston, November 18, 2009, 12:30 PM. I observed the officer riding a whole block opposite traffic.

Boston police officer riding opposite traffic in the door zone

There’s another example of a Boston police officer riding opposite traffic, with additional comments, on another page.

At the very least, what I have observed does not conform to best bicycling practice, or to good police practice. And it matters, for the sake of the officers’ safety and the effectiveness of their mission.

The photo below, from summaer 2011, is a cylindrical panorama: Hillside Road, at the right, is at a right angle to Route 4-225 (the Great Road) at the left. The Narrow Gauge Rail Trail runs from front to rear in the photo, alongside Hillside Road and (at the rear) Bacon Street. (Google map of the location) You can click on the photo to enlarge it and get a better view.

Panorama — Trail at Route 4-225 and Hillside Road, Bedford, Massachusetts, USA

There are heavy, steel gates across the trail at either side of Route 4-225, so bicyclists must thread through narrow openings. Someone has posted a sign, “Walk bikes in crosswalk for your own safety.”

Is walking really safer? My take is that it depends on who you are. If your bike-handling skills are lacking, it probably is safer, because you will be able to pay more attention to the traffic in the cross street.

If your bike-handling skills are good, that is, if you can slow nearly to a stop without losing your balance, look around for traffic and accelerate smartly, riding will be safer, because you get across the street sooner, and you are more maneuverable riding the bicycle than walking next to it.

In either case, the bicycle will be broadside to the traffic as you cross in the crosswalk, a much wider target for an errant motorist to avoid than a pedestrian without a bicycle.

My own preference is to avoid using the path here entirely, entering the intersection as a bicycle driver on the street, so I do not have to look behind myself for turning traffic. Car-bike collisions are common when motorists turn in front of bicyclists on paths which run alongside roads.

As to those steel gates: well, they’ll slow down most people, only causing a crash occasionally if someone fails to see a gate, or collides with a post threading through a narrow gap. There are better ways to slow bicycle traffic where a path approaches a street: for example, see the third photo from the top on this page.

How would I like to think of the People’s Pike? I want to see a bicycle path and an adjacent footpath which avoid crossing and turning conflicts, passing under the ramps to the Turnpike and to the proposed West Station, with connections up to the overpasses to get to West Station and beyond, to Packard’s Corner and the Boston University campus.

Early proposals for the People’s Pike all showed it running parallel to the Turnpike where it could go under the ramps, but at the October 15 Task Force meeting, I saw three proposals for a bikeway through the project area. One proposal was for a route near the Turnpike. It would provide a direct connection between North Allston, West Station and the Paul Dudley White path, and it would have grade-separated crossings of least two– maybe all– of the four streets which lead to the Turnpike and West Station.

Option 3J-1: direct route

The MassDOT presenters somehow thought that this would be a bad idea: the path would be next to a retaining wall, and there would be noise from the Turnpike.

I don’t understand why noise would be a major problem.  The retaining wall would reduce the noise, as the Turnpike would be up on an elevated structure for much of the route. Also, there’s been a lot of discussion of noise barriers, and I don’t see why the path couldn’t be pulled a bit farther from the Turnpike. For purposes of comparison, you might take your bicycle out onto Lincoln Street in North Allston. It runs alongside the Turnpike. There’s a noise barrier along part of Lincoln Street too , in case you would like to check out how that works.

Two other proposals were for paths alongside a new Cambridge Street South.

Option 3J-2: path alongside Cambridge Street

Another similar option

Somehow, the presenter at the meeting seemed to think that if there is a Cambridge Street South, then the bikeway has to run alongside it. But why, and what sense does it make for the bikeway to take that route — granted, that bicyclists making local trips will still have to use Cambridge Street. But is this a People’s Pike?

As shown in the overhead views, the route would follow the new Cambridge Street South down to Soldiers Field Road, turn more than 90 degrees, and go alongside Soldiers Field Road for a quarter-mile before crossing over to the Paul Dudley White paths. This is a 40% longer route, and need I say that Soldiers Field Road also is noisy? Also, there would have to be spurs to connect to West Station and Packard’s Corner. Trips between North Allston and those locations would be longer. (If you look carefully, you can see an additional Turnpike overpass in the drawings, to shorten the trip from the PDW path to West Station).

There are also other serious issues with travel time, and with safety.

All of the traffic to and from the the Turnpike and West Station, including heavy trucks and buses, would cross or turn at Cambridge Street South.

So, let’s consider: what is a cycle track? Simply stated, it is a bicycle path next to a busy street. Traffic in the cross streets crosses it. Traffic turns across it at every intersection and driveway. Signals at the intersections delay bicyclists. The delay makes the trip more inconvenient for people who are careful, but it makes for trouble for people who are less cautious or who don’t understand the hazards. At the driveways, there are no signals, and turning motorists must be extra-careful to avoid colliding with through-traveling bicyclists. Sometimes sight lines are blocked and it in only safe to inch forward. Not everyone does that.

In urban areas, turning and crossing collisions are the largest cause of serious and fatal bicycle crashes. The same issue can occur with a bike lane, or with a cycle track. If you think that a bikeway alongside a roadway rather than on it solves this problem, you might consider the many bicycle-motor vehicle collisions at street crossings on the Southwest Corridor path where it runs alongside Washington Street.

The Cambridge Street South proposals appear to be for a two-way bikeway on one side of  the street. This design poses the greatest dangers, because bicyclists arrive from more, and more unusual, directions.

There’s a noise and air quality issue too. Where there is a cycle track, there is an adjacent sidewalk, but the cycle track is always closer to the street traffic, and it’s at street level.

On the other hand, the parallel path proposal which would take the People’s Pike under the ramps would work for bicyclists at all skill levels, even children. The path need not be chock-a-block with the  Turnpike, either, because a bicycle underpass only has to be 10 feet high, while a Turnpike underpass has to be 17 feet high.

The MassDOT proposals with a path alongside the Turnpike would still have it cross two streets at ground level — as opposed to the four crossings (plus who knows how many  driveways) for the Cambridge Street proposals, and the one crossing in the Boston Society of Architects proposal at peoplespike.com/BeaconYards3F.kmz,

One of the Boston Society of Architects proposals

But let’s think big here: let’s think underpasses at all cross streets. The blank slate for new construction in the Beacon Yards area offers unparalleled flexibility in planning and design, and let’s take advantage of that.

Let me just put the question in the boldest terms: What do you want: a direct route between North Allston, West Station and the Charles River on a path with no street crossings, somewhere near a busy Turnpike frontage road and with the possibility of a noise barrier; or an indirect route alongside busy Cambridge Street and Soldiers Field Road, crossing four or five intersections with heavy motor traffic including bus and truck traffic, and who knows how many driveways?

Call it what you will, but only the one which avoids the cross traffic is a People’s Pike. The other proposals are People’s Pillar to Post, as far as I’m concerned.

I was bicycling home from church on a Sunday afternoon recently.

The church I attend, First Parish in Waltham, has a parking lot on either side, but also the public school parking lot across the street doesn’t get much use on a Sunday, and handles any overflow.

As I rode home, I headed south on Eddy Street and turned right on a green light onto Weston Street, a two-lane main street with a moderate uphill grade and single-family residences on either side.

Weston Street is wide enough for easy bicycle-motor vehicle side-by-side lane sharing if there is no parking. If vehicles park along Weston Street, it becomes too narrow for safe travel at the 35 mph speed limit even with motor traffic only: parked vehicles block sight lines for residents pulling out of their driveways.

So, parking is prohibited at all times along Weston Street, mostly.

A Lutheran church stands on the corner of Eddy and Weston Streets, and it has only a small parking lot. The special exception, indicated by signs which are faded by now almost to illegibility, allows parking in the block in front of this church on weekends. Many people attending its services park on the street. Some of the faithful park in the next block too.

The Google Maps satellite view below was taken on a Sunday. The marker in the image is at the intersection of Weston Street and Eddy Street. Cars are parked  in the church parking lot, and front of the church, and in the next block. You might also go directly to Google Maps to look around, though the satellite view you see then might be from a different day.

Weston and Eddy streets, and the Lutheran church

I turned right from Eddy Street onto Weston Street. A few seconds later, the traffic signal changed and traffic started up Weston street behind me.

Here was my choice as I saw it:

• Ride in the door zone and risk being flung out in front of overtaking traffic by a car door opening in front of me or a person walking out from between cars —
• or control the travel lane and be safe.

There was oncoming traffic too, so the drivers behind me couldn’t pull out partway across the double yellow line to pass me.

I chose to ride outside the door zone and walk-out zone of the parked cars, not wanting to collide with any good Christians, or be flung out into the path of an overtaking car.

The first driver in line behind me honked the car horn at me.

After I’d passed the parked cars and merged over to the right, the second driver honked while passing me.

I was going about ten miles per hour. That is as fast as I could go. I might have delayed the people in the cars behind me by 15 seconds.

The safe choice is becoming more difficult. Boston used to have an “every man for himself” sort of traffic culture. Drivers were used to other drivers who bent the law to get ahead. (It was always, of course the other driver…) This was somewhat of an ego thing, I think, with origins in the Bluebloods vs. Irish cultural and political struggles of a century ago — but also, drivers often had to edge out into narrow and congested Boston-area streets, failing to yield right of way, sometimes blindly, to avoid waiting interminably for a gap in traffic. In a somewhat perverse way, this was an egalitarian culture, and it worked well for assertive, law-abiding bicyclists. Yielding to a visible, predictable, law-abiding bicyclist was less of an annoyance than yielding a motorist who was butting into line in traffic.

That is changing. More and more drivers have been trained that bicyclists belong in the door zone, by the dozens of miles of door zone bike lanes which cities and towns in the Boston area have been installing. And, every year there is a new crop of students at our colleges and universities, who don’t know any better than to fall into the trap which the cities and towns have set for them.

Oh, and now, rethinking the situation, there was a third possible choice: I could have waited at the green light on Eddy Street, then through the red light so I could start up Weston Street on a new green. I’d then get past the parked cars before the traffic behind me on Weston Street started to move. I wouldn’t be delaying anyone except myself — unless, of course, there was other traffic entering from Eddy Street — and there often is.

What would you choose?