Boston is reviewing its street infrastructure, which could lead to some of the bicycle and bus lanes that were added over the last few years being removed.
During an interview on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio Tuesday, Mayor Michelle Wu said some work was already being done to remove “flex posts” separating bike and car lanes on some streets. Calling the posts, which bend to prevent damage if they are hit by a vehicle, her “personal pet peeve,” she added, that they had always been meant to be temporary.
“It’s basically been an experiment in how we can quickly and temporarily prioritize the safety of cyclists and pedestrians, even if it ends up not looking how it should or not feeling like the roadways are as usable for everyone else as well,” she said. “I truly believe that there’s a way to balance the needs of delivery trucks [that] have to serve our small businesses, of pedestrians, of drivers and of cyclists, and that we have to constantly be in an iterative conversation to get that right.”
StreetsblogMASS reported last month that an internal memo was being circulated in City Hall about a 30-day review of street infrastructure installed over the last three years, including bike and bus lanes and speed bumps.
Then-Mayor Tom Menino launched Boston Bikes in 2007 to create a network of bike lanes throughout the city. Under Wu, bicycle infrastructure work ramped up, with the city announcing a 9.4-mile network expansion in 2022.
While cyclists and public transit advocates have praised the efforts, others have loudly complained about the loss of parking spots and exacerbated traffic in what some consider to be the fourth most traffic-congested city in the country.
Last month, the city said it would remove a bus lane from Boylston Street that was created in 2022, while the Orange Line was shut down and made permanent last year. Wu said Tuesday that milling would begin on the street this weekend to remove the painted markings, with repaving expected about two weeks later.
The decision was made, she said, because the lane “wasn’t being used as a bus lane” due to the dense traffic on Boylston Street.
In the case of the flex post-separated bike lanes, Wu said the city needed to reflect on and evaluate their effectiveness and, where needed, replace them with permanent solutions like raised curbs or elevated pathways.
“The goal is where it’s working, keep it, move it into something that is permanent, that is beautiful, that is fitting of how all of our street users should feel when they’re on the street,” she said.
Mayoral candidate Josh Kraft has made bike lanes a campaign issue, promising, if elected, to immediately pause all new bike lane construction during his official campaign launch in early February.
But Wu has defended bike lanes and emphasized Tuesday that they were not going away completely.
“This is not about saying we don’t need bike lanes. We very much need safe, protected infrastructure for more people to use our streets,” she said. “But we also need to recognize that the more jobs we’re adding, the more housing we’re adding, our streets are only so big, and we have to have safe ways for people to get around.”
