Eyes On the Street: the New Boylston Street Bike Lane In Back Bay

Earlier this month, Boston’s Transportation Department put the finishing touches on a major new protected bike lane on Boylston Street through the heart of Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.

We took a ride on the new bikeway last week at the tail end of the heat wave, and in spite of the temperatures, we found our palms were dryer and our pulse was slower than it had been on previous bike rides we’d taken when Boylston was a three-lane free-for-all of double-parked cars and drag racers.

The western end of the new bike lane begins at Massachusetts Avenue, where a high-rise construction site has renovated the streetscape with improved crosswalks and new curbs to protect the bike lane from motor vehicles (note that this block of Boylston is about to be repaved, so the bike lane markings aren’t there yet):

Two blocks further east, Boylston goes from being a two-way street to a one-way (eastbound) street at its intersection with Dalton and Hereford Streets. On the far side of that intersection, the bike lane zig-zags across the intersection to land on the northern curb.

When we were out taking these photos on Thursday afternoon, we didn’t actually see anyone using this crossing; instead, most riders were looking over their shoulder and merging through the middle of the intersection to cross over to the other side, like this guy:

Note how this design also dramatically shortened the distance where pedestrians are exposed to moving vehicle traffic in the crosswalk on the east side of Hereford Street.

Here’s a video of a fast-paced ride along the new bikeway from local bike advocacy hero Peter Cheung: