Taking up the Beacon Street Guantlet

A previous post showed the abrupt end to the new Beacon St. bike lane at the "Garden City" welcome sign in Newton. It's time for Newton to take up the challenge of making its stretch of Beacon Street bike friendly. A good start was the "Share the Road" signs by the Bike and Pedestrian Task Force working with the city. There is plenty of further low hanging fruit between Chestnut Hill and Wellesley.

One of the first easy fixes will be to correct the biker-hostile (and pedestrian hostile, for that matter) vanishing shoulder stripe common at dozens of intersections along Beacon St. (the one shown is Tudor Rd. just coming down the hill from BC). Bikers must cross a solid line curving across their path to proceed straight ahead. The solid line cutting off the shoulder lane means cars have right of way to turn across/into bikes. What is needed in these couple of dozen intersections is a dashed line extending across the intersection that indicates to motorists that they need to be aware of bikes on their right that are proceeding straight.

Here is "the vanishing point" at Beacon St and Hammondswood Rd, approaching Hammond Pond Parkway from the east.