As of Friday morning, it's still a work in progress – crews were installing new bollards near Blossom Street and working their way west towards the Charles River, and some pavement markings remain to be painted.
So it's no surprise that, even before the new lane has been fully installed this week, dozens of bicycle users were already using the new facility on Thursday afternoon.
For various technical and political reasons, the City of Boston has no immediate plans to install a protected bike lane on the other side of Cambridge Street, from the Longfellow Bridge to City Hall Plaza.
Bike safety advocates are hopeful that the city could fill that eastbound gap in the downtown bike network with a new protected bike lane on Charles Street, which isn’t a parallel route, but could provide an attractive route from the Longfellow Bridge to downtown Boston via the new bikeways around the Boston Common and Public Garden.