Why We Should Pay People to Bike to Work [Boston Magazine]
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This morning, it took me 40 minutes to drive 3.5 miles from my house in Jamaica Plain to my office by Symphony Hall. That’s about 5 miles per hour, a pace that makes me want to slam my head into the dashboard, over and over again. I can jog faster than that, and I am not a good runner. Traffic was particularly brutal today, but I’ve never made it less than 30 minutes during rush hour — which is why, 99 percent of the time, I bike to work (20 minutes, door-to-door) or take the T (25 minutes). After I fired up my computer and settled into my desk, I opened the Globe and was reminded again why biking is the best way to get around Boston: Booming Kendall Square has vastly increased its office space over the past few years, while actually cutting car traffic. Yes, you read that right. Here’s the Globe‘s Eric Moskowitz:
”Despite the rapid expansion in and around Kendall Square in the last decade — the neighborhood absorbed a 40 percent increase in commercial and institutional space, adding 4.6 million square feet of development — automobile traffic actually dropped on major streets, with vehicle counts falling as much as 14 percent.
Although more commuters are churning in and out of Kendall each day, many more than ever are going by T, bike, car pool, or foot.”
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