Rearranging Boston

Bluebikes in Boston. Originally Hubway, Bluebikes is a bicycle sharing system in the Boston metropolitan area. The system is owned by the municipalities of Boston, Cambridge, Everett, Somerville and Brookline, and is operated by Motivate.

 From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Boston is starting to implement new street-narrowing,  traffic-calming, bike-lane creation and sidewalk-widening plans that will make parts of the city’s very dense urban core more pleasant.

Mass.streets.blog.org summarized the program in May, when it reported:

“The initial plans include a network of new protected bike lanes across downtown Boston and around the Public Garden, expanded bus stop waiting areas, and processes to let restaurants expand their outdoor seating areas on sidewalks and on-street parking lanes.’’

The new bike lanes are already being set up, albeit not yet permanently; cones are being used, not concrete or metal barriers.

Some of these plans were in the works before COVID-19, but the pandemic has jump- started some of them to encourage social distancing and boost walking and bike riding by COVID-cautious people worried about taking public transportation (though those concerns have been found to be exaggerated).

Sidewalks in most American cities are too narrow. Widening them for restaurants, outdoor retail stores and other functions will add to cities’ liveability.

Anything that discourages car traffic and encourages walking and bike riding and, yes, a return to public transportation in center cities, will improve their quality of life and help lure back residents, businesses and tourists who fled because of the virus.

It should be said, by the way, that density per se does not present a COVID-19 peril. Consider how well Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei have kept virus cases down to a handful. That’s probably in part because of lessons from the East Asian-based SARS epidemic, in 2002-04

And note that virus cases are much lower in  densely populated and affluent downtown Boston than in neighborhoods a little further out with more poor people. To reduce your chances of getting sick with COVID, live in a rich, orderly neighborhood where people follow mask and social-distancing guidelines and lose weight while you’re at it. But back to reality….

Of course  it’s easier for rich folks to leave town in pandemics and  to avoid crowded places.

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