SO HOW did Cambridge — Cambridge? — a city known for its stellar commitment to cycling, wind up with such a poorly designed sidepath? Although Cambridge officials initiated and funded the Fresh Pond revitalization, they had to seek final approval from the state Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), which owns Fresh Pond Parkway. Cara Seiderman, the city’s transportation manager who oversees bike projects, explains that officials aimed to recapture "the parkway feel" of the area by installing aesthetic improvements, such as new lights and trees, and by accommodating traffic. "Our goal was to make it easier for people to walk, bike, and drive," she says. Cambridge Bicycle Committee member Ted Hamann, who sat on the project’s citizen-advisory group in 1996, explains that he and his cycling colleagues pushed for things that would benefit everyone by connecting the Concord Avenue neighborhoods to Fresh Pond, the Alewife Brook Parkway, and points beyond. Adds Hamann, "We wanted a system that works for people who are used to biking, as well as those who aren’t."

To hear Cambridge’s defenders tell it, the sidepath is the result of the MDC’s unresponsiveness to cyclists, not Cambridge’s. The city, they say, suggested widening the road to construct on-road bike lanes — yet the MDC refused. The city proposed replacing the two rotaries with cyclist-friendly four-way intersections — to no avail. Cambridge even had to fight for the new Concord Avenue pedestrian crosswalk, which lets people walk across the busy street to enter the pond area. When the MDC argued that the crosswalk would slow traffic, Cambridge officials enlisted the help of state politicians to pressure the MDC, which eventually caved.

Thus, the city was left with only one option for cyclists: a sidepath, even though it marks a clear departure from the designated bike lanes that exist throughout the city. Michael Halle, who heads the Cambridge Bicycle Committee, explains that "in an ideal world" the city would have built something different. But given the constraints placed upon it, he adds, "This [path] was the best we could do." Might Cambridge have applied more pressure for a safer bike path? Not likely. Says Halle, "The land is the MDC’s, so the leverage that Cambridge had for any issue wasn’t very much."

Seiderman puts it more bluntly: "The MDC had limits. We accepted them."

The MDC, for its part, stands behind the path. MDC planning director Julie O’Brien says that her department had to consider not only all three modes of transportation — car, bike, and foot — but also the parkway’s historic character. It wanted room for trees and lights, which ruled out widening the road for bike lanes. Meanwhile, it had to respect private landowners’ existing driveways — or purchase the seven properties. In short, O’Brien says, "This [path] is a creative attempt to accommodate everyone in what is a historically limited roadway."

DESPITE ITS FLAWS, the Concord Avenue sidepath probably would have been installed without incident were it not for Allen. In Cambridge, cyclists who knew about the path’s dubious design, such as Halle and Hamann, seem grateful to have received the morsels of attention that the MDC bestowed upon them. The controversy didn’t begin brewing until the revitalization project was nearly complete, when, on May 10, Allen scrolled through the listserv on the Web site of the Massachusetts Bike Coalition, a Boston advocacy group. He discovered that Cambridge was planning a gala event May 19 honoring Fresh Pond’s new face. The news prompted Allen to voice his objections. "I am just wondering what there is to celebrate about the two-way bicycle sidepath on the north side of Concord Avenue," he wrote in an e-mail. The path, he continued, "is among the worst I have ever seen.... Excuse me, but what in the name of God were they thinking?"

The question set off a heated, back-and-forth debate among bike advocates, most of whom decry Cambridge for building this type of path. In e-mail after e-mail, with a passion usually reserved for discussion of juicy romantic entanglements, cyclists have condemned the path as "a nightmare" that’s "more dangerous than it was before." One cyclist offered up this observation: "It is every sort of horrible and senseless and confusing and inadequate and dangerous as any critic might want to express, in fact."

The criticism even managed to find its way to the May 19 celebration, which took place at the newly unveiled Fresh Pond Park. As Cambridge mayor Michael Sullivan and other city and state officials mounted a tent-covered podium to praise the renovation, a handful of cyclists including Allen and Mass Bike board member Tom Revay — a self-described "somewhat hard-core" cyclist who averages 6000 miles per year — made their concerns known in a quiet-yet-attention-grabbing manner. Allen, sporting a bright-yellow windbreaker, black tights, and a bike helmet with a rear-view mirror, wandered through a crowd of people who were munching on free hot dogs and sipping free sodas. He passed out leaflets that read WATCH OUT! THE FRESH POND ROTARY PATH IS DANGEROUS!, pressing them into people’s hands and, in an ominous voice, whispering, "Part of this project is not what it should be." After an hour or so of protest, he took in the scene, shook his head in disbelief, and then wondered aloud, as if addressing city and state officials, "But should you encourage people to ride bikes by creating hazardous facilities? That is the question."

Of course, it’s way too late to change the path — after all, it’s there, and the city has already contributed its $1.6 million share to the Fresh Pond project. So bike advocates are now focusing on something else — that is, making the existing path safer. Some are pushing for such changes as stop signs and stop lines to mitigate the dangers at the path’s intersections. Others want to post SHARE THE ROAD signs on the street so motorists know that cyclists can ride there. Still others want the city to remove the bike-striping altogether. "Just leave it a sidewalk," Revay says. "It’s safer that way."

Whether officials will oblige is an open question. Although some people in Cambridge agree with the critics — Hamann, for one, acknowledges that the sidepath "is hazardous; there’s no way around it" — city and state officials paint a different picture. When asked about possible modifications, Seiderman replies, "If people have suggestions, they’d have to be made to me and approved by the MDC." But she is quick to note that she’s ridden on the path and hasn’t felt "particularly at risk." O’Brien, on the other hand, dismisses the safety complaints. "At this point," she says, "I see no need to do anything more" to fix the path.

The consequences of that attitude are not lost on Allen. If the sidepath stays the same, he’s ready to predict the worst: one day, a motorist pulling into a driveway will run down a cyclist. Somebody, cycling too fast, will get hurt. "This is not a game," Allen says. "This sidepath will cost lives. I guarantee it."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com