Letter: Let’s Talk about Safer Infrastructure for Cycling and Walking in Amherst
On the way to Wildwood School. Bike to school day in Amherst, October 4, 2023. Photo: Toni Cunningham
In helping to organize today’s (10/4) walk/bike to school event for Wildwood I was a bit apprehensive as to how many kids and parents might actually show up to a somewhat last minute event early in the morning on a Wednesday. After years of being saddened by the continual site of empty and idle bike racks at our schools and around town I felt pessimistic as I walked towards my bike. However, as my son and I rode up to our meeting location at East Pleasant and Pine streets, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. There was already a small group of eager riders there ahead of schedule and more coming in from every direction. Fourteen of us rode South along East Pleasant and picked up more kids along the route. We were 25 by the time we got to Wildwood and intersected with the kids and parents that came in from downtown. Today the bike racks were overflowing and it was great!
Four of the five public schools in town hosted similar style events, with roughly 150 families participating. Approximately 300 donut holes were consumed by our kids once we arrived at our schools! Principals came out to offer encouragement and the kid’s smiles were great to see.
However, as noted in the pages of the Indy, despite the existing bike lane, I did not feel safe travelling down East Pleasant Street with a group of children on bikes, so I arranged for a police escort to ensure our group’s safety. With cars often exceeding the posted 40 mph limit, it’s certainly no place for small children to safely ride. I bike to Wildwood regularly with my 2 kids (kindergarten and 3rd). However, we opt to ride our mountain bikes by utilizing trails in the woods so as to avoid the roadways and lack of sidewalks. Unfortunately, not everyone has this as an option. And that is the point of this letter. I think we most certainly can, and should do better in providing some basic infrastructure within our town for our children, college students, and residents to feel safer in navigating the town by bike or walking. If we, as a small college town that is home to the state flagship university and Amherst College, cannot strive towards creating a better environment for those who either need to or choose to rely less on vehicles for transportation then who will?
I heard from many parents today who have interest in cycling around town with and without kids but feel uneasy about taking the risk due to our lack of the appropriate infrastructure to make it safe. I’ve spent a lot of time in communities that have been able to implement some key transportation improvements in order to increase the safety for cycling and pedestrians. As evidenced by today’s events, many more are ready to walk and ride when given a safer environment to do so. As I stated earlier, I was skeptical that there were many other parents here in North Amherst that were like me in wanting the opportunity to simply have a safe route to ride or walk with their children to school.
I ask our town councilors and our school district to bring us into a conversation about the town’s transportation infrastructure, and how it can better serve our kids and the community at large.
Sincerely,
Kurt Bahneman
Kurt Bahneman is a resident of Amherst and the parent of two students at Wildwood Elementary School.
Kurt, thank you for writing this! I totally agree that “we most certainly can, and should do better in providing some basic infrastructure within our town for our children, college students, and residents to feel safer in navigating the town by bike or walking.” The bike to school event was fantastic and inspiring, but without the police car with flashing lights behind us the whole way, I would not have felt safe riding on East Pleasant with my 10 year old.
Conveniently, Amherst already has a Bicycle and Pedestrian Network Plan, developed in June 2019:
https://www.amherstma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/53876/Final-BicyclePedestrianNetwork-Plan-June-28-2019?bidId=
And a Complete Streets Policy was approved by the former Select Board in May 2018:
https://www.amherstma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/44607/2-Complete-Streets-Policy-05-14-2018?bidId=
The Bicycle and Pedestrian Network Plan identifies priority bicycle and pedestrian projects and outlines potential funding sources. The report recommended that a Complete Streets Prioritization Plan should be the next step, and then a capital budget be developed to plan for funding of priority projects and ongoing maintenance of bicycle and pedestrian facilities. To my knowledge, the Complete Streets Prioritization Plan was never completed. Maybe some of the people who have been more actively involved than me in pushing for multimodal transportation shifts could shed some light on the status and on what the barriers are to progress. Eve Vogel, Tracy Zafian, Rob Kusner, Stella Dee, Chris Lindstrom, Stephanie Ciccarello, others?
It would be great to see some Town Councilors make it a priority to get the Complete Streets Prioritization Plan completed and funding for the highest priority sidewalk and bike path projects secured. Consider making it a Town Manager goal and we may start to see some positive change in this realm. Electing Town Councilors who will prioritize bike and pedestrian infrastructure will also help the town make progress.
Way to go Kurt! We don’t feel safe riding on east pleasant with our child either. The drivers constantly veer into the bike lane and the sidewalk is inconsistent/ changes sides. I support your plea for safer ways to bike around our town.!!
Simultaneously lowering the posted speed limit on East Pleasant Street and painting the sidelines at least a foot more towards the middle of the roadway (to narrow the main travel lanes and widen the bike lanes) might be a pragmatic first step (if only the Council and Town Manager would agree to do that). Ditto for other arterial roadways in town (especially Belchertown Road, South Pleasant/West Street and Bay Road).
If this were faithfully implemented the next time these lines were repainted, it would cost nothing extra and could be a first step toward greater road safety & user comfort, as well as promote the mode-shift toward more environmentally friendly transportation by making cycling and walking more attractive (and car-driving less so).
Planning for complete streets is a noble goal for getting to a better place, but if these plans are never implemented (because of cost or whatever) we’re just standing still.
While I don’t know whether the First Amendment would protect it as a form of free speech, using “big chalk” to petition on the ground exactly where the infrastructure might be an (albeit temporary but environmentally harmless) option.
There’s also ample precedent around the world for community members directly investing in the needed infrastructure (of slightly greater permanence), for instance:
https://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/01/world/americas/wikilane-mexico-city/index.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/3051049/a-guerrilla-bike-lane-made-with-flower-pots-forces-a-citys-hand
http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/project/guerrilla-bike-lanes
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/guerrilla-bike-lanes-san-francisco-makes-illicit-infrastructure-permanent/
https://medium.com/signals-of-change/guerilla-bike-lanes-demonstrate-the-power-of-citizen-experimentation-9868fe08efb9
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/aug/07/guerrilla-bike-lane-appears-in-spokane/
As a lifelong and avid cyclist, I have a strong interest in safe cycling. While I support a “build it and they will come” approach to walking and cycling infrastructure, I do not believe that cycling “sharrows” (marked cycle lanes) and sidewalks are enough. These and other strategies are incentives to walk or ride a bike, but there must also be powerful disincentives to driving. As anyone who lives in Amherst year-round, there is an explosive increase in vehicular traffic once students return in late August. One simple way to put a dent in this traffic would be for UMass to make it much harder for students to park on campus. Students who live on campus should simply be provided with nowhere to park their cars, and those students who live within a certain designated radius of the campus should not be provided with parking passes (unless they have a handicap or other compelling need to be able to park on campus). Also, on-street parking permits for transient renters (i.e., students) should price on-street parking out of reach (unless, once again, a renter has a compelling need for a personal car).
I think we need a carrot-and-stick approach: Make walking and cycling a safer and more attractive option by building infrastructure while making using an automobile much more costly and inconvenient.
My bonafides regarding biking: In the past 20 years, I have put nearly 40,000 miles on my bikes. Most of my rides start and end at my Amherst home. Few roads and streets anywhere are in the marginal shape of many of Amherst’s.
There is more to bike safety than painting lanes. Amherst used to be a lot better for bikes, but in the past several years, lax maintenance has led to increasingly dangerous conditions.
Potholes – a serious danger to cyclists – have become deeper and a LOT more numerous.
Areas that have been repaved often have drop-offs to the old pavement either immediately beside or actually in bike lanes. Barely noticeable in a vehicle, these obstacles are hazards, especially to novice riders.
Bike lanes are now seldom swept, and the result is accumulating hazards like sand and gravel, broken glass, and metal fragments that threaten to throw riders and/or cause flats. Dodging these obstacles means riders often have to swerve into traffic lanes.
Throughout town, the problem of vegetation encroaching on roads is worsening. Knotweed and ragweed run rampant along many major roads. Pasture rose, poison ivy and bittersweet threaten to snag riders on several main thoroughfares, again causing riders to dodge away from the side of the road and into traffic lanes.
It would be helpful if the DPW paid closer attention to these issues. Perhaps if someone on staff ocaissionally toodled around town on a bike, these problems could be recognized and remedied.
In agreement 200% with Alex and John on this!
To one of Alex’s good points: Each time then-Select Board members visited then-Chancellor John Lombardi’s house in the mid-2000s for the obligatory “shrimp in lieu of taxes” dinner, I’d always question Lombardi when he’d follow Amherst College’s lead and ban cars on campus for (at least 1st and 2nd year) students? And his answer was always along the lines of a famous punchline (also title of the most recent book) by former New Yorker cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff:
HOW ABOUT NEVER? IS NEVER GOOD FOR YOU?
Lombardi may even have suggested that this was how UMass competed for students with private Boston-area institutions: parents would tell their kids they will pay tuition for * * or else their kids could have a car and go to UMass. Times have changed and such a campus ban (with few exceptions) should be revisited.
And to John’s points about the desperate need for better road maintenace : My comment about paint and speed limits – at least as a starting point – applies particularly to East Pleasant Street where (for the most part) some of the road hazards he mentions are less prevalent. In contrast, College Street and the western half of Belchertown Road resemble scenes from post-invasion Ukraine. Obviously these need more than superficial maintenance, but rather a resurrection as complete streets. Unfortunately, they cross through the greater Fort River floodplain and all the pavement in surrounding areas has made drainage a severe problem in wet weather or winter-spring snowmelt season, so a resurrection is going to be a big job! Nevertheless, if painting narrower motor-vehicle lanes and posting lower speed limits there now could also help slow traffic, isn’t at least worth an experiment?
And to repeat something I mentioned a few weeks ago (when the modest $108,000,000 federal grant to begin improving east-west rail joining Boston-Worcester-Palmer-Springfield was anounced): Without making it easier for folks (particularly many students with family in the Boston metropolitan area) to use public transit to reach Amherst (perhaps via a Palmer-Amherst rail shuttle) how do we make limiting cars on campus a reality?
I also find conditions hazardous in Amherst – my experience has been the same as John Varner’s, with the addition that I have ended up in the hospital or in urgent care a number of times specifically BECAUSE OF the potholes. People advise me to stop biking, but that’s not going to happen, because dangerous as the potholes in Amherst are (much worse than other communities, as Mr. Varner says), the benefits of biking (and the dangers of not biking) are greater. The tragedy is the number of people who would otherwise bike who consider the roads too dangerous, so drive instead.
If people in Amherst felt secure enough to bike for the short trips or medium trips they make by car, it would have a significant impact on climate change locally – if they did it nationwide, it would be greater than most of the expensive climate change reduction efforts getting media attention. And by the way, it would also improve their health both physically and mentally and relieve the daily stresses they feel. Not to mention save large amounts on gas and reduced car maintenance costs.
I turned 70 this year – I work locally and commute to work by bicycle most days all year round when not too icy. When I signed up for life insurance 12 years ago, I needed a blood test and based on that, the cost of my insurance was (and is) in the lowest category – so many benefits to biking – most importantly leaving a better world for the younger generations when so much is going wrong otherwise.
Roadwork is underway thanks to federal infrastructure funds but yes, drop offs in the bike lanes due to repaving are a new hazard overlooked as insignificant by the majority of non bicyclists and this also urgently needs to be addressed. Hopefully it will, so we can all enjoy the many benefits of bicycling – yay! These problems have been successfully addressed in European cities – we can do it here in Amherst, too.
Thanks so much for writing Kurt et al.! Yes, lots needs to get done!
All: Besides your fantastic advocacy here and on Amherst schools and streets, please consider writing to your Councilors (towncouncil@amherstma.gov) and the DPW (publicworks@amherstma.gov). Asking them to make sure bike lanes (and sidewalks!) are maintained with regular pothole repair and sweeping is a fantastic idea. I’d ask you add: renew the paint striping each fall so it stays visible as we have more dark hours.
Finally if you’re willing, there are two initiatives happening *right now* that you could add to your voice to. Please write your councilors and the DPW and ask them to
– Ensure any new streetlighting policy makes streets and sidewalks safe and welcoming for bikes, pedestrians, transit users, and mobility-aid users (I will likely have a letter on this soon….)
– Ensure the town’s bicycle and pedestrian plan gets finished. (For more on this, see: https://www.amherstindy.org/2023/01/27/mode-shift-3-supporting-sustainable-equitable-transportation-its-time-to-finish-amhersts-bicycle-and-pedestrian-network-map-and-plan/)
Thank you!
It’s awesome that you did this ride, Kurt! And thanks to the police for providing an escort! Keep it going!