Friday, April 1, 2011

A Dose Of Awesome

From Boston.com, news of public bike repair stands.

"The stands provide tire gauges and pumps, Allen wrenches and a few other tools that enable cyclists to make minor repairs, such as adjusting seats or handlebars."


I say it's awesome because it shows the willingness of the city of Cambridge to embrace cycling as a viable transportation alternative. However, I'm not so sure the money couldn't be more well spent elsewhere. This is certainly something that I would support if the cycling culture in Boston were more 'mature', but I'm not so sure the general public in the Boston area is quite comfortable with cycling in the city just yet. Cambridge, maybe, since the article quotes a significant increase in cycling traffic over the past couple of years.

From a different perspective, is there a liability issue with the city 'encouraging' people to elicit their own repairs to dubious ends? I really don't know the answer to that question, but I'm wondering if it was considered.

Still, I applaud Cambridge's efforts to encourage cycling. Perhaps it will in fact serve as an epicenter for responsible cooperation between cyclist and local government, and radiate outward from there.

Oh, and don't bother with the comments on the article. As usual, it's loaded with the usual selfish ignorant diatribes from big-mac-eating fuckers, sort of like the facebook comments from ugly americans over the earthquake and tsunami in japan (click on the facebook image after it loads to enlarge so you can read it).

2 comments:

solobreak said...

If you want to lose faith in humankind, just read comments on boston.com. Doesn't matter what the story is about. It must just be what people with no hobbies nor interests who have nothing of value to say do to fuck off at work.

Cambridge is supposed to be pretty aggressive about ticketing riders for traffic violations too.

No matter how you look at it, any funds devoted to cycling are going to be a drop in a bucket compared with overall expenses on transportation infrastructure in a city like Cambridge. I do get sick of the typical cyclist holier-than-thou attitude and sense of entitlement but in this case I think Cambridge is probably looking at real numbers and taking a sensible approach. The portion of people using bikes for transportation is not as tiny as other places and they are acting accordingly.

I know I'm not making any sense. I should head over to boston.com

zencycle said...

RE: funds - I was thinking more of the big picture, and how people generally speaking would prefer the money be spent on fixing potholes rather than bike repair stations. I can see that point, since roadways in good repair benefit motorists _and_ cyclists. But still, the $1000 dollar price tag is probably 1/10th of the monthly graft taken by each city councillor, so half a dozen 'drops in the bucket' over the course of a year isn't exactly significant.

I actually have a spacebar dent in my forehead some days from reading comments on news websites. I've learned to not scroll past the comments heading in general.