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The Wild West, as yet unconquered

The Wild West? West of Massachusetts Avenue, that is, where sidepaths have yet to be installed.

In the left foreground of the photo below is an MIT Police cruiser parked halfway up on the sidewalk next to the Dupont Armory, just west of Massachusetts Avenue. But also, note the two large trucks parked back to back, unloading, on the far side of the street near the end of the large brick building, the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse.


008_5AVassar Street cropped.jpg (22603 bytes)


Where the police cars are supposed to park after the sidepaths are built is not clear. There is already too little room  in the parking pad next to Dupont. But stranger yet, the plan for the second phase of the project would place the westbound sidepath between the truck loading zone and the sidewalk. The drawing below is from actual plans for the project. The blue arrow points to the sidepath and the red arrow points to the loading zone.

Trucks unload here frequently. There are photos on a different page of this site that coincidentally show another truck unloading.


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There is a precedent in the USA for placement of bicycle facilities behind truck loading zones. In 1980, following a transit strike, New York City installed barrier-separated bike lanes on a couple of Manhattan Avenues. The bike lanes were like sidepaths, physically separated from the roadway, but at street level behind a raised berm. The barriers were removed after only a few months, following a rash of serious car-bike crashes, as well as complaints from businesses and from truckers. Some of the problems: ramps from the side of a truck could not be used, because they would have blocked the bike lane. Trundling hand trucks up and down over the berm while looking for bicyclists was difficult and hazardous. Bicyclists passing between standing trucks and the sidewalk were hidden from motorists turning across the bike lane at the next cross street.

But let's get back to Vassar Street. The proposed westbound sidepath continues past the entrance to MIT's West Parking Garage, visible in the background of the photo above. Hundreds of vehicles enter and leave this garage every morning and evening. Then the sidepath passes several smaller buildings, some parking lots, and the new Simmons Dormitory.

Oddly, the artist's rendering of the entrance to the Simmons Dormitory below, from an MIT Web page publicizing the Vassar Street project, does not show the sidepath. Perhaps the artist understood that bicycle traffic would disturb the impression of contemplative quiet that the picture attempts to convey. The outdoor seating area in the background blocks much of the sidewalk, too.

Two-way bicycle traffic would be particularly heavy here, because there is to be no crosswalk directly in front of the dorm to take student bicyclists to the eastbound sidepath on the far side of Vassar Street.


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