Great: Local news mag show Chronicle just aired a piece on Northampton MA, and featured the city’s planned redesign of Main Street for ped and bike safety!
Greater: That proposed redesign includes the sweet double-tree-row portico for bicyclists!
Remember like ten years ago when protected bike lanes were only smattered about in a few big cities and ultra-progressive university cities, and now low-key cities of 29k people like Northampton are doing premium-quality reconstructions like this?
@bikepedantic also Northampton is an ultra-progressive university city. They have Smith College. (One of the 5 colleges in the area) Easthampton (next door) has a private highschool that costs $90k a yr.
Not to rain on your parade. I'm really excited too, it's just been a lot. There's a ton of other awesome in the pipeline for the Pioneer Valley. Holyoke should look like this in 5+ years too. The progress being made in Hadley is also impressive.
Now if we could just get Springfield on board.
@alexisdyslexic @bikepedantic I don't think even the big cities have caught on yet to how Paris or even Jersey City has shifted the conversation from being about a hypothetical cross-section on a few blocks "late next year maybe" to having a usable low-stress bikeway network throughout the city right now. Portland has certainly been too slow to build too little separation, every city is missing their #VisionZero goals by a decade or more at this rate.
@alexisdyslexic @bikepedantic I get that people need to see a built example of what it could be like, but what actually decides whether you have bike ridership or car congestion, is the A to B experience for all trips being easy and convenient by biking, walking, and transit, and not having free / cheap parking everywhere particularly at the expense of the exact locations where you could have a usable bike network. I don't see how we'll get there politically or otherwise except comprehensively.
@enobacon @bikepedantic Northampton is actually removing parking spaces (which is what the business store owners are up in arms about) and started charging more per hour on Main St then in the parking garage (one block away) the stuff people are saying tho... someone said in a meeting 'parking garages are abilest' (there's 4 handicap parking spots right next to a sky ramp into the shopping center).
The parking garage is .75 cents an hour and never full. Usually have 200 hundred extra spots.
@enobacon @alexisdyslexic @bikepedantic you forgot that it's also free for the first hour and has four EV charging bays. Honestly, the Thornes Garage is a big part of what makes Northampton as walkable as it is, but there's still way too much vehicular traffic on Main Street.
@colby @alexisdyslexic @bikepedantic how much of that traffic is circling for parking?
@enobacon @colby @bikepedantic there's like 6 giantic surface parking lots + the parking garage. Within a 5 block radius.
If they are driving around looking for parking it's because they are lazy bones.
Unfortunately Northampton has the most happening downtown for a county of 20+ rural towns so everyone drive in with their Ford 150's to go to dinner. The Hill towns their called.
@enobacon @bikepedantic we finally actually started talking about vision zero in our last meeting & the MPO just won $1 million for planning. So maybe we might actually do something ??
I actually mentioned Jersey City in the last meeting. And they said they had read about it.
@alexisdyslexic @bikepedantic that’s all great, but we also need better, more, and more frequent rail service. Vermont New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts used to have a gigantic sprawling rail network. Time to put those corridors back to their full potential and also improve connections to places in New York as well.
@bikepedantic yes. It’s kind of amazing. Still scared for the future as a whole, but the slow and steady progress with biking infrastructure is a positive thing!
@bikepedantic oh man, Northampton has all the drama tho. Buisness owners (who live out of town and drive in) are trying to push back on the design. The opinion page of the Hampshire Gazette has been off the charts.
I get a front row seat as I live one town over and we're trying to do the same thing and I'm the MassBike Rep for the region. Northampton should be all set tho, they should be at 75% or 100% design & currently scheduled for construction in '25 (which actually means Oct this year).