Building Boston Better:
The Car/Bike Swap

Horns blare violently, shouting erupts in the distance, and brakes screech. It's afternoon rush hour on Huntington Avenue and a caravan containing Boston's hungry, exhausted, and frustrated workforce inches towards Brookline. For drivers sitting miserably stagnant in this chaotic scene, the relative serenity of Huntington Avenue's bus and bike lane is conspicuous. With bumper-to-bumper traffic overflowing the road's single car lane, commuters eye its newly marked bus- and bike-only lane longingly.

Huntington Avenue is just one of many thoroughfares where Boston's government now prioritizes bikers over drivers. Since 2008, officials have poured thousands of hours and millions of dollars into constructing over 90 miles worth of dedicated bike lanes throughout and around the city. But not everybody buys into the city's vision: a palpable tension between hopeful bikers and disheartened drivers often erupts into heated arguments, whether at committee meetings or on the streets. Both groups know that the future of Boston commuting hinges on this moment and neither is willing to back down without a fight.

Between 2008 and 2016 Boston's bikers tripled in number, according to an analysis of traffic data from the city. While Boston matched this spike in cyclists with investments in biking infrastructure, it remains one of the world's most congested cities for motorists: on average, drivers spend upwards of 130 hours in traffic each year.

Nevertheless, Boston's transit timetable has officials setting their sights on one of the city's most prominent thoroughfares: Boylston Street. Among Boston's top 10 most-dangerous streets for Bikers, city officials hope that constructing a separated bike lane on Boylston will make transit more accessible and improve safety.

But, since the city announced its plans, concerned drivers have made their opposition known. With local groups like the Back Bay Association and the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay leading the charge, residents are blaming bike lanes lanes for a major reduction in capacity for vehicular traffic.

Montez Haywood, a candidate for District 8's city council seat, says that taking away a lane of traffic on Boylston will make traffic even worse. At the same time, Haywood argues that a separated lane would increase the number of interactions between turning cars and bikers, endangering bikers: it's safer to have the bikers ride with the flow of traffic than adding additional points of contact, he said.

Haywood subscribes to the vehicular cycling school of bicycle safety advocated in John Forester's book, Effective Cycling which argues that cyclists are safest when they join car lanes and follow the rules of the road. The theory conflicts with more modern research on cycling safety.

In 2019, civil engineering professor at the University of New Mexico Nicholas Ferenchak found that the frequency of separated or protected bike lanes in large cities — bike lanes that are physically distinguished from car lanes — was associated with reduced fatal traffic accidents for both drivers and bikers. In 2023, research by the Federal Highway Administration confirmed his findings.

Ferenchak believes that drivers need to think of the bigger picture. While the process of building bike lanes may temporarily worsen traffic, he likens this to growing pains and says that more people will switch from driving to biking as Boston improves its infrastructure. Hopefully people will see that these investments will help them by alleviating congestion.

Peter Furth, a professor of civil engineering at Northeastern University, largely agrees. In a popular big city, [if] you make roads, [drivers] will fill them. The demand for driving is two times what we provide. Furth says that to alleviate traffic long-term, We should be providing better alternatives so that people don't have to drive. He argues that improving cycling infrastructure is one such better alternative, If you make it safe then, people will come and ride.

Passersby on Boylston mirror Ferenchak and Furths' sentiments. Britta Egeland, a Back Bay resident, supports Boylston's proposed bike lane because we need more safe alternatives for transportation. Kate Collins, a resident of Chinatown, says that bike lanes make streets much safer and that designated bike lanes increase the number of people who will come into Back Bay.

City officials hope to complete construction by December 2023 and see the move as one step closer to fulfilling previous Boston mayor Thomas Menino's 2009 dream: The car is no longer king in Boston.