Transportation

Car free

by Michael Blanding

Riding a bike down the leafy Fenway, it's easy to forget you're in the city -- that is, until the bike path slams without warning into the six lanes of noxious traffic where Route 9 meets the Jamaicaway. To get to the other side, cyclists must head a block down a narrow pedestrian-filled sidewalk to cross at a traffic light, then straddle a narrow cement island halfway across and wait for a second light while cars and trucks race by at close range.

Sound like fun? A group of cyclists thinks the crossing, like many in the city, is an ER visit waiting to happen. On September 21, they'll put their pedals to the metal to protest Boston's car-centered transportation scheme. Along with a smattering of pedestrians and transit riders, the cyclists will join an international celebration of car-free transport and block the Route 9-J-way intersection to bring visibility to their cause.

The occasion is World Car-Free Day, an event cooked up by Czech-based Car Busters (www.carbusters.ecn.cz) in which protesters across the globe will collectively thumb their noses at internal combustion. In Boston, group rides from area bike shops will converge at the intersection and form a continuously moving circle around the crossing. Although the protesters promise nonviolence, Suzanne Hunt, co-owner of Cambridge's Broadway Bicycle School, says that the group will block traffic, and that individual members may risk arrest in a show of civil disobedience.

Carl Kurtz, overseas development coordinator of Bikes Not Bombs, says that drastic measures are necessary to call attention to Boston's wrong-headed transportation priorities. "For a cosmopolitan city, we're the laughingstock of the world," says Kurtz. "One hundred and fifty cities in Italy have institutionalized car-free day. Here in Boston we're spending $14.3 billion on a federally funded car project."

The Metropolitan District Commission completed a study of the Route 9 crossing in 1994 in which it agreed to put in a traffic light timed specifically for non-car cross-traffic, according to Jeff Ferris of the Emerald Necklace Greenway Project. "We said, `Great, thank you,' and then we left," says Ferris. "But despite them saying they were committed, the reality is they weren't very committed at all." Since the traffic light was approved, the project has languished without funding.

Meanwhile, bicyclists and pedestrians tangle daily with a network of bike paths and park trails that remains incomplete and confusing at best. "We shouldn't only be thinking about crossing Route 9, we should be thinking of how we are going to get from Franklin Park to the Charles River," says Ferris. "Cities across the country say, `I wish we had a greenway, but where would we put it?' Boston has this beautiful legacy, but we can't use it the way it was intended."

Transportation commissioner Andrea D'Amato promises that this will be addressed in Mayor Menino's ambitious transportation master plan -- dubbed Access Boston 2000-2010 -- which will be unveiled this fall. "We've all recognized one of our greatest assets is in linking our park systems," she says, explaining that the city has been working with the Bicycle Advocacy Committee to identify areas where the connections could be made better.

Car-Free Day takes place September 21. Group rides leave Bikes Not Bombs (59 Amory Street, Roxbury) at 4:30 p.m. and Broadway Bicycle School (351 Broadway, Cambridge) at 5:15 p.m. They will converge at the intersection of Route 9 and the Jamaicaway at 5:45 p.m. For more information, call (781) 393-0252, ext. 2.