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.
