Cycles of change

The commuter

by Jason Gay

Michael Hering is a lucky guy. He can walk across the street from his home in West Medford and hop aboard an MBTA commuter rail train that can deposit him close to his workplace in downtown Boston in less than half an hour. Not a bad commute, right?

But rare is the day that Hering rides the rails. Instead, the brown-haired, clean-cut 33-year-old is usually out of the house shortly after

8 a.m., navigating his red Bridgestone bike through parts of Medford, Somerville, and Cambridge before crossing the Longfellow Bridge into Boston, where he works as an assistant attorney general in the state's Consumer Protection and Antitrust division. Hering makes this trip 12 months a year -- on days like today, when the pavement's hot enough to broil a flank steak, and when it's so cold that people wear earmuffs for a two-block walk down the street.

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The cop
The couriers
The competitor

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Train or no train, Hering thinks there's no better way of getting to work than bicycling. "Riding gives me great flexibility," he says. "I don't have to worry about the train schedule, or getting on the train when it's packed and sweaty and the air conditioning is broken -- that's unpleasant. I get on my bike and it's relaxing."

But Hering is frustrated at how poorly Boston treats its bike commuters. To illustrate his point, he takes a visitor into the bowels of his workplace, the John W. McCormack building on Beacon Hill. Here, amid a sea of automobile parking spaces, the only space for cyclists is a meager, decrepit bike rack. Two racks were removed to make space for motorcycles, Hering says. And he, like the rest of the McCormack staff, must make do with a broom closet of a locker room. (Female employees, with no locker facility of their own, have it even worse: they must share a cramped space with state police troopers.)

"They could be doing a lot more around here to encourage cycling," Hering says after exiting the underground lot. "Bicyclists have been shafted for the past 40 years. Ever since World War II, highway planners and city planners have accommodated the automobile, and it's evolved into a mutual dependency."

Indeed, simply getting to and from the McCormack building is an adventure. Hering says his commute can be a roller coaster of various hazards -- not the least of which are automobile drivers, who are often oblivious to bicyclists. A few days ago, a driver nearly sideswiped him on the roadway. "She said, `You're not a car,' " Hering recalls, shaking his head.

Hering admits he's not above talking back to drivers, or even writing down the license plate numbers of cars that cut him off. But Hering, who raced competitively in his 20s -- he reached Category II status, equivalent to

Triple A for baseball players -- knows better than to pick a fight with a sports-utility vehicle or a semi. A friend of his once had his legs crushed when he was run over by a truck.

And Hering himself narrowly escaped injury recently when he was struck from behind by an elderly driver near his house.

Despite these brushes with danger, Hering's convinced he's found the ideal way to get to work. So don't wait for him at the turnstile.

"I still love it," Hering says. "On a day like today, you couldn't get me on a train."

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.