A pilot program of bus/truck lanes and protected bike lanes on Summer Street is underway, but in an increasingly common move city officials are silent on how exactly they’ll judge whether the program is a success or a failure.
City planners are wrapping up work on their renovations to the premier route from the Downtown to South Boston and the Seaport, adding a range of improvements to alternative transit that they say will be permanent if well received.
The most prominent addition, added in September, is that of a combined bus/truck lane. Business heavy areas like the Seaport and Newmarket have been reluctant to embrace the now ubiquitous bus/bike lanes due to their reliance on large-scale commercial shipments.
Allowing semi-trucks to use the bus lane while preserving and reinforcing existing separate bicycle infrastructure apparently placated the area’s businesses, at least for the pilot. “The City of Boston has worked closely alongside MassPort and the Boston Convention Center and Exhibition staff throughout the planning and development stages of this pilot. Additionally, the city has received support from area stakeholders for this pilot such as from the Fort Point Neighborhood Association,” said a spokesperson for the Boston Transportation Department (BTD).
Those bike lanes are the highlight of the latest round of work, begun in late September and expected to finish sometime in early October depending on weather. The city is installing plastic bollards along the bike lane, although the bridge segment is delayed slightly due to standard flex posts not playing well with the concrete of the Summer Street Bridge.
While it’s certainly better than bumping elbows with cars, it’s worth noting that Boston’s cyclist groups have objected to the use of “protected bike lane” to describe nonstructural elements like bollards. While the Boston Cyclist Union has said it’s grateful for compromise solutions like bollards that alert drivers when they’re drifting into the cycling lane, the real infrastructure they’re chasing are concrete barriers or curbs between bikes and traffic.
The latest round of work will also bring fresh roadway striping to the street, and a new signal system including designated bicyclist signals that will go online as soon as striping is in place.
BTD officials were notably short on detail, however, when it came to exactly how they’d be judging whether the program is a success to be permanently implemented. Their statement did say that public comment and traffic would be taken into consideration, but they declined to comment beyond that.
“The city will evaluate community feedback and traffic impact from the pilot to determine the future of any permanent traffic changes,” read the entirety of their statement on evaluation criteria.
Some insight can be found in public documents, although details are again sparse. “Community and business” feedback will be gathered through “a variety of methods such as public surveys,” according to the pilot’s design document. That document says the program will run for six months, collecting traffic data twice for comparison to existing conditions in a final “Pilot Evaluation Report.” Specifics like how those surveys will be distributed, whether the city will attempt to create a representative sample, what goal or objective threshold would determine success versus failure and who will make the final call on whether to implement the changes permanently all went unanswered.
