Boston Rising: Nicole Freedman and the Emergence of a Bike-Friendly City

The Boston metro area has always had plenty of cyclists. But other than a few fantastic greenways like the Minuteman Trail and some forward-thinking bike lanes in Cambridge, they haven’t had many good places to ride. In fact, until recently it wasn’t uncommon to hear murmurs that Boston was the worst biking city in the country.

But that’s all starting to change. In 2007, Mayor Thomas Menino hired Nicole Freedman — a former Olympic cyclist — as his “bike czar” to head up an initiative called Boston Bikes. Though the city still has quite a ways to go, Boston is shaking off decades of bike rust, and officials are advancing plans to become more bike-friendly. This April, Menino told a gathering of cyclists at the city’s first Bicycling Safety Summit that “the car is no longer king in Boston.”

Streetfilms was recently in town, and we got to spend a few minutes with Nicole in between her busy schedule to file this report.