The Boston Transportation Department has been busy paving and re-configuring several key streets in the Back Bay neighborhood to make new cross-town connections in the city's growing network of protected bike lanes.
The city has installed new parking-protected bike lanes in the past month on segments of Berkeley Street and Arlington Street.
The new bikeways provide a new north-south route that connects downtown Boston to the city's existing Tremont Street protected bike lanes through the South End.
On Berkeley Street (pictured above), the protected bike lane that had previously ended at Columbus Avenue has been extended several blocks further to Commonwealth Avenue, with a connection to the new bikeway on Boylston Street:
One block to the east, the city has created a complementary southbound bikeway on Arlington Street.
Previously, there had already been a protected bike lane on Arlington between Beacon Street and Boyslton, along the edge of the Public Garden. Now, that lane has been extended through Bay Village into the South End.
At the Interstate 90 overpass, the new bike route jogs left on short new contra-flow bike lane on Marginal Road before connecting to the Tremont Street bikeway:
More bike infrastructure coming soon on Beacon, Dartmouth
The city has also finished its re-paving projects along the Beacon Street protected bike lane from the Public Garden to Massachusetts Avenue and on Dartmouth Street north of Copley Square.
As of last Friday, both streets had yet to receive their new pavement markings, but when they do, the city will gain two more links in its bike network.
Crucially, the city's plans for Beacon Street include a new parking-protected bike lane along the southern curb between Arlington Street and Berkeley Street – a block where bike traffic had previously been forced to share lanes with cars and trucks.
