Plan to Bring Bike Lanes (Back) to Main Street Wins Support

Bike lanes will be returned to Main Street sometime this summer – provided the plan to bring them back wins approval by the Charlestown Neighborhood Council tonight.

On Monday night, members of the council’s Basic Services committee OK’d a proposal from city officials to put bike lanes along both sides of Main Street – a decision that was met with applause from the 70 or so residents who turned out for the bike lane meeting.

The plan will be presented this evening to all 21 members of the Neighborhood Council. If it wins support there, the council will give the city its blessing, so to speak, for the bike lanes. (The full council meets tonight at 7 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus.)

The council’s vote would punctuate a months-long debate about whether Charlestown should have bike lanes and, if so, where they should be. Last fall city crews painted bike lanes on either side of Main Street, but some members of the , saying they had questions and concerns they would have liked the city to answer before installing the lanes.

And just as quickly and mysteriously as the bike lanes arrived, they disappeared. City officials said they hoped to ease tension with the removal, and invited the Neighborhood Council to host a public meeting on the issue before proceeding. Dozens of residents turned out for that, for effectively removing the bike lanes without their consent.

That was back in January. City officials promised then that, come spring, they’d return to Charlestown with a formal presentation and, with hope, a vote of confidence from the council, for their plan.

As promised, Nick Jackson presented an overview on Monday night of the city’s plan to bring bike lanes to the neighborhood, and connect it to a broader network of lanes in Boston, Somerville and Cambridge. Jackson’s a senior planner for Toole Design, which is working with the mayor’s office to implement bike lanes around Boston.

“It’s important we have a bike network that serves the whole community,” Jackson said. “We want to provide access throughout the whole neighborhood."

In the short term, the city would like to see bike lanes on Main Street because of its proximity to local businesses and major arteries in and out of the neighborhood. The lanes would be painted this summer when city crews are resurfacing the road. 

Main Street is 44 feet wide, Jackson said – wider than Chelsea, Medford or Bunker Hill streets, where bike lanes have also been proposed. The Main Street design would include 7-foot parking lanes, 5-foot bike lanes and 10-foot travel lanes on both sides of the road.

Officials would also like to add a stretch of bike lanes on Cambridge Street. The City of Somerville has painted bike lanes on that roadway which will end at the Charlestown border. This proposal would bring them all the way into Sullivan Square. 

A large crowd of bicyclists from the neighborhood and beyond turned out for the meeting on Monday, just as they did for the January meeting on bike lanes. At least a dozen spoke in support of the city’s plan, and many thanked the council and city officials for offering such a comprehensive plan to Charlestown. Several also expressed interest in seeing bike lanes on more roads than just Main Street, including Rutherford Avenue, the rotary at Sullivan Square and Medford Street. Only one person in attendance objected to the plan.

“I’m totally opposed to a bike lane on Main Street,” she said. “There's just too much pedestrian traffic there. If [a bicycle] cuts me off, what am I supposed to do? Call the police? Unless there's a license plate on a bicycle, there shouldn't be any bicycles on Main Street at all.”

Many cyclists raised concerns about the cycling conditions on local bridges. City officials said they were aware of these issues and were exploring one plan to cover the metal grates on the Charlestown Bridge with non-skid metal plates.

Nicole Freedman, who directs the Boston Bikes program at City Hall, also mentioned that Charlestown is on the short list as a hub in the coming to the city this summer.

The program, known as Hubway, will function a bit like ZipCar – members get swipe cards that will allow them to rent a bike at one of 61 locations around the city and pay a small fee per usage. Freedman said if a bike rental station isn’t opened in Charlestown in the first phase of the program, it will get one immediately after.