Letter to the Editor: 'Misinformation Abounds About Beacon Street Cycletracks'

Editor's note: The author of this letter, Alex Epstein, is a Beacon Street resident and chair of the Somerville Bicycle Committee. He is writing in response to a boisterous public meeting, held Tuesday night, about a plans to reconstruct Beacon Street.

Here's what Epstein wrote:

I was surprised and extremely disappointed by a number of false and misleading statements, made at Tuesday night's Beacon Street reconstruction meeting, against improving bicycle facilities. I feel compelled to set the record straight with the vocal critics who've shown no bounds in their factual creativity opposing the project. And now they've even got the ear of an elected official.

It was claimed that "the majority of the neighborhood" opposes the project, and a 700 signature petition was cited. Yet NO ONE acknowledged the Boston Cyclist Union petition with over 1,000 local signatures in favor of Beacon Street cycletracks. Has anyone bothered to look at the 700 signatures on the "resident" petition? Has anyone counted how many signatures are from Tewksbury, Reading, Fall River, and other "local" neighborhoods? If anyone actually talked to the majority of the people on Beacon Street, door to door, I think their conclusion about "the majority of the neighborhood" would be very different.

"Cycletracks versus transit"—another new volley against cycletracks. Whoever came up with this idea selectively forgot that cycletracks on Vassar Street have functioned well with MIT Shuttle bus stops for years and that if you extend the curb next to a cycletrack into the roadway just like any other curb extension, that you've got yourself a great bus stop. See the Western Avenue project in Cambridge. Or just go to Cambridge Street in Cambridge to see how "bike lanes versus transit" are working out pretty smoothly with curb extensions since the early 2000s. (P.S. Not moving the 83 bus back to Beacon Street has absolutely nothing to do with cycletracks.)

Another bit of misinformation is the cycletracks-and-bike-lanes-are-deathtraps statements issued forth from an extreme group of "vehicular cyclists," who sincerely believe that bicycles are cars and should not be "driven" slower than 25 mph. They say if there's a new separate place on the street for bikes that is 15 mph, more protected, and comfortable for the majority of the non-spandexed population, bicyclists will die. Pedestrians will be hit. The sky will fall. I'd like to hear just one documented example where public health, safety, or businesses have suffered because a city installed a protected bike lane that they later regretted.  

But it was the last statement that really made people like me bristle.

It was proclaimed that Beacon Street will be built with "Gas Tax Money." Gee, that sound an awful lot like, "bikers and pedestrians pay nothing for the roads, so they should be grateful for whatever they get!" I work at the USDOT, so I have some understanding of who's paying for Beacon Street. With the Highway Trust Fund going broke, more and more general funds are siphoned from the U.S. Treasury—$21 billion the last time I checked. But wait, that's Income Tax Money! And because we all buy stuff everyday delivered by trucks and trains that burn fuel, we're all paying gas taxes, whether we want to or not. These gas taxes, by the way, fund no more than 60 percent of state road expenditures, and therefore no more than 60 percent of Beacon Street. And that's if you just take Beacon Street in a vacuum, ignoring the fact that bicyclists and pedestrians use local roads most of the time, which account for two-thirds of Massachusetts roads. How much do you think gas taxes pay for our 23,710 miles of Mass local roads? A whopping 8 percent. The rest is my income tax, sales tax, and really anything BUT the gas tax. If you glance at this Victoria Policy Institute report, you'll see that bicyclists and pedestrians actually pay MORE than their fair share of taxes for using public roads. People who bike and walk subsidize people who drive, not the other way around!

Widespread ignorance of this fact (see "Gas Tax Money," above) fuels antagonism toward bicyclists like we heard Tuesday, and it holds us back from building a better Somerville that aspires to the Comprehensive Plan. Let's finally acknowledge this reality and think about how to invest in our Beacon Street neighborhood, not just for this generation, but for the next.