Bicycling

Sound Familiar?

With nothing much happening in the American League East this Fall, we've been turning our attention to Boston's burgeoning Livable Street movement instead. Last year a fellow named Jeff Rosenblum founded an organization called the Livable Streets Alliance that is setting out to do work similar to that of New York City's Transportation Alternatives. Jeff's group appears to be doing a good job of moving the issues up on Boston's civic agenda. Last week's Boston Globe ran a story on a City Counci member's efforts to transform a congested street in Little Italy into a pedestrian piazza and an op/ed arguing:

By Aaron Naparstek

11:40 AM EDT on September 8, 2006

With nothing much happening in the American League East this Fall, we’ve been turning our attention to Boston’s burgeoning Livable Street movement instead. Last year a fellow named Jeff Rosenblum founded an organization called the Livable Streets Alliance that is setting out to do work similar to that of New York City’s Transportation Alternatives. Jeff’s group appears to be doing a good job of moving the issues up on Boston’s civic agenda. Last week’s Boston Globe ran a story on a City Counci member’s efforts to transform a congested street in Little Italy into a pedestrian piazza and an op/ed arguing:

BOSTON SHOULD be one of the best cities in the United States in which to ride a bike. It’s beautiful, it’s largely flat, and it has wide avenues that could easily accommodate cars and bikes together. It also boasts the Emerald Necklace, the Paul Dudley White Memorial Bicycle Path, and the upcoming South Bay Harbor Trail, some of the country’s most scenic and useful bike paths.

Change the name of these “scenic and useful bike paths” to “Hudson River Greenway” and you may as well be describing New York City. Of course, as in baseball and most other things, it sounds like in New York City is still way ahead of Boston when it comes to bike-friendliness and Livable Streets.

Aaron Naparstek

Aaron Naparstek is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparstek's journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. He was also one of the original cast members of the "War on Cars" podcast. You can find more of his work on his website.

Bicycling | Livable Streets | Out of Town

Streetsblog has migrated to a new comment system. New commenters can register directly in the comments section of any article. Returning commenters: your previous comments and display name have been preserved, but you'll need to reclaim your account by clicking "Forgot your password?" on the sign-in form, entering your email, and following the verification link to set a new password — this is required because passwords could not be carried over during the migration. For questions, contact tips@streetsblog.org.